The Italian Schools of Painting Volume 2; Based on the Handbook of Kugler (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 Excerpt: ... It is said that he and one Maturino, a Florentine, of whom nothing else is known, embellished the exterior of several palaces in Rome with decorations in chiaroscuro, chiefly friezes with subjects from ancient history and mythology, in which it is believed, the principal merit belongs to Maturino. The little that has been preserved of them, as well as the still existing copies and designs, display a decided tendency to the later Raphaelesque style. The study of tho antique is here most happily united to picturesqueness of effect, while the mannerism which undermined the school of Raphael is still subdued by great freshness of power. In Polidoro's few easel-pictures, also of this time--for instance, in ' Psyche received in Olympus, ' in the Louvre--we still trace reminiscences of Raphael's feeling. His later works executed in Naples and Messina show a totally different style. The mannered idealism of his Roman contemporaries is here replaced by a gaudy and somewhat unpleasant naturalism, which, though hitherto kept down by the noble examples around him, may be considered as the original tendency of this painter. At the same time, even in this representation of common nature, he evinces much power, life, and passion, being the first to suggest tho style which afterwards became that of the Neapolitan painters. His principal work--' Christ bearing His Cross, ' painted in Messina--is now, with a number of smaller pictures of sacred subjects, in the Public Gallery at Naples. It is a highly animated, and, despite the meanness of the forms, imposing composition, of gloomy brown colouring, like most of Polidoro's later works. An 'Annunciation ' by him in the Gallery at Gotha is pleasing in colour. Polidoro was murdered in 1543 by one Tonno, his assistant. See engravi...