Six Centuries of Painting

So far as it concerns pictures painted upon panel or canvas in tempera or oils, the history of painting begins with Cimabue, who worked in Florence during the latter half of the...

"He afterwards painted the picture of the Virgin for the Church of Santa Maria Novella, where it is suspended on high between the chapel of the Rucellai family and that of the B...

Foremost among the painters of this period was FRA ANGELICO, or to give him his proper title, Frate Giovanni da Fiesole, who was born in 1387 not far from Florence, and died in...

The large and beautiful _Assumption of the Virgin_, with the circles of saints and angels, in the National Gallery, which has only of late years been taken out of the catalogue...

In 1508 Michelangelo began to prepare the cartoons for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Space forbids me to attempt any description of these, but the story of their completion...

The influence of the Byzantine style still hangs heavily over the work of NICOLO SEMITECOLO, who was working in Venice in the middle of the fourteenth century, as may be seen in...

of this portrait has been bequeathed to the National Gallery by Sir Henry Layard, and it is to be hoped that the difficulties raised by the Italian government as to its removal...

Of the Sebastian, Vasari says very much the same as Reynolds. "He is nude," he writes, "and has been exactly copied from the life without the slightest admixture of art, no effo...

It cannot be said that the Venetian artists of the second half of the sixteenth century equalled in their collective excellence the great masters of the first, but in single ins...

Shortly after painting this picture he left his native country for the first time, and visited Venice and Rome. At Venice he made copies of Tintoretto's _Last Supper_ and _Cruci...

The prevailing arrangement of his subjects is symmetrical, holding fast to the earliest rules of ecclesiastical art. His heads appear to aim at an ideal beauty and dignity only...

The first painter who deserted his native style of art was, as before mentioned, Jan Mabuse. After the large _Adoration of the Kings_ in the National Gallery the most important...

The remarkable freedom and originality of Rubens's treatment of classical subjects is thus accounted for. Under the surface is his familiarity with the antique, but instead of c...

Poor Hals, he was a good, honest fellow, though sadly given to drink and low company. But for sheer genius he has never had an equal. The vast number of his paintings--many of w...

With respect to his treatment of Biblical subjects, two older writers, Kolloff and Guhl, accord him an honour which, as we shall see, Kugler gives to Dürer a century earlier, na...

ALBERT CUYP, born at Dortrecht 1620, died there about 1672. Of the life of this great painter little more is known with any certainty than that he was the scholar of his father,...

MEINDERT HOBBEMA (1638-1709) was a friend as well as a pupil of Jacob Ruisdael. The fact that such distinguished painters as Adrian van de Velde, Wouvermans, Berchem, and Lingel...

Of HANS HOLBEIN, born at Augsburg in 1498, we shall have more to say in a later chapter, when considering the origins of English portraiture. But as in the case of Van Dyck, and...

Watteau's two earliest pictures still in existence are supposed to be the _Départ de Troupe_ and the _Halte d'Armée_, which were the first of a series of military pictures on a...

In the preface to the _Anecdotes of Painting_ written in 1762, Horace Walpole observes that this country had not a single volume to show on the works of its painters. "In truth,...

In answer to criticism of his _Analysis of Beauty_, Hogarth writes: "Among other crimes of which I am accused, it is asserted that I have abused the 'Great Masters'; this is far...

"The history of our exhibitions," he says "affords the strongest evidence of their impressive effect upon public taste. At their commencement, though men of enlightened minds co...

"It must be remembered that the style and department of art which Gainsborough chose, and in which he so much excelled, did not require that he should go out of his own country...

Among these Turner stands out conspicuously from the rest, and he would be included by anyone in a list of twenty, or perhaps a dozen, of the greatest painters in the world. But...

So much for the critics. For the artist, if Ruskin said more than Turner himself could understand, he has summed up his achievement in a few passages which may possibly outlast...

767. I just want to ask you one more question. When you said that in your opinion the walls of the Academy have had priority of claim in the past, have you any particular reason...