Guido (Eclectic-Bologna: 1575-1642). See 11.
In pictures of this subject two distinct conceptions may be noticed. In some the coronation of the Virgin is, as it were, dramatic; the subject is represented, that is to say, as the closing act in the life of the Virgin, and saints and disciples appear in the foreground as witnesses on earth of her coronation in heaven. No. 1155 is a good instance of that treatment. This picture, on the other hand, shows the mystical treatment of the subject—the coronation of the Virgin being the accepted type of the Church triumphant. The scene is laid entirely in heaven, and the only actors are the angels of the heavenly host. Notice the carefully symmetrical arrangement of the whole composition, as well as the charming faces of many of the angel chorus.
215, 216. VARIOUS SAINTS.[115]
School of Taddeo Gaddi (Florentine: 1300-1366).
See also (p. xix)
Taddeo Gaddi was the godson and pupil of Giotto, with whom he lived twenty-four years, and whose tradition he faithfully carried on: art had "gone back," he used to say, "since his master's death." His most extensive works were the frescoes in the Spanish Chapel in Santa Maria Novella (described in ch. iv. of Ruskin's Mornings in Florence). Taddeo was also distinguished as an architect. "He built the Ponte Vecchio, and the old stones of it were so laid by him that they are unshaken to this day."
There is an air of settled peace, of abstract quietude, about this company of saints which is very impressive—something fixed in the attitude and features recalling the conventual life as described by St. Bernard and paraphrased by Wordsworth in his Ecclesiastical Sonnets—
Here Man more purely lives, less oft doth fall,
More promptly rises, walks with stricter heed,
More safely rests, dies happier, is freed
Earlier from cleansing fires, and gains withal
A brighter crown.
218. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.
Ascribed to Peruzzi (Sienese: 1481-1536).