Artists belonged entirely to new era and stand at beginning of Renaissance as two tendencies to prevail in Florence throughout the fifteenth century
Uccello had sense of tactile values and feeling for colour but in so far it was to illustrate scientific problems mere occasion for solving problem
Accordingly he composed pictures in which he contrived to get as many lines as possible leading the eye inward, prostrate horses, dead or dying cavaliers
Thus in his battle pieces, instead of adequate action of any sort, we get the feeling of witnessing a show of stuffed figures whose mechanical movements have been suddenly arrested
Giotto’s paintings on the contrary, have not only as much power of appealing to the tactile imagination as is possessed by the objects represented human figures in particular but actually more, with the necessary result
We whose current knowledge of anatomy is greater, who expect more articulation and suppleness in the human figure, who, in short, see much less naïvely now than Giotto’s contemporaries
At the risk of seeming to wander off into the boundless domain of æsthetics, we must stop at this point for a moment to make sure that we are of one mind regarding the meaning of the phrase
Two clans increased rapidly in Florence for both good and evil, greatly affected the whole subsequent course of Florentine painting before going farther, briefly define to ourselves dexterity
The essential in painting especially in figure painting is the rendering tactile values
The great painter, then, is, above all, an artist with a great sense of tactile values
Now this sense, though it will increase as the man is revealed to himself, is something
The great painter possesses at the start so that he is scarcely aware of possessing it
His conscious effort is given to the means of rendering it is of means of rendering, that he talks to others and because his triumphs here are hard-earned The greater the painter, the less likely he is to be aware of aught else in his art than problems of rendering but all the while he is communicating what the force of his genius makes him feel without his striving for it, almost without his being aware of it, the material and spiritual significance of forms
The spiritual significance thus gained he uses to give the highest import to the event he is portraying; this import, in turn, gives a higher value to the types Masaccio keeps us on a high plane of reality and significance. In later painting we shall easily find greater science, greater craft, and greater perfection of detail, but greater reality, greater significance, I venture to say, never
In short, I scarcely could realise it more, and in real life I should scarcely realise it so well, the attention of each of us being too apt to concentrate itself upon some dynamic quality Then what strength to his young men, and what gravity and power to his old! How quickly a race like this would possess itself of the earth, and brook no rivals but the forces of nature! Whatever they do simply because it is they is impressive and important, and every movement, every gesture, is world changing
However intimates heared nothing but skill, he seems to think of skill and naturally and the entire public
Artists belonged entirely to new era and stand at beginning of Renaissance as two tendencies in Florence throughout the fifteenth century
Uccello had a sense of tactile values and a feeling for colour, but in so far as he used these gifts at all, it was to illustrate scientific
Accordingly he composed pictures in which he contrived to get as many lines as possible leading the eye inward prostrate horses dead or dying
