The nudes of
the early Renaissance, in painting still more than in sculpture, are
differentiated by the faces. The rest of the figure is generally
conventionalized as thoroughly as the face itself is in Byzantine and
the hands in Giottesque painting. Giotto could draw admirably, it need
not be said. He did draw as well as the contemporary feeling for the
human figure demanded. When the Renaissance reached its climax and the
study of the antique led artists to look beneath drapery and interest
themselves in the form, expression made an immense step forward. Color
was indeed almost lost sight of in the new interest, not to reappear
till the Venetians. But owing to the lack of visible nudity, to the lack
of the classic gymnasia, to the concealments of modern attire, the
knowledge of and interest in the form remained, within certain limits,
an esoteric affair. The general feeling, even where, as in the Italy of
the _quattro_ and _cinque centi_, everyone was a connoisseur, did not
hold the artist to expression in his anatomy as the general Greek
feeling did.
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