eBooks Base 2000

There is what seems to me a better
picture than either of these has produced, by Bonamico Buffalmacco, an
artist of about their date or not long after. The first real picture in
the series is the "Adoration of the Magi," by Gentile da Fabriano, a
really splendid work in all senses, with noble and beautiful figures in
it, and a crowd of personages, managed with great skill. Three pictures
by Perugino are the only other ones I cared to look at. In one of these,
the face of the Virgin who holds the dead Christ on her knees has a
deeper expression of woe than can ever have been painted since. After
Perugino the pictures cease to be interesting; the art came forward with
rapid strides, but the painters and their productions do not take nearly
so much hold of the spectator as before. They all paint better than
Giotto and Cimabue,--in some respects better than Perugino; but they
paint in vain, probably because they were not nearly so much in earnest,
and meant far less, though possessing the dexterity to express far more.


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