History tells us that wars, massacres, and persecutions were frequent
in the fifteenth century; but in its art we learn no more of the
political than we do of the domestic life of the century. The Virgin
and Child were sufficient inspiration for hundreds of painters. Now
she is in full-face, now in three-quarter face, now in profile. In
this picture she wears a blue cloak, in that picture she is clad in a
grey. She is alone with the Child in a bower of tall roses, or she is
seated on a high throne. Perhaps the painter has varied the
composition by the introduction of St. John leaning forward with
clasped hands; or maybe he has introduced a group of angels, as
Filippo Lippi has done. The throne is sometimes high, sometimes low;
but such slight alteration is enough for a new picture. And several
generations of painters seem to have lived and died believing that
their art was to all practical and artistic purposes limited to the
continual variation of this theme.
Among these painters Botticelli was the incontestable master; but
about him crowd hundreds of pictures, pictures rather than names.
Imagine a number of workmen anxious to know how they should learn to
paint well, to paint with brilliancy, with consistency, with ease, and
with lasting colours. Imagine a collection of gold ornaments, jewels,
and enamels, in which we can detect the skill of the goldsmith, of the
painter of stained-glass, of the engraver, and of the illuminator of
missals; the inspiration is grave and monastic, the destination a
palace or a cathedral, the effect dazzling; and out of this miraculous
handicraft Filippo Lippi is always distinct, soft as the dawn,
mysterious as a flower, less vigorous but more illusive than
Botticelli, and so strangely personal that while looking at him we are
absorbed.
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