Book Description

Excerpt from The Picture Collector's Manual, Adapted to the Professional Man, and the Amateur, Vol. 1 of 2: Being a Dictionary of Painters, Containing Fifteen Hundred More Names Than in Any Other Work; Together With an Alphabetical Arrangement of the Scholars, Imitators, and Copyists of the Various Masters The Fine Arts had long been on the decline in the classic regions of Greece and Italy, and although the lambent ame of genius, continued to hover between those countries, and in Egypt, its in uence was scarcely felt in either, if we may judge from the rude specimens with which we have been furnished, until the commence ment of the thirteenth century, at about which period, a spark of its sacred fire appears to have fallen upon Cimabue, who by his example, gave a new impulse to the art, and thus laid the foundation of that greatness, to which the Florentine School now lays claim. Cimabue, the founder of that school, and of the modern art of painting, was born in Florence, in 1240 he had received some instruo tion in that branch of the Arts, and also in architecture and sculpture, but his labours had been confined to the mere copying of the works of others, disdaining those trammels, he determined to take nature for his guide, and soon acquired that confidence in his own powers, from which arose the germ of excellence, that about two centuries afterwards, began to overspread the whole of Italy. The paintings of Cimabue, who has been called the Michael Angelo of that period, were all of a scriptural or religious character, boldly conceived and splendidly coloured, but the attitudes of his figures were stifi, the outlines harsh, and the extremities bad; his male heads, particularly of old men, were dignified and impressive, but those of females possessed neither beauty nor delicacy, the eyes were generally wide and staring, and the nostrils too much spread, the fingers lean, and the toes peaked and unnatural. Nevertheless, Cimabue had his admirers, and one of his pictures of the Virgin was borne in procession to one of the churches in that city, accompanied by music he died in 1300. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."