DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51584#0226
222
EARLY ITALIAN PAINTERS.
the school of Padua, and rendered still more a
fashion by the influence and popularity of Andrea
Mantegna, already old, and Michael Angelo, then a
young man), was rapidly corrupting the simple and
pious taste which had hitherto prevailed in art,
even while imparting to it a more universal di-
rection, and a finer feeling for beauty and sublimity
in the abstract. At the same time, and encouraged
for their own purposes by the Medici family, there
prevailed with this pagan taste in literature and art
a general laxity of morals, a licence of conduct, and
a disregard of all sacred things, such as had never,
even in the darkest ages of barbarism, been known
in Italy. The papal chair was during that period
filled by two popes, the perfidious and cruel Sixtus
IV., and the yet more detestable Alexander VI.
(the infamous Borgia). Florence, meantime, under
the sway of Lorenzo and his sons, became one
of the most magnificent, but also one of the most
dissolute of cities.
The natural taste and character of Bartolomeo
placed him far from this luxurious and licentious
court; but he had acquired great reputation by the
exquisite beauty and tenderness of his Madonnas,
and he was employed by the Dominicans of the con-
vent of St. Mark to paint a fresco in their church,
representing the Last Judgment. At this time
Savonarola, an eloquent friar in the convent, was
preaching against the disorders of the times, the
EARLY ITALIAN PAINTERS.
the school of Padua, and rendered still more a
fashion by the influence and popularity of Andrea
Mantegna, already old, and Michael Angelo, then a
young man), was rapidly corrupting the simple and
pious taste which had hitherto prevailed in art,
even while imparting to it a more universal di-
rection, and a finer feeling for beauty and sublimity
in the abstract. At the same time, and encouraged
for their own purposes by the Medici family, there
prevailed with this pagan taste in literature and art
a general laxity of morals, a licence of conduct, and
a disregard of all sacred things, such as had never,
even in the darkest ages of barbarism, been known
in Italy. The papal chair was during that period
filled by two popes, the perfidious and cruel Sixtus
IV., and the yet more detestable Alexander VI.
(the infamous Borgia). Florence, meantime, under
the sway of Lorenzo and his sons, became one
of the most magnificent, but also one of the most
dissolute of cities.
The natural taste and character of Bartolomeo
placed him far from this luxurious and licentious
court; but he had acquired great reputation by the
exquisite beauty and tenderness of his Madonnas,
and he was employed by the Dominicans of the con-
vent of St. Mark to paint a fresco in their church,
representing the Last Judgment. At this time
Savonarola, an eloquent friar in the convent, was
preaching against the disorders of the times, the