File:The history of Our Lord as exemplified in works of art - with that of His types; St. John the Baptist; and other persons of the Old and New Testament (1872) (14766903294).jpg

Identifier: historyofourlord02jame (find matches)
Title: The history of Our Lord as exemplified in works of art : with that of His types ; St. John the Baptist ; and other persons of the Old and New Testament
Year: 1872 (1870s)
Authors: Jameson, Mrs. (Anna), 1794-1860 Eastlake, Elizabeth, 1809-1893
Subjects: Jesus Christ Christian art and symbolism
Publisher: London : Longmans, Green, and Co.
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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s difficult to judge it coolly as regards therendering of the subject, in which respect one may venture to pro-nounce it far inferior to Peruginos. Here, also, the main object isforgotten, for all the attention is devoted to the Virgin. The actionof lifting her veil, too, is trivial, and does not explain itself; noris the manner in which the body is held across the knees by theMagdalen devotional, or scarcely respectful. St. Johns figure isbeautiful, but his grief is not for the right object. Fra Bartolomeo is one of the last of the Italians who gives usa genuine Pieta: it is in the Pitti. And here the great agony isover, and it is affection rather than grief that is expressed (wood-cut, No. 207, over leaf). With the great colourists and draughtsmen of the 16th centurythe Pieta lost all pathos, as it discarded all tradition. MichaelAngelos repeated version of this subject will never draw a si^h.The eye turns unwillingly from the placid straightened body of our 232 HISTORY OF OUR LORD.
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207 Pieta. (Fra Bartulomeo. Pitti.) Lord lying peacefully in its winding-sheet, and ready to be bornefarther with ease and reverence, which we have hitherto contem-plated, to the huge muscular development which lies apparentlyas it fell, and is totally beyond the management of the women orangels about it. Not from their want of strength, however, forthey are all bone and muscle too, but from the irreverent clumsinesswith which they are hoisting up the flaccid mass. They are allconscious, also, of being looked at by the spectator: the very bodyhas the same expression. We turn to the early Art of the North for the traditional Pieta.The two great masters—father and son—Rogier van der Weyden,the elder and younger—were masters of that intensity of expressionwhich alone could beautify their austere and homely types of coun-tenance. This, perhaps, led them to choose the group of subjectssucceeding the crucifixion, as they did the Ecce Homo, as theirfavourite study. A Pieta in Berlin (N

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