DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.71556#0060
30
LIFE OF MICHAEL ANGELO.
into further details, but it may well be said of the
whole of these compartments, that they are fraught
with the highest beauties of art. The greater part
of the works of Giotto have perished ; but judging
of him from the paintings of this chapel, and from
those at Assisi, he soars far beyond the sphere of
Masaccio in poetical conception, in devout elevation,
and in refined grace and tenderness. Masaccio is
the head of the modern realistic School in its most
dignified form; Giotto is the head of that great
School which combines the truth and simplicity of
nature with the lofty and charming qualities of the
ideal and poetic. Giotto's incorrect drawing, his
ignorance of perspective and foreshortening, the
feebleness of his extremities, and his other obvious
defects, were consequences of imperfect and unde-
veloped art ; his beauties are those of a genius of
the highest order.
The great qualities of Giotto are, in no small
degree, reflected in the works of the ablest of his
followers,— Taddeo Gaddi, Giottino, and Andrea
Orcagna, who has been called, not without reason,
the Michael Angelo of the fourteenth century.
Like him, Orcagna was great as a painter, a
sculptor, and an architect ; he also excelled in
poetical composition. In the Campo Santo at
Pisa, his powers as a painter are finely displayed,
and his Heaven, Hell, and Last Judgment in the
Strozzi chapel of the Church of Santa Maria
Novella, at Florence, was the School of Art to Fra
LIFE OF MICHAEL ANGELO.
into further details, but it may well be said of the
whole of these compartments, that they are fraught
with the highest beauties of art. The greater part
of the works of Giotto have perished ; but judging
of him from the paintings of this chapel, and from
those at Assisi, he soars far beyond the sphere of
Masaccio in poetical conception, in devout elevation,
and in refined grace and tenderness. Masaccio is
the head of the modern realistic School in its most
dignified form; Giotto is the head of that great
School which combines the truth and simplicity of
nature with the lofty and charming qualities of the
ideal and poetic. Giotto's incorrect drawing, his
ignorance of perspective and foreshortening, the
feebleness of his extremities, and his other obvious
defects, were consequences of imperfect and unde-
veloped art ; his beauties are those of a genius of
the highest order.
The great qualities of Giotto are, in no small
degree, reflected in the works of the ablest of his
followers,— Taddeo Gaddi, Giottino, and Andrea
Orcagna, who has been called, not without reason,
the Michael Angelo of the fourteenth century.
Like him, Orcagna was great as a painter, a
sculptor, and an architect ; he also excelled in
poetical composition. In the Campo Santo at
Pisa, his powers as a painter are finely displayed,
and his Heaven, Hell, and Last Judgment in the
Strozzi chapel of the Church of Santa Maria
Novella, at Florence, was the School of Art to Fra