How to Visit the Great Picture GalleriesDodd, Mead and Company, 1911 - 492 pages |
From inside the book
Page 298
... Some throw themselves furiously on the murderers and try to tear from them their deadly weapons ; others piteously plead for mercy ; whilst others cast themselves weeping over the tiny corpses of their children , which they bear ...
... Some throw themselves furiously on the murderers and try to tear from them their deadly weapons ; others piteously plead for mercy ; whilst others cast themselves weeping over the tiny corpses of their children , which they bear ...
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Common terms and phrases
admirable Adoration Andrea del Sarto angels arms artist attitude beautiful blue Botticelli brilliant charming chiaroscuro Christ colour composition Correggio Correggio's costume dark delicate drapery dress Dürer's Dutch Dyck execution expression exquisite eyes face famous figures flesh flowers foreground Fra Angelico Fra Bartolommeo Frans Hals gallery Giorgione Giovanni Bellini gold golden grace grey ground hair hand harmony head holds Holy Family Infant Jesus Jan Steen John the Baptist kneeling lady landscape background Leonardo light look Louvre lovely Madonna and Child Magdalen Magi mantle marvellous master masterpiece painted painter Palma Vecchio peasant Perugino picture portrait Raphael remarkable Rembrandt rendered represented rich robe Rubens Rubens's saints scape scene seated shadow Shepherds shows side spectator splendid stands style throne tints tion Titian tone touch trees ture Uffizi Venetian Venus Virgin and Child warm wears wife woman young
Popular passages
Page 53 - She is older than the rocks among which she sits ; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave ; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her ; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants : and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary ; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments,...
Page 52 - La Gioconda is, in the truest sense, Leonardo's masterpiece, the revealing instance of his mode of thought and work. In suggestiveness, only the Melancholia of Diirer is comparable to it ; and no crude symbolism disturbs the effect of its subdued and graceful mystery. We all know the face and hands of the figure, set in its marble chair, in that cirque of fantastic rocks, as in some faint light under sea.
Page 52 - Giocondo's house. That there is much of mere portraiture in the picture is attested by the legend that by artificial means, the presence of mimes and flute-players, that subtle expression was protracted on the face. Again, was it in four years and by renewed labour never really completed, or in four months and as by stroke of magic, that the image was projected? The presence that...
Page 298 - If we consider the fruitfulness of invention which is discovered in this work, or the skill which is shown in composing such an infinite number of figures, or the art of the distribution of...
Page 52 - Hers is the head upon which all 'the ends of the world are come,' and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment...
Page 11 - ... sounding sea, listening, in the pauses of alternate song, for the prolonging of the trumpet blast, and the answering of psaltery and cymbal, throughout the endless deep and from all the star shores of heaven...
Page 119 - Michielsens, and is fixed on one of the pillars : this is one of his most careful pictures; the characters are of a higher style of beauty than usual, particularly the Mary Magdalen, weeping, with her hand clenched. The colouring of the Christ and the Virgin is of a most beautiful and delicate pearly tint, opposed by the strong high colouring of St. Joseph.
Page 297 - There is nothing very interesting in this picture : perhaps there is too great a quantity of flesh to have an agreeable effect. Three naked women and a naked man join together to make the great mass of light of the picture. One of the women, who is looking out of the picture, has for that reason the appearance of a portrait, and is said to be one of Rubens's wives ; and a figure rising out of a grave, in the foreground, is said to be his own portrait ; but certainly neither of these suppositions...
Page 115 - The whole is conducted with the most consummate art. The composition is bold and uncommon, with circumstances which no other painter had ever before thought of, such as the breaking of the limbs and the expression of the Magdalen, to which we may add the disposition of the three crosses, which are placed perspectively in an uncommon picturesque manner...
Page 146 - This is perhaps the first picture of portraits in the world, comprehending more of those qualities which make a perfect portrait", than any other I have ever seen...
Bibliographic information
| Title | How to Visit the Great Picture Galleries |
| Author | Esther Singleton |
| Publisher | Dodd, Mead and Company, 1911 |
| Original from | Harvard University |
| Digitized | 15 Feb 2008 |
| Length | 492 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |