Memoirs of the early Italian painters / by Anna Jameson; thoroughly revised and in part rewritten by Estelle M. Hurll.
- Anna Brownell Jameson
- Date:
- 1899
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Memoirs of the early Italian painters / by Anna Jameson; thoroughly revised and in part rewritten by Estelle M. Hurll. Source: Wellcome Collection.
80/335 page 44
![traditions as to particular figures have reached us. The atti- tudes of Christ and the Virgin were afterwards borrowed by Michael Angelo, in his celebrated Last Judgment; but, not- withstanding the perfection of his forms, he stands far below the dignified grandeur of the old master. Later painters have also borrowed from his arrangement of the patriarchs and apostles, particularly Fra Bartolommeo and Raphael. The third representation, directly succeeding the foregoing, is Hell. It is altogether inferior to the preceding represen- tations in execution, and even in the composition. Here the imagination of the painter, unrestrained by any just rules of taste, degenerates into the monstrous and disgusting, and even the grotesque and ludicrous. Hell is here represented as a great rocky caldron, divided into four compartments rising one above the other. In the midst sits Satan, a fearful armed giant — himself a fiery furnace, out of whose body flames arise in different places, in which sinners are consumed or crushed. In other parts the condemned are seen spitted like fowls, and roasted and basted by demons, with other such atrocious fan- cies, too horrible and sickening for description. The lower part of the picture was badly painted over, and altered accord- ing to the taste of the day, in the sixteenth century; certainly not for the better. The Lorenzetti also painted in the Campo Santo the Her- mits in the Wilderness :1 they are represented as dwelling in caves and chapels, upon rocks and mountains; some studying, others meditating, others tempted by demons in various horri- ble or alluring forms, for such were the diseased fancies which haunted a solitary and unnatural existence. As the laws of perspective were then unknown, the various groups of hermits and their dwellings are represented one above another, and all of the same size, much like the figures on a china plate. It is, however, very interesting, and Lorenzetti repeated these scenes on a smaller scale in a picture now in the Ufffzi at Florence.2 [Andrea da Firenze (1377) and] Antonio Veneziano [1386] also painted in the Campo Santo the history of St. Ranieri, a native of Fisa, who, for his pious life and wonderful miracles, 1 [For a detailed account of this fresco, and an engraving of same, see Saci'cd and Legendary Art, p. 740 et seq.~] 2 [Crowe and Cavalcaselle consider this picture the work of a pupil.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24877888_0080.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
