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.
83/335 page 47
![that the direful effects of his nightmare were doubtless exag- gerated by Vasari.] I have mentioned here but a few of the most prominent names among the multitude of painters who flourished from 1300 to 1400; before we enter on a new century we will take a general view of the progress of the art itself and the purposes to which it was applied. The progress made in painting was chiefly by carrying out the principles of Giotto in expression and in imitation. Taddeo Gaddi and Simone excelled in the first; the imitation of form and of natural objects was so improved by Stefano Fiorentino that he was styled by his contemporaries 11 Scimici della Na- tura, the Ape of Nature. Giottino, the son of this Stefano, and others improved in color, in softness of execution, and in the means and mechanism of the art; but oil-painting was not yet invented, and linear perspective was unknown. Engraving on copper, cutting in wood, and printing were the inventions of the next century. Portraits were seldom painted, and then only of very distinguished persons, introduced into large com- positions. The imitation of natural scenery, that is, landscape painting, as a branch of art, now such a familiar source of pleasure, was as yet unthought of. When landscape was introduced into pictures as a background or accessory, it was merely to indicate the scene of the story : a rock represented a desert; some formal trees, very like brooms set on end, indi- cated a wood; a bluish space, sometimes with fishes in it, signified, rather than represented, a river or a sea; yet in the midst of this ignorance, this imperfect execution, and limited range of power, how exquisitely beautiful are some of the remains of this early time ! affording in their simple, genuine grace, and lofty, earnest, and devout feeling, examples of excel- lence which our modern painters are beginning to feel and to understand, and which the great Raphael himself did not disdain to study, and even to copy. As yet the purposes to which painting was applied were almost wholly of a religious character. No sooner was a church erected than the walls were covered with representa- tions of sacred subjects, either from Scriptural history or the legends of saints. Devout individuals or families built and consecrated chapels ; and then, at great cost, employed painters either to decorate the walls or to paint pictures for the altars;](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24877888_0083.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
