PaintingW. Blackwood and sons, 1848 |
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Page 195 - Scotsman found worthy of such honour. (Hamilton himself was the first). The picture which gained him so acceptable a prize is one of great merit, both in conception and drawing, and certainly excels any thing else, in the same style, which Allan ever painted. The subject is the old poetic dream of the " Origin of Painting; or the Corinthian Maid drawing the shadow of her Lover.
Page 148 - He is now numbered with the classics of the art, though little more than the fifth part of a century has elapsed since death relieved him from the apathy of cognoscenti, the envy of rivals, and the neglect of a tasteless public...
Page 102 - ... Christianity, personal and social, can alone lead to excellence in art : — each of the three elements of human nature — Matter, Mind, and Spirit — being thus brought into union and cooperation in the service of God, in due relative harmony and subordination. I cannot over-estimate the importance of this principle; it was on this that, consciously or unconsciously, Niccola himself worked — it has been by following it that Donatello and Ghiberti, Leonardo, Raphael, and Michael Angelo have...
Page 186 - There was Ramsay, of whom Sir Joshua used to say that he was the most sensible among all the painters of his time ; but he has left little to show it. His manner was dry and timid. He stopped short in the middle of his work, because he knew exactly how much it wanted. Now and then we find hints and sketches which show what he might have been, if his hand had been equal to his conceptions. I have seen a picture of his of the Queen, soon after she was married — a profile, and slightly done ; but...
Page 42 - Judgment, the pope directed the painting in fresco of the walls of a chapel which had been built by San Gallo, and which was called the Pauline chapel. The subjects chosen were the Conversion of St. Paul, and the Crucifixion of St. Peter.
Page 177 - ... the looks and lineaments of many whose names belong to history : eg Sir Duncan Campbell— William Earl of Airth — John Duke of Rothes — James Marquis of Hamilton — Archibald Lord Napier — William Earl Marischal — the Earl of Loudon, chancellor — John Earl of Marr, &c. All these portraits are in tolerable preservation ; and when the colours were fresh, and men surveyed them who had not been rendered too fastidious by the grand dashing freedom of posture and magical colouring of Vandykes...
Page 102 - Niccola's peculiar praise is this, — that, in practice at least, if not in theory, he first established the principle that the study of nature, corrected by the ideal of the antique, and animated by the spirit of Christianity, personal and social, can alone lead to excellence in art : — each of the three elements of human nature — Matter, Mind, and Spirit — being thus brought into union and cooperation in the service of God, in due relative harmony and subordination.
Page 9 - Agarthacus made scenes, and left a treatise upon them ;" and that " after him Democritus and Anaxagoras went still farther in that way, showing the power of . imitating nature, by making all the lines to vanish to one point, as to a centre, when viewed at a fixed distance ; by which means they were enabled to represent in their scenes the images of real buildings, as they usually appear to the eye ; whether they were painted on horizontal or upright surfaces, they exhibited objects near and at a...
Page 132 - ... Avignon, were sometimes the forced, and often the voluntary, abettors of French policy. The German Princes, beginning to despise the Papal excommunication, refused either to elect Emperors patronized by the Holy See, or to lead forth their subjects to the conquest of the Holy Land, a device, by which from the beginning of the twelfth to the end of the thirteenth century, all the armies of Europe had actually been at the disposal of the Popes. The wild and enterprising fanaticism of religion having...