The Savoy . ue Flaxmans designsto the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso, only a little above thebest of these ; because he does not seem to have ever been really moved byDante, and so to have sunk into a formal manner, which is a reflection of thevital manner of his Homer and Hesiod. His designs to The Divine Comedywill be laid, one imagines, with some ceremony in that immortal waste paperbasket in which Time carries with many sighs the failures of great men. I amperhaps wrong, however, because Flaxman even at his best has not yet touchedme very deeply, and I hardly ever hope to escape
The Savoy . ue Flaxmans designsto the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso, only a little above thebest of these ; because he does not seem to have ever been really moved byDante, and so to have sunk into a formal manner, which is a reflection of thevital manner of his Homer and Hesiod. His designs to The Divine Comedywill be laid, one imagines, with some ceremony in that immortal waste paperbasket in which Time carries with many sighs the failures of great men. I amperhaps wrong, however, because Flaxman even at his best has not yet touchedme very deeply, and I hardly ever hope to escape this limitation of my rulingstars. That Signorelli does not seem greatly more interesting, except here andthere, as in the drawing of the Angel, full of innocence and energy, comingfrom the boat which has carried so many souls to the foot of the mountain ofpurgation, can only be because one knows him through poor reproductions fromfrescoes half mouldered away with damp. A little known series,drawn by Adolph. BLAKES ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE DIVINE COMEDY 35 Stiirler, an artist of German extraction, who was settled in Florence in the firsthalf of this century, are very poor in drawing, very pathetic and powerful ininvention, and full of most interesting pre-Raphaelitic detail. Certain groupsof figures, who, having set love above reason, listen in the last abandonment ofdespair to the judgment of Minos, or walk with a poignant melancholy to thefoot of his throne through a land where owls and strange beasts move hitherand thither with the sterile content of the evil that neither loves nor hates ;and a Cerberus full of patient cruelty ; are admirable and moving in theextreme. All Sttirlers designs have, however, the languor of a mind thatdoes its work by a succession of delicate critical perceptions rather than thedecision and energy of true creation, and are more a curious contribution toartistic methods than an imaginative force. The only series that compete with Blakes are those of
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Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1800, booksubjectart, booksubjectliteraturemodern
