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
Noah’s arks, are used by him with scarcely an attempt at disguise, to serve his scheme of mathematically converging lines. In his zeal he forgot loved his horses
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, broken lances, ploughed fields
Furthermore, the stimulation of our tactile imagination awakens our consciousness of the importance of the tactile sense in our physical and mental functioning better provided
The proportions of this small book forbid me 12 to develop further a theme, the adequate treatment of which would require
Let us now turn back to Giotto fulfils the first condition of painting as an art, which condition, as we agreed, is somehow to stimulate our tactile imagination.
We shall understand this without difficulty if we cover with the same glance two pictures of nearly the same subject that hang side by side in the Florence Academy
To recognise these we have 14 had to make many times the effort that the actual objects would have required, and in consequence our feeling of capacity
It is a temptation to hasten on from Pollaiuolo and Verrocchio to Botticelli and Leonardo, to men of genius as artists reappearing again after two generations, men who accomplished with scarcely an effort
Learn MoreBut from these it would be even more difficult than at present to turn back to painters of scarcely any rank among the world’s great artists, and of scarcely any importance