DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51584#0146
142
EARLY ITALIAN PAINTERS.
so rapidly, and with so much liveliness and truth,
as to astonish every one : the exact drawing and
modelling of forms, the inventive fancy exercised
in his mechanical art, and the turn for portraiture,
are displayed in all his subsequent productions.
These were so many in number, so various in sub-
ject, and so admirable, that only a few of them can
be noticed here. After he returned from Rome
his first work was the painting of a chapel of the
Vespucci family, in the church of Ognissanti (All
Saints), in which he introduced, in 1485, the por-
trait of Amerigo Vespuccio the navigator, who
afterwards gave his name to a new world.
Ghirlandajo painted a chapel for a certain Flo-
rentine citizen, Francesco Sassetti, in the church
of the Trinita. Here he represented the whole
life of Francesco’s patron saint, St. Francis, in a
series of pictures full of feeling and dramatic
power. As he was confined to the popular histories
and traditions, which had been treated again and
again by successive painters, and in which it was
necessary to conform to certain fixed and prescribed
rules, it was difficult to introduce any variety in
the conception. Yet he has done this simply by
the mere force of expression. The most excellent
of these frescoes is the Death of St. Francis, sur-
rounded by the monks of his order, in which the
aged heads, full of grief, awe, resignation, are de-
picted with wonderful skill: at the foot of the
EARLY ITALIAN PAINTERS.
so rapidly, and with so much liveliness and truth,
as to astonish every one : the exact drawing and
modelling of forms, the inventive fancy exercised
in his mechanical art, and the turn for portraiture,
are displayed in all his subsequent productions.
These were so many in number, so various in sub-
ject, and so admirable, that only a few of them can
be noticed here. After he returned from Rome
his first work was the painting of a chapel of the
Vespucci family, in the church of Ognissanti (All
Saints), in which he introduced, in 1485, the por-
trait of Amerigo Vespuccio the navigator, who
afterwards gave his name to a new world.
Ghirlandajo painted a chapel for a certain Flo-
rentine citizen, Francesco Sassetti, in the church
of the Trinita. Here he represented the whole
life of Francesco’s patron saint, St. Francis, in a
series of pictures full of feeling and dramatic
power. As he was confined to the popular histories
and traditions, which had been treated again and
again by successive painters, and in which it was
necessary to conform to certain fixed and prescribed
rules, it was difficult to introduce any variety in
the conception. Yet he has done this simply by
the mere force of expression. The most excellent
of these frescoes is the Death of St. Francis, sur-
rounded by the monks of his order, in which the
aged heads, full of grief, awe, resignation, are de-
picted with wonderful skill: at the foot of the