Identifier: greatpicturesassx00sing (find matches)
Title: Great pictures, as seen and described by famous writers
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: Singleton, Esther, d. 1930, ed. and tr
Subjects: Painting
Publisher: New York : Dodd, Mead and Company
Contributing Library: Boston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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ar subjectswere not uncommon, the vast majority of paintings exe-cuted for patrons, whether clerical or lay, were stillreligious in subject. It is not therefore, surprising thatamong the artists of the Fifteenth Century, many of whomwere monks and all Church painters, we find a distinctcleavage dividing artists whose aim was to break awayfrom all traditions—realists — classicists—in a word, re-formers, from artists who clung tenaciously to the old ideals,and whose main aim was still the perfection of devotionalexpression. It was to the former class that Benozzo Gozzoli be-longed, pupil though he was of Fra Angelico. Althoughhis special quality may be partly discerned in the altar-piecethat hangs above his masters predella, in the strongly markedcharacter of the saints, and perhaps more in the carefullystudied goldfinches, there was little scope in such a subjectfor the exercise of his imagination or the display of hisindividuality. It is different with the little panel opposite,
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THE RAPE OF HELEN 139 The Rape of Helen (No. 591), in which he has depictedwith great liveliness and gusto a scene from a classicallegend. Possibly, to Fra Angelico, who regarded paintingonly as a means of edification, its employment on sucha subject may have seemed little less than sacrilege, notunlike the use of a chancel for the stabling of horses.Such views can scarcely be said to be extinct now, and thisis the more remarkable as no one has the same feeling withregard to the other arts, such as sculpture or poetry. Toa young man like Benozzo, and many others of his day,not monks, nor specially devout in disposition, it must,nevertheless, have been a change which was welcome.To paint the Virgin enthroned with Saints over and overagain, must have been a little wearisome to men con-scious of a fancy to which they could give no scope exceptby putting S. Jeromes hat in a new place, or introducing acouple of goldfinches. One likes to think of the pleasurewith which Gozzoli received his

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