The Road in Tuscany Volume 2; A Commentary (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. 1904 Excerpt: ...course you get none of the mystery of Gothic. The Sienese did, in fact, by outlining in paint and coloured stone what the French did by masses and forms. The effect is nothing so good; it is enormously heavy; but it is an effect, a strong effect, and, incredible as it may seem, a Gothic effect.1 Lovers of the Queen of heaven, they have not been able to build her a house; but have they painted her portrait? Assuredly Painting. J r 1 J they have tried, as never lover yet, to show her to us as she showed herself to them, without spot, utterly kind, of peerless beauty, yet a crowned queen. To see Sienese paintings is to have no doubt of this. Their Madonnas have a beauty not of this world; but their paintings are not pictures. The gallery at Siena is evidence of love, but not of art. Just as a doting husband will dress his wife delightfully, hang her little person with jewels and chains, and set a crown upon her empty little head, and 'For one instance out of many of unlawful practice, take the line of popes' heads under the clerestory windows; what is that but a way of embossing? But to emboss a building with popes' heads which cannot even be seen for what they are, is more than unlawful--is outrageous. The culmination of busyness, overlaying and overdoing, is to be sought in the Piccolomini Library, whose frescoes, if they were not gilt, would be nothing. It is as if one were to keep one's books in a jewel-case. with every ounce of value he puts on her will be spending and allaying his frenzy of adoration--so I find the Sienese painters to have been, from Duccio, whom Mr. Douglas so strangely exalts, to Neroccio, beloved by Mr. Berenson. They loved Madonna far above their force as artists; but, mercifully for themselves and us, they had gold-leaf in plenty an...