A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

630. MADONNA AND CHILD WITH SAINTS.

Gregorio Schiavone (Paduan: painted about 1470).

A picture of historical interest, as being the earliest in the Gallery of the Paduan School. Gregorio, the Sclavonian (i.e. Dalmatian), though not, one must think, a very good artist, was proud of his master, and this picture is signed (on the little card below the throne) "the work of Schiavone, the pupil of Squarcione." That master's style was distinguished by its sculpturesque quality; and in the works of a somewhat clumsy pupil like Gregorio ("this Dalmatian clodhopper," Morelli calls him) one sees this tendency carried to excess; the outline of the Madonna's face here, and still more in 904, is quite grotesquely sharp. Another characteristic of the school is exemplified in both Gregorio's pictures—the choice, namely, of antique embellishments, of bas-reliefs, and festoons of fruit, in the accessories. Thus note here the bas-relief behind the Madonna's chair, and in 904 the festoons of fruit upon the arch.