Painting

Fra Angelico we know already as the painter who devoted his life to picturing the departing mediæval vision of a heaven upon earth. Nothing could have been farther from the purpose of Uccello and Castagno. Different as these two were from each other, they have this much in common, that in their works which remain to us, dating, it is true, from their years of maturity, there is no touch of mediæval sentiment, no note of transition.

In all that concerns movement, Verrocchio was a learner from Pollaiuolo, rather than an initiator, and he probably never attained his master’s proficiency. We have unfortunately but few terms for comparison, as the only paintings which can be with certainty ascribed to Verrocchio are not pictures of action. A drawing however like that of his angel, in the British Museum, which attempts as much movement as the Hercules by Pollaiuolo, in the same collection, is of obviously inferior quality.

(REMBRANDT)

EUGÈNE FROMENTIN

(GUIDO RENI)

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

(WATTEAU)

EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT

(BENOZZO GOZZOLI)

COSMO MONKHOUSE

(RAPHAEL)

MRS. JAMESON

(RAPHAEL)

F.A. GRUYER

Raphael seemed to have attained perfection in the Virgin with the Fish; however, four or five years later, he was to rise infinitely higher and display something superior to art and inaccessible to science.

It was in 1518 that the Benedictines of the monastery of St. Sixtus ordered this picture. They had required that the Virgin and the Infant Jesus should be in the company of St. Sixtus and St. Barbara. This is how Raphael entered into their views.

(LEONARDO DA VINCI) 

WALTER PATER