The children's book of art . days of ancient Greece. His sculpturedfigures on the tombs of the Medici in Florence ranksecond only to those of the greatest Greek sculptors,and his ceiling in the Sistine Chapel is composed ofa series of masterpieces of figure-painting. Hedevoted himself largely in his sculpture and hispainting to the representation of the naked humanbody, and made it futile in his successors to pleadignorance as an excuse for bad drawing. As acolourist he was not pre-eminent, and his few panelpictures are for the most part unfinished. Leonardo da Vinci, the older contemporary of
The children's book of art . days of ancient Greece. His sculpturedfigures on the tombs of the Medici in Florence ranksecond only to those of the greatest Greek sculptors,and his ceiling in the Sistine Chapel is composed ofa series of masterpieces of figure-painting. Hedevoted himself largely in his sculpture and hispainting to the representation of the naked humanbody, and made it futile in his successors to pleadignorance as an excuse for bad drawing. As acolourist he was not pre-eminent, and his few panelpictures are for the most part unfinished. Leonardo da Vinci, the older contemporary ofRaphael, first in Florence and afterwards in thenorth of Italy, left a colossal reputation and butfew pictures, for in his search after perfection hebecame dissatisfied with what he had done andis said to have destroyed one masterpiece afteranother. For him the great interest in the aspectof man and woman was not so much the form ofthe body as the expression of the face. What wasfantastic and weird fascinated him. At Windsor. The Knights Dream. From the picture by Raphael, in the National Gallery, London. Page 84 RAPHAEL 81 are designs he made for the construction of animaginary beast with gigantic claws. He onceowned a lizard, and made wings for it with quick-silver inside them, so that they quivered when thelizard crawled. He put a dragons mask over itshead, and the result was ghastly. The tale givesus a side light on this extraordinary you are led to read more about him you willfeel the fascination of his strong, yet perplexingpersonality. The faces in his pictures are wonderfulfaces, with a fugitive mocking smile and a seemingburden of strange thought. By mastery of themost subtle gradations of light, his heads havean appearance of solidity new in painting, tillRaphael and some of his contemporaries learnt thesecret from Leonardo. Heretofore, Italian paintershad been contented to bathe their pictures in aflood of diffused light, but he experimented alsowith e
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Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectart, bookyear1909
