The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance: With An Index To Their WorksBerenson, Bernard
History
The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance: With An Index To Their Works
Berenson, Bernard
Art, Renaissance; Painters -- Italy -- Florence
We are happily far better situated toward Fra Angelico, enough of whose
works have come down to us to reveal not only his quality as an artist,
but his character as a man. Perfect certainty of purpose, utter devotion
to his task, a sacramental earnestness in performing it, are what the
quantity and quality of his work together proclaim. It is true that
Giotto's profound feeling for either the materially or the spiritually
significant was denied him--and there is no possible compensation for
the difference; but although his sense for the real was weaker, it yet
extended to fields which Giotto had not touched. Like all the supreme
artists, Giotto had no inclination to concern himself with his attitude
toward the significant, with his feelings about it; the grasping and
presentation of it sufficed him. In the weaker personality, the
significant, vaguely perceived, is converted into emotion, is merely
felt, and not realised. Over this realm of feeling Fra Angelico was the
first great master. "God's in his heaven--all's right with the world" he
felt with an intensity which prevented him from perceiving evil
anywhere. When he was obliged to portray it, his imagination failed him
and he became a mere child; his hells are bogy-land; his martyrdoms are
enacted by children solemnly playing at martyr and executioner; and he
nearly spoils one of the most impressive scenes ever painted--the great
"Crucifixion" at San Marco--with the childish violence of St. Jerome's
tears. But upon the picturing of blitheness, of ecstatic confidence in
God's loving care, he lavished all the resources of his art. Nor were
they small. To a power of rendering tactile values, to a sense for the
significant in composition, inferior, it is true, to Giotto's, but
superior to the qualifications of any intervening painter, Fra Angelico
added the charm of great facial beauty, the interest of vivid
expression, the attraction of delicate colour. What in the whole world
of art more rejuvenating than Angelico's "Coronation" (in the
Uffizi)--the happiness on all the faces, the flower-like grace of line
and colour, the childlike simplicity yet unqualifiable beauty of the
composition? And all this in tactile values which compel us to grant the
reality of the scene, although in a world where real people are
standing, sitting, and kneeling we know not, and care not, on what. It
is true, the significance of the event represented is scarcely touched
upon, but then how well Angelico communicates the feeling with which it
inspired him! Yet simple though he was as a person, simple and
one-sided as was his message, as a product he was singularly complex. He
was the typical painter of the transition from Mediaeval to Renaissance.
The sources of his feeling are in the Middle Ages, but he _enjoys_ his
feelings in a way which is almost modern; and almost modern also are his
means of expression. We are too apt to forget this transitional
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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