Painting

For a hundred years after Giotto there appeared in Florence no painter equally endowed with dominion over the significant. His immediate followers so little understood the essence of his power that some thought it resided in his massive types, others in the swiftness of his line, and still others in his light colour, and it never occurred to any of them that the massive form without its material significance, its tactile values, is a shapeless sack, that the line which is not functional is mere calligraphy, and that light colour by itself can at the best spot a surface prettily.

(BORDONE)

THÉOPHILE GAUTIER

(GENTILE DA FABRIANO)

F.A. GRUYER

(MURILLO)

AIMÉ GIRON

(LEONARDO DA VINCI)

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

We will now turn to The Last Supper, which was painted on the wall of the refectory of St. Maria delle Gratie in Milan.

The place where this picture is painted must first be considered: for here the knowledge of this artist is focussed. Could anything more appropriate, or noble, be devised for a refectory than a parting meal which the whole world will reverence for ever?

(BOTTICELLI)

WALTER PATER

(HOLBEIN)

ANTONY VALABRÈGUE

(GIOTTO)

JOHN RUSKIN