The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance: Third Edition — John Shaqi
The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance: Third EditionBerenson, Bernard
History
The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance: Third Edition
Berenson, Bernard
Art, Renaissance; Painters -- Italy -- Venice
But happily art is too great and too vital a subject to be crowded into
any single formula; and a formula that would, without distorting our
entire view of Italian art in the fifteenth century, do full justice to
such a painter as Carlo Crivelli, does not exist. He takes rank with the
most genuine artists of all times and countries, and does not weary even
when "great masters" grow tedious. He expresses with the freedom and
spirit of Japanese design a piety as wild and tender as Jacopo da
Todi's, a sweetness of emotion as sincere and dainty as of a Virgin and
Child carved in ivory by a French craftsman of the fourteenth century.
The mystic beauty of Simone Martini, the agonized compassion of the
young Bellini, are embodied by Crivelli in forms which have the strength
of line and the metallic lustre of old Satsuma or lacquer, and which are
no less tempting to the touch. Crivelli must be treated by himself and
as the product of stationary, if not reactionary, conditions. Having
lived most of his life far away from the main currents of culture, in a
province where St. Bernardino had been spending his last energies in the
endeavour to call the world back to the ideals of an infantile
civilisation, Crivelli does not belong to a movement of constant
progress, and therefore is not within the scope of this work.
To make the essay useful as a handbook to Venetian painting, lists have
been appended of the works, in and out of Italy, by the principal
Venetian masters. These lists do not pretend to absolute completeness.
Only such private collections have been mentioned as are well known and
accessible to students, although in the case of very rare painters all
of their known works are given, and even such as are of doubtful
authenticity are alluded to. The author has seen and carefully
considered all the pictures he mentions, except one or two at St.
Petersburg, which are, however, well known from the photographs of MM.
Braun & Cie. The attributions are based on the results of the most
recent research. Even such painstaking critics of some years ago as
Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle laboured under terrible disadvantages,
because most of their work was done at a time when travelling was much
slower than it has now become, and when photography was not sufficiently
perfected to be of great service. Rapid transit and isochromatic
photography are beginning to enable the student to make of
connoisseurship something like an exact science. To a certain extent,
therefore, Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle have been superseded, and to a
great degree supplemented by the various writings of Morelli, Richter,
Frizzoni, and others. The author takes pleasure in acknowledging his
indebtedness to the first systematic writers on Italian painting no less
than to the perfectors of the new critical method, now adopted by nearly
all serious students of Italian art. To the founder of the new
criticism, the late Giovanni Morelli, and to his able successor, Dr.
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