eBooks Base 2000

. . . .
On reaching the Academy, the soldier or policeman at the entrance
directed us into the large hall, the walls of which were covered on both
sides with pictures, arranged as nearly as possible in a progressive
series, with reference to the date of the painters; so that here the
origin and procession of the art may be traced through the course of, at
least, two hundred years. Giotto, Cimabue, and others of unfamiliar
names to me, are among the earliest; and, except as curiosities, I should
never desire to look once at them, nor think of looking twice. They seem
to have been executed with great care and conscientiousness, and the
heads are often wrought out with minuteness and fidelity, and have so
much expression that they tell their own story clearly enough; but it
seems not to have been the painter's aim to effect a lifelike illusion,
the background and accessories being conventional. The trees are no more
like real trees than the feather of a pen, and there is no perspective,
the figure of the picture being shadowed forth on a surface of burnished
gold.


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