DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61670#0071
CHARACTERISTICS OF LUCA’S ART 45
energetic of his romping putti has something rhythmic and
sedate in movement and gesture. In his reliefs of the Campanile
he conceives his scenes with a romance and poetry suggestive
of the lyric quality of Greek sculpture, though superficially
following the traditional Giottesque style. Luca, who perhaps
adopted less consciously than Donatello or Ghiberti the externals
of antique art, is instinctively and by affinity of temperament
the most purely classic among fifteenth century artists.
To sum up the spiritual qualities of his art. He has the
classic breadth of conception and treatment, the classic selection
of the significant, the classic tranquillity, the classic unconscious-
ness of the spectator. In an age of realism he remains true to
imaginative and poetic ideals. He combines with the classic
reserve and purity of taste a freshness and buoyancy all the
more invigorating because held in restraint, and he has, in
addition, a profound earnestness and religious solemnity,
which were his inheritance from Byzantine traditions. No
artist of the Renaissance, not even Donatello, has united so
harmoniously the finest qualities of Hellenic and early Chris-
tian Art.
His technical methods are in accord with these spiritual
characteristics, bold, simple, and direct. He works with
breadth and unity, extracting from marble and bronze their
special properties of grandeur and strength—that suggestion
of coherent massiveness, of having been hewn out of a solid
block, which is the essential of noble sculpture. Even in his
glazed terra-cottas it is with difficulty we realise that their
marble-like surface is but an incrustation, in so solid and
sculptural a manner are they treated.
He composes his scenes with true classic feeling for rhythm
and balance, grouping the figures symmetrically, and even
in his larger works, such as the Cantoria and the Bronze
Doors, never losing sight of the whole effect. Each relief
is a perfectly built up, self-contained scene, but each is
composed to take its share in a general scheme.
energetic of his romping putti has something rhythmic and
sedate in movement and gesture. In his reliefs of the Campanile
he conceives his scenes with a romance and poetry suggestive
of the lyric quality of Greek sculpture, though superficially
following the traditional Giottesque style. Luca, who perhaps
adopted less consciously than Donatello or Ghiberti the externals
of antique art, is instinctively and by affinity of temperament
the most purely classic among fifteenth century artists.
To sum up the spiritual qualities of his art. He has the
classic breadth of conception and treatment, the classic selection
of the significant, the classic tranquillity, the classic unconscious-
ness of the spectator. In an age of realism he remains true to
imaginative and poetic ideals. He combines with the classic
reserve and purity of taste a freshness and buoyancy all the
more invigorating because held in restraint, and he has, in
addition, a profound earnestness and religious solemnity,
which were his inheritance from Byzantine traditions. No
artist of the Renaissance, not even Donatello, has united so
harmoniously the finest qualities of Hellenic and early Chris-
tian Art.
His technical methods are in accord with these spiritual
characteristics, bold, simple, and direct. He works with
breadth and unity, extracting from marble and bronze their
special properties of grandeur and strength—that suggestion
of coherent massiveness, of having been hewn out of a solid
block, which is the essential of noble sculpture. Even in his
glazed terra-cottas it is with difficulty we realise that their
marble-like surface is but an incrustation, in so solid and
sculptural a manner are they treated.
He composes his scenes with true classic feeling for rhythm
and balance, grouping the figures symmetrically, and even
in his larger works, such as the Cantoria and the Bronze
Doors, never losing sight of the whole effect. Each relief
is a perfectly built up, self-contained scene, but each is
composed to take its share in a general scheme.