File:The study and criticism of Italian art - second series (1902) (14788946873).jpg

Identifier: gri_33125001807748 (find matches)
Title: The study and criticism of Italian art : second series
Year: 1902 (1900s)
Authors: Berenson, Bernard, 1865-1959
Subjects: Art, Italian Painting, Italian
Publisher: London : G. Bell and sons
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute

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orthat reason—being executed by rote and, as it were,almost unconsciously—enable us to get a closer ac-quaintance with his habits. In the Sposaliziothe ears have invariably the form which we see inLo Spagnas Madonna in the Louvre ; they arejoined to the cheeks in a rather unusual way, andthey are quite different from those of Perugino, bothin general outline and in the shape of the cavity.The hands have so broad a palm that it almostamounts to a deformity, and that swollen secondphalanx of the thumb that we can parallel not only inthe Madonna of the Louvre, but everywhere inLo Spagna. Peruginos hands are much finer andmore delicate. A detail even more typical is to be found in theway the draperies are disposed. It is instructive tocompare, in this respect, the Caen Sposalizio withLo Spagnas works on the one hand, and Peruginoson the other. The arrangement of draperies in thelatter is more supple, more natural, more graceful ;while in Lo Spagnas works they seem, to borrow LO SPAGNA
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(Louvre, Paris. MADONNA AND CHILD THE CAEN SPOSALIZIO ii Cavalcaselles expression, arranged by hand as on layfigures. The Virgins torso is clothed in a sort ofshapeless sack, under which one can scarcely makeout her form. St. Joseph also wears a garment thatlooks like a sack, and the same might be said ofmost of the figures in the picture. As to the HighPriests garment, I defy anyone to find the least in-dication of his body under that vague drapery, whichhas the appearance of a decalcomania. Let thereader compare these draperies with those he cansee in Lo Spagnas better works—the Madonnaof the Louvre, the altar-piece at Assisi, the Coro-nation at Todi—and he will find the same pecu-liarities, the same weaknesses, the same meaninglesscorkscrew writhings, the same incapacity to make usrealize the nude under the drapery. In Lo Spagna,the folds seldom have the angular decision thatPerugino gives them; they usually end up in around. Their characteristic, obvious to even a super-ficial

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