PAINTING 



4449 



PAINTING 



In the fifteenth century every branch of 

 human knowledge began to be cultivated with 

 a renewed vigor and enthusiasm. Painting, too, 

 enjoyed its full and glorious share of the gen- 

 eral activity. Foremost in the ranks of the 

 painters of the Florentine School are Tommaso 

 Guidi, better known as Masaccio, whose classic 

 naturalism was adopted by the progressive 

 rtt of his time; Fra Angelico, who remained 

 true to the traditions of Roman Catholic art 

 and invested his Madonnas and angels with 

 the cheerfulness, beauty and holiness which re- 

 flected the purity of his own life; Fra Filjppo 

 Lippi, the artist monk who imparted to his 

 Madonnas a sensuous beauty and clothed his 

 angels in gay Florentine garb. Perugino heads 

 the list of the Umbrian School, the art of which 

 was characterized by deep religious fervor. 

 Venetian painting was later than Florentine 

 in its development. Jacopo Bellini was the 

 fir>t great painter in Venice, but he was far 

 surpassed by his more renowned sons, Gentile 

 and Giovanni. 



All these men were but the forerunners of 

 the still greater artists of the next century, the 

 Golden Age of Italian art. Instead of an ex- 

 pression of religious faith in painting we find 

 now an expression of the highest worldly beauty. 

 As Ruskin has pointed out, the painters chose 

 a religious subject, not like the earlier Chris- 

 tian painters, for the purpose of touching men's 

 :rs, but for the purpose of pleasing men's 

 eyes. In the Florentine school of this period 

 are the "divinely endowed" Leonardo da Vinci, 

 painter, sculptor architect, engineer, and one 

 of the earliest leaders in science, especially 

 that which had a bearing upon art ; Fra Bar- 

 tolommco, noted for his Madonnas; Michel- 

 angelo, supreme in painting, sculpture and 

 an Int. . ture; and Andrea del Sarto, "the Fault- 

 less Painter" and great colorist. In the Roman 

 School, a continuation of the Umbrian, Raphael 

 Santi stands supreme. He is hailed as tin- 

 "Prince of Italian painting." Parma boasts 

 of Correggio. . known a nl of 



th- Lombard School, and without a rival in IK- 

 rite perception of tin- minutest gradations 

 of light and shade. Painting n now 



likewise burst into full bloom und r the KU id- 

 ance of it worldly painters, whose brill 

 ul"u:::_' tints arc unsurpassed Titian, the 

 father of the modem art of coloring; Pal ma 

 Vecchio, noted for his portraits of 

 women; Tintoretto, like Titian, famed for 

 wondrous coloring; and Paul Veronese, who 

 1"-. i-d to paint banquet scenes. In the 1 

 279 



part of the sixteenth century came a decline in 

 Italian art, due chiefly to the lavish imitation 

 of the great masters of the preceding century. 



Other Nations. During this period Flemish 

 art reached a high degree of excellence. The 

 brothers Van Eyck founded a school of paint- 

 ing whose influence extended to succeeding 

 periods. They were the first to use oils suc- 

 cessfully in mixing colors, and they introdi: 

 the landscape as a setting for their figures. 

 Hans Memling added to the work* of the Van 

 F.ycks by introducing a delicacy of finish in 

 his landscapes and costumes that was far in 

 advance of his time. 



Albrecht Durer was the greatest of the Ger- 

 man masters of this period, and his work 

 erted a lasting influence upon German art. He 

 was followed by Hans Holbein, the Younger, 

 one of the world's greatest portrait painters. 



The Seventeenth Century. Art critics regard 

 the seventeenth century as the Golden Age of 

 painting because during this century technical 

 mastery of the art reached its highest degree 

 of perfection. The most marked changes dur- 

 ing the period consisted in the development 

 of the landscape, and its use in the representa- 

 tion of scenes of common life (genre), the per- 

 fection of portrait painting and the change 

 from mural decoration to small canvases or 

 easel painting. 



Italy. The decline in art which began in the 

 sixteenth century extended far into the seven- 

 teenth in Italy. Two schools then came into 

 prominence the Naturalist, established in Na- 

 ples, whose followers looked to nature for their 

 inspiration and of whom Sal vat or Rosa 

 the leader; and the Fclectic School, founded 

 in Bologna by the Carracci, who tried to fol- 

 low in the steps of the masters who had just 

 preceded them, and of whom Domeniehino and 

 Guido Reni were the most successful. By the 

 nning of the eighteenth century. Italian 

 art had reached a mediocre level, and although 

 Italy has shared to some extent in the modern 



I al of art. it has not In en aide to i 



the hiuh standard of the more northern nations. 

 Spain. Spanish art reach..l itl lm.-h.-t de- 

 \.l>l>ment in the seventeenth century, the time 

 >! Velasquez and Murillo; the former was 

 "the painter of earth;" the latter, "the pa: 



of heaven." Many critics consider that the his- 

 tory of Spanish painting begins with the period 

 M these tuo masters flourished. For a 

 long time Spanish art was dependent upon 

 in teaching. Ho,. DM that 



n art in the sixteenth 



