The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1928-05-01

l. new art produced no such tow
ering figure again; it was an age
of experiment. in which Oil began
to replace fresco, and perspective
appeared in the work of Ucello and
Masaccio.
"Ah, Paolo," said Donatello to
Ucello, with this perspective you
are leaving the substance for the
shadow: how could the great sculp-
tor know that in these shadows and
distances lay the promise of Leon
ardo and Rembrandt?
OF Masaccio we know nothing ex-
cept that in a pitifully brief career
Che was born in 1902 and died at
the age of 30 he did the finest
painting between Giotto and Botti-
celli, and contributed to the Renais-
Sance almost brutal realism that
makes him more akin to contempor-
airy art than any of the famous
figures that superseded him.
Here is his Adam and Even Elk
PEELED from Eden: the two figures,
says Taine, "aTe Florentines whom
he has undraped the man with slim
thighs and blacksmiths shoulders,
the woman with short neck and
clumsy form, and both with ugly
shaped legs; they are artisans.
who have not led, like the Greeks,
a naked existence, and whose bodies
have not been fashioned by gym
nastics"
These frescoes in the Church of
Carmine at Florence became famous,
shocking and fascinating Masaccio's
age and the next; almost every
great artist came to study them:
Verrocchio, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli,
Leonardo, Fra Angelica, Fra Lippo
Lippi, Fra Bartolomeo, Peruglno,
and Mfchelangelo himself. But
Masaccio died homeless at the age
of 26, without a stone to mark his
grave.
How different is Angelica! There
was something hard and ZolaeSque
in these frescos. which did not quite
express the piety of the age, nor the
lust for beauty that fills the Italian
soul. No wonder that we find, off
on siding from the main line of
Renaissance development, a figure of
compromising gentleness, q man left
over from an earlier and more be-
lieving age, living in the simplicity
of Francis devoting his life and his
art to the order of which he was a
brother, refusing bishoprics and any
honor, finding his happiness in
painting. over and over again, old
lyle religious figures of the Virgin
and her Son.
They seem a little absurd to us,
these MadonnaS and these Crucifix-
ions, for we no longer share Fra
Angelico's tender faith; but artists,
who know better, revel in their
delicacy of coloring and profound
but quiet feeling; Napoleon had the
grace to steal Fra Angelicos
Coronation of the Virgin" We can
not understand these pictures be-
cause we are once more pagan; we
look for splendid bodies, but bodies
here do not count, the soul is every
thing. With Fra Angelica we are
still in the Middle Ages.
n r.
A ND yet, even in the monasteries,
L n the pagan influence OF the
rediscovery of Greece appears, and
the flesh makes itself heard even
in the home of the spirit. Art grows
out of religion, because profound
feeling longs for expression, and
faith struggles to give some fair
form to its imaginings but art
grows also, and even more alb
originally, out of desire and love,
since all sense of beauty is print
lively sexual; therefore a secret
hostility turks between art and piety
even when piety is in command.
Supernatural religion is too often
ascetic and gloomy, while art wishes
to be senSuous and joyful; art
f1ourishes best, and religion worst,
where the senses have been freed.
So we find Fra Bartolommeo,
piouS Dominican monk, fervent
under the influence of Savonarola,
suddenly painting a nude st.
Sebastian; and so like the very
flesh, that women confessed it had
suggested evil thoughts to them,
whereupon the monk gave orders
that it should never be shown again.
And here is another monk, Fra
Lippo Lippi, os harassed by the
fires of Tartarus that in his paint
ings realism replaces idealism, and
the body energies from the soul.
Fra Lippo escapes periodically from
his monastery to indulge in
escapades with the looser ladies of
Florence; his superiorS we're
chnnlrnI L..,A r.n.a..- ..l...-A =. -Is....