The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting
The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting

Author: Raimond Van Marle

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 643

ISBN-13: 9401527989

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It is only in the last generation that lovers of art have recognized the special qualities of the 14th century Sienese school of painting, and have found its graceful, conventional drawing and its pleasing decorative effects not inferior to the realism and fidelity to nature praised in other periods. The general admiration accorded to the subtle, lyrical and aristo· cratic expression of abstract and spiritual conceptions which is the essence of Sienese painting, gives us some hope for the future develop ment of taste in Europe and for its artistic tendencies. F. Mason Perkins was the first to understand the aesthetic signific ance, not only of the principal artists of this school, but also of its minor members. His numerous articles on the "Little Masters" have been of great assistance to me in my attempt to write as complete a history as was possible of Sienese painting in the I4th century. I am only too glad to take this opportunity of paying homage to his profound knowledge and enthusiastic activity in this field of study. Other names that deserve mention here are those of Mr. Langton Douglas, the annotator of Crowe and Cavalcaselle and author of many important studies including a IIHistory of Siena"; and of Dr. G. De Nicola, Director of the National Museum, Florence, for among the many subjects with which he is conversant is the history of the Sienese school of painting, on which he has written articles of great value.

Book Auction Records
Book Auction Records

Author: Frank Karslake

Publisher:

Published: 1918

Total Pages: 702

ISBN-13:

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A priced and annotated annual record of international book auctions.

Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino, Volume I (of 3)
Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino, Volume I (of 3)

Author: James Dennistoun

Publisher: JOHN LANE COMPANY

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13:

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Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino, Volume I (of 3) But Dennistoun's Dukes of Urbino is not merely a history of the houses of Montefeltro and Della Rovere, of-viii- their famous and most brilliant Court, and of that part of Italy over which they held dominion, but really a work in belles-lettres too, discursive and amusing, as well as instructive. It deals not merely with history, as it seems we have come to understand the word, a thing of politics—in this case the futile and childish politics of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy—but illustrates "the arms, arts, and literature of Italy from 1440 to 1630." And indeed this programme was carried out as well as it could be carried out at the time these volumes were written. The book, which has long been almost unprocurable, is full, as it were, of a great leisure, crammed with all sorts of out-of-the-way learning and curious tales and adventures. Sometimes failing in art, and often we may think in judgment, Dennistoun never fails in this, that he is always interested in the people he writes of, interested in their quarrels and love affairs, their hair-breadth escapes and good fortunes. How eagerly he sides with Duke Guidobaldo, chased out of his city of Urbino by Cesare Borgia! It is as though he were assisting at that sudden flight at midnight, and, whole-heartedly the Duke's man as he was, almost fails to understand what Cesare was aiming at, and quite fails to see what Cesare saw too well—the helplessness of Italy, at the mercy, really, of the unconscious nations of the modern world. Such failures as this make his work, indispensable as it is, less valuable than it might have been, but they by no means detract from the general interest of the story. That is a quarry from which much has been hewn, and a good many of those enduring blocks which go to make up so popular and charming a work as John Inglesant came in the first instance from Dennistoun's volumes.