DOI Kapitel:
Chapter I: Verrocchio and his Place in Qattrocento Art
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62110#0028
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VERROCCHIO
curiosity and interest such investigations would awake as
the mysteries of the body were revealed. It is little wonder
if he should tend to become absorbed in such studies for
their own sake. But the Florentine artist had his purpose
too deeply at heart to allow much deviation from his
course, and it is but rarely that the so-called naturalist
allowed his scientific interests to obscure his ultimate
aims.
The realism of Donatello and his followers differed
essentially from the realism of later art in that it was but
a means to an end, not an end in itself. Realism in the
Dutch School of the seventeenth century and of our own
day seems to imply the deliberate rejection of the poetic
and beautiful, the selection of the commonplace and ugly.
With the Florentines of the fifteenth century truth to
nature did not mean the ignoring of nature’s most beauti-
ful manifestations. On the contrary, they selected invari-
ably those forms which were fittest to embody their ideals
of physical and intellectual ability. I know of no Quattro-
cento Florentine painter or sculptor who was realistic in
the modern sense of the word to the exclusion of the
poetic and ideal, nor naively unselective as were the
Flemings and Germans, nor interpreters con amore of the
commonplace and ugly as were the Dutch of the Teniers
School.
The noble idealism of the sculpture of Donatello, the
chief of the Realistic School, is its greatest attraction.
While imitating with scientific accuracy the human frame,
rendering with precision its movements and gestures, his
true interests were those of the poet and humanist. His
chief aim was the interpretation of individual character,
such subtle character as perplexes and baffles in the
VERROCCHIO
curiosity and interest such investigations would awake as
the mysteries of the body were revealed. It is little wonder
if he should tend to become absorbed in such studies for
their own sake. But the Florentine artist had his purpose
too deeply at heart to allow much deviation from his
course, and it is but rarely that the so-called naturalist
allowed his scientific interests to obscure his ultimate
aims.
The realism of Donatello and his followers differed
essentially from the realism of later art in that it was but
a means to an end, not an end in itself. Realism in the
Dutch School of the seventeenth century and of our own
day seems to imply the deliberate rejection of the poetic
and beautiful, the selection of the commonplace and ugly.
With the Florentines of the fifteenth century truth to
nature did not mean the ignoring of nature’s most beauti-
ful manifestations. On the contrary, they selected invari-
ably those forms which were fittest to embody their ideals
of physical and intellectual ability. I know of no Quattro-
cento Florentine painter or sculptor who was realistic in
the modern sense of the word to the exclusion of the
poetic and ideal, nor naively unselective as were the
Flemings and Germans, nor interpreters con amore of the
commonplace and ugly as were the Dutch of the Teniers
School.
The noble idealism of the sculpture of Donatello, the
chief of the Realistic School, is its greatest attraction.
While imitating with scientific accuracy the human frame,
rendering with precision its movements and gestures, his
true interests were those of the poet and humanist. His
chief aim was the interpretation of individual character,
such subtle character as perplexes and baffles in the