Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Legends of the Madonna by Mrs. Jameson
page 43 of 443 (09%)
it has been well styled, was held together by such a principle. The
founders of the Caracci school, and their immediate followers, felt
the influences of the time, and worked them out. They were devout
believers in their Church, and most sincere worshippers of the
Madonna. Guido, in particular, was so distinguished by his passionate
enthusiasm for her, that he was supposed to have been favoured by a
particular vision, which enabled him more worthily to represent her
divine beauty.

It is curious that, hand in hand with this development of taste and
feeling in the appreciation of natural sentiment and beauty, and
this tendency to realism, we find the associations of a peculiar and
specific sanctity remaining with the old Byzantine type. This arose
from the fact, always to be borne in mind, that the most ancient
artistic figure of the Madonna was a purely theological symbol;
apparently the moral type was too nearly allied to the human and
the real to satisfy faith. It is the ugly, dark-coloured, ancient
Greek Madonnas, such as this, which had all along the credit of
being miraculous; and "to this day," says Kugler, "the Neapolitan
lemonade-seller will allow no other than a formal Greek Madonna, with
olive-green complexion and veiled head, to be set up in his booth." It
is the same in Russia. Such pictures, in which there is no attempt
at representation, real or ideal, and which merely have a sort of
imaginary sanctity and power, are not so much idols as they are mere
_Fetishes_. The most lovely Madonna by Raphael or Titian would not
have the same effect. Guido, who himself painted lovely Virgins,
went every Saturday to pray before the little black _Madonna della
Guardia_, and, as we are assured, held this old Eastern relic in
devout veneration.

DigitalOcean Referral Badge