[100] Disegno interiore ed esteriore; concetti intellettivi e formativi;
sostanze sostanziali, forme formali.--Titolo del capitolo XII. che la
filosofia e il filosofare è disegno metaforico similitudinario.--Disegno,
Segno di Dio.
[101] Baglioni, Vita di Muziano.
[102] 1560-1640.
THE SCHOOL OF NAPLES.
Social refinements and elegance of taste in arts had shed their
splendour over the Hesperian colonies of Greece long before Rome had
learnt to value more than the ploughshare and the sword; Herculaneum,
Stabiæ, Pompeii, with their still remaining multitude and variety of
legitimate monuments, prove that a technic school of eminence flourished
in the Neapolitan states after they had been incorporated with the Roman
empire; and what time has spared or tradition recorded of the attempts
made by Goths, Greeks, Longobards, Saracens, and Normans, to repair
their waste of desolation, sufficiently shows, that though the art
itself at intervals vanished, the craft still subsisted during the gloom
of the middle ages.
But not to soil these pages with too much legend, we date the revival of
Neapolitan art from the name of Tommaso de' Stefani, born 1230, the
contemporary of Cimabue and Charles of Anjou, who, though on his passage
through Florence he had been led to visit that object of Tuscan dotage,
on his establishment at Naples employed Tommaso in his new-founded
church; a questionable honour, of which a native writer[103] avails
himself to insinuate the superiority of his countryman over Cimabue, as
if the suffrage of a prince could defeat the evidence of works, or stand
against the verdict of Marco da Siena,[104] who from them, judged him
inferior to the Florentine in grandeur of style and breadth.
The favours of Charles were continued to Tommaso by his successor, and
emulated by the principal families of the city; the chapel de' Minutoli,
named by Boccaccio, was storied by him with subjects drawn from the
Saviour's passion; and others from the life of S. Gennaro, and some
sainted bishops, by his hand, are said still to exist in a roomy chapel
of the ancient Episcopio. Some semblance of the same saint in S. Angelo
a Nido, formerly S. Michele, is considered as his work, and some
fragments have survived of others, with dates of 1270 and 1275. He was
the master of Filippo Tesauro, who painted in the church of S. Restituta
the life of S. Nicholas the Hermit, the only fresco of his which has
reached our time.[105]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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