The art of looking at pictures; by Thurston Carl Hammond Philander 1887-

Author:Thurston, Carl Hammond Philander, 1887- [from old catalog]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Painting, Painters
Publisher: New York, Dodd, Mead and company
Published: 1916-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

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▼igour^ the spontandiy^ and the completeness with which he carries out whatever task he is engaged on. (4) See how conscious they all are—even to the bodiless cherubs—that they have work to do in the world. (5) Note their physical strength. (6) Observe that they are fully conscious of the evil in the world; but that they are prepared to meet it, and are not at all disheartened by it. (7) Feel the kindliness which tempers their dignified gravity. (8) Realise what rich affection and unwavering de^ votion they would be capable of. (9) Learn to recognise Mantegna's sombre, powerful colour schemes. (10) See how boldly Ms architecture soars into the air. (11) Notice how seldom you find any detail which you can brand as merely conventional space-filling; each one is full of meaning. (12) Feel the force within Mantegna which was struggling too hard to find expression to be bothered with making a picture merely pretty.

Mantegna was bom at Vicenza in 1431. Before he was eleven he had already begun to study with Squar-cione, the Paduan tailor who had turned painter; and he soon became the master's favourite among all his hundred and thirty-seven pupils. But Mantegna's style was also influenced by Jacopo BeUini, whose daughter he married at twenty-three; by Paolo Ucello, who was then makuig his famous discoveries in perspective; and by the sculptor Donatello, who worked for ten years in Padua. In 1459 he went to Mantua as court painter to Ludovico Gonzaga and, with the exception of a short journey to Rome, spent tiie rest of his life there. This journey was undertaken at the request of Innocent VIII., who wished to have a series of frescoes from the painter's hands in the Vatican. But he showed so little readiness to pay for them that Mantegna, after having worked for a year and a half for little more than his board, on being asked to paint the seven deadly sins produced a composition containing eight figures, and on the pope's asking for an explanation of the eighth, lemarkea that

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it was Ingratitude, the worst of them all. He also had financial difficulties with his Mantuan patrons; but tiiev invariably treated him with the greatest respect, and showed great patience in straightening out the many real and imaginary entanglements into which his irritable disposition plunged him. Albert Durer often repeated, after Mantegna's death, that it was the saddest thing that had ever befallen him.

''Andrea was always of opinion that good antique statues were more perfect and displayed more beauty in the different parts than is exhibited by nature. He thought, moreover, that the muscles, veins, nerves, and other minute particulars were more distinctly marked and more clearly defined in statues than in nature."— Giorgio Vasari,

''Immediately after the five or six greatest names in the history of Italian art comes that of Andrea Man-tegna; he stands at the head of the group of secondary painters which counted Ghirlandajo, Botticelli, Filip-pino, Bellini, Signorelli, and Peru^no among its members.

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