DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61022#0144
ROMAN ART
Leonardo, upon a thorough comprehension of the really vital
features in the human figure; upon a mastery, not of anatomical
detail, but of the general structure and habits of the human form.
The advance was not made in a day. Each real master of the
earlier ages had seized some central characteristic of the human
body, some note of lightness or of solidity, of strength or of
elegance, which gives their work real value in the eyes of the
discerning amid all the conventional and extravagant accidents
which have now succeeded in attracting the vulgar. Successive
steps had brought the artists of Italian schools to a level of
achievement at which they could look upon and appreciate the
mature works of classic art, themselves the outcome of a long
and precisely similar evolution. It is thus not easy to decide
in any picture of the Renaissance how much is the result of
Italian tradition, how much the result of personal observation,
and how much the effect of the daily discoveries of classic art.
In the 4 Disputa ’ of Raphael, for the first time in his history,
all the three tendencies appear to have converged.
It is clear that he owed to no one his ease of distribution upon
the various planes. Concentration upon a central incident and
variation of grouping had been the characteristic distinguishing
him from Perugino in days as early as those in which he painted
the 4 Coronation ’ and the 4 Sposalizio.’ Nor could he have learnt
from Perugino the art of representing figures in a consistent and
unified space. Something may have been learnt from Pinturicchio,
whose frescoes in the library at Siena are connected with Raphael
by tradition. They show, with painful stiffness, a deliberate
attempt to produce a spatial effect by means of a circular arrange-
ment of the figures. But the chief influence must have come
from Florence and from the two great cartoons which have them-
selves disappeared, but have left traces upon every significant
work of art which was produced after their exhibition. Another
work of Leonardo’s, upon a smaller scale, and in itself most
obviously the greatest of a long series of similar compositions-
122
Leonardo, upon a thorough comprehension of the really vital
features in the human figure; upon a mastery, not of anatomical
detail, but of the general structure and habits of the human form.
The advance was not made in a day. Each real master of the
earlier ages had seized some central characteristic of the human
body, some note of lightness or of solidity, of strength or of
elegance, which gives their work real value in the eyes of the
discerning amid all the conventional and extravagant accidents
which have now succeeded in attracting the vulgar. Successive
steps had brought the artists of Italian schools to a level of
achievement at which they could look upon and appreciate the
mature works of classic art, themselves the outcome of a long
and precisely similar evolution. It is thus not easy to decide
in any picture of the Renaissance how much is the result of
Italian tradition, how much the result of personal observation,
and how much the effect of the daily discoveries of classic art.
In the 4 Disputa ’ of Raphael, for the first time in his history,
all the three tendencies appear to have converged.
It is clear that he owed to no one his ease of distribution upon
the various planes. Concentration upon a central incident and
variation of grouping had been the characteristic distinguishing
him from Perugino in days as early as those in which he painted
the 4 Coronation ’ and the 4 Sposalizio.’ Nor could he have learnt
from Perugino the art of representing figures in a consistent and
unified space. Something may have been learnt from Pinturicchio,
whose frescoes in the library at Siena are connected with Raphael
by tradition. They show, with painful stiffness, a deliberate
attempt to produce a spatial effect by means of a circular arrange-
ment of the figures. But the chief influence must have come
from Florence and from the two great cartoons which have them-
selves disappeared, but have left traces upon every significant
work of art which was produced after their exhibition. Another
work of Leonardo’s, upon a smaller scale, and in itself most
obviously the greatest of a long series of similar compositions-
122