File:The study and criticism of Italian art (1916) (14780448862).jpg

Identifier: gri_33125001581517 (find matches)
Title: The study and criticism of Italian art
Year: 1916 (1910s)
Authors: Berenson, Bernard, 1865-1959
Subjects: Art, Italian Painting, Italian
Publisher: London, G. Bell and sons, ltd.

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ideals is offered by the twoversions of the Virgin with St. Anne, the blackchalk cartoon in London, and the painting in Paris.The first has perfect naturalness of look and posture,and a simple impressiveness of design, with nothingfar-fetched and dear-bought. There is somethingtruly Greek about the gracious humanity of the idealshere embodied, and it is no less Greek as decoration.I can still subscribe to what I said about it morethan fifteen years ago: One can scarcely finddraped figures contrived in a more plastic way with-out going back centuries to those female figureswhich once were clustered together on the gable ofthe Parthenon. There was, however, no room inthis cartoon for the exhibition of skill in conqueringdifficulties of composition. It required scarcely anysubtleties of chiaroscuro, still less of contrapposto, andis not even pyramidal. So Leonardo discarded it,and contrived with logic absolute the Louvre design—a pyramidal design which, had it been completed, LEONARDO
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(Former de Ruble Collection, Paris. LKDA w^mm^m LEONARDO 3i would have enjoyed a superabundance of chiaroscuro.Even in its present unfinished state, it revels in everykind of affected and acrobatic contrapposto—as arti-ficial and masterly and wonderful as the most ad-mired of forensic Latin periods. The contrast between the cartoon and the paintingis the more damaging as the former is already com-pletely thought out in conception, and almost fullyelaborated in essential execution, and thus escapesthe possible retort that the difference is due to theadvantage all slight sketches have over fully finishedworks. For in a sketch we expect the essentialsonly of pose and action, and trust the expressionwill be supplied in the achieved design. It stimulatesus to the life-enhancing exercise of our own facultiesby inviting us, as it were, to associate ourselves withthe artist in completing his task. How true wereLeonardos instincts, and how faulty his theories,may be inferred from the fact th

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