This, to my mind, is the only imaginative; that is, the only true, real,
heartfelt representation of the being and actuality of the subject in existence.I should exhaust the patience of the reader if I were to dwell at length on the
various stupendous developments of the imagination of Tintoret in the Scuola di
San Rocco alone. I would fain join a while in that solemn pause of the journey
into Egypt, where the silver boughs of the shadowy trees lace with their
tremulous lines the alternate folds of fair clouds, flushed by faint crimson
light,
art oil paintings for sale, and lie across the streams of blue between those rosy islands, like the
white wakes of wandering ships; or watch beside the sleep of the disciples among
those massy leaves that lie so heavily on the dead of the night beneath the
descent of the angel of the agony, and toss fearfully above the motion of the
torches as the troop of the betrayer emerges out of the hollows of the olives;
or wait through the hour of accusing beside the judgment seat of Pilate, where
all is unseen, unfelt, except the one figure that stands with its head bowed
down, pale like a pillar of moonlight, half bathed in the glory of the Godhead, half wrapt in the whiteness
of the shroud. Of these and all the other thoughts of indescribable power that
are now fading from the walls of those neglected chambers,
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endeavor at some future time to preserve some image and shadow more faithfully
than by words; but I shall at present terminate our series of illustrations by
reference to a work of less touching, but more tremendous appeal, the Last
Judgment in the Church of Santa Maria dell' Orto. In this subject, almost all
realizing or local statement had been carefully avoided by the most powerful
painters, they judging it better to represent its chief circumstances as generic
thoughts, and present them to the mind in a typical or abstract form. In the
judgment of Angelico the treatment is purely typical, a long Campo santo,
composed of two lines of graves, stretches away into the distance; on the left side of it rise
the condemned; on the right the just. With Giotto and Orcagna, the conception,
though less rigid, is equally typical,
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space, and only so much ground represented as is absolutely necessary to support
the near figures and allow space for a few graves. Michael Angelo in no respect
differs in his treatment, except that his figures are less symmetrically
grouped, and a greater conception of space is given by their various
perspective. No interest is attached to his background in itself. Fra
Bartolomeo, never able to grapple with any species of sublimity except that of
simple religious feeling, fails most signally in this mighty theme. His group of the dead, including not more
than ten or twelve figures, occupies the foreground only, behind them a vacant
plain extends to the foot of a cindery volcano, about whose mouth several little
black devils like spiders are skipping and crawling. The judgment of quick and
dead is thus expressed as taking place in about a rood square, and on a dozen of
people at a time; the whole of the space and horizon of the sky and land being
left vacant, and the presence of the Judge of all the earth made more finite
than the sweep of a whirlwind or a thunder-storm.
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