TRIPTYCH, BY THE SAME PAINTER; IN THE UFFIZI, FLORENCE
We come next to an artist who was probably at one time Agnolo Gaddi’s pupil. The two little predella pieces representing the Visitation and the Adoration of the Magi ([Plate IV]) are not only among the most charming pieces of the collection, but they are among the best works of an artist whose sense of beauty was almost of the highest order—Lorenzo Monaco. The melodious rhythm of his long-drawn interlacing lines, the sweetness and lucidity of his design, are here beautifully apparent. His peculiar treatment of drapery would seem to indicate that the miniature paintings of northern Europe, particularly of French workmanship, were not without their influence on him. But here, though the main ideas of design are essentially gothic, there is much that already foreshadows the art of the fifteenth century. How much of Fra Angelico there already is in the tenderly expressive gesture of the Virgin’s hands as she raises St. Elizabeth from her knees, while the movement of the right leg and the peculiar disposition of the drapery which it causes are favourite motives with the pupil. Angelico, indeed, had but little to add to this exquisite interpretation of the subject. How much, too, of Fra Filippo Lippi’s genre feeling is already hinted at in the figure leaning against the doorpost—how much of his romance in the woodland background! Lorenzo Monaco’s importance as the inspirer of the new ideas of the quattrocento perhaps deserves more recognition. The Adoration is a variation upon the theme of a predella piece by Lorenzo in the Raczynski gallery at Berlin; but the differences between this, which we must assume to be a late work, and the Berlin picture are remarkable. The head of the second king in particular is so different from Lorenzo’s usual type, so near to what Masolino or the young Masaccio might have done, that one wonders whether some pupil, already advancing beyond his master in the new direction, may not have had a hand in it. ¶ If these works by Lorenzo Monaco show the emergence from the gothic formula of a new spirit, our next picture ([Plate V]) is on the contrary a curious case of retardation. ¶ The general effect of this picture is decidedly Giottesque; the colour scheme is still of the gay and variegated kind that occurs in works of the trecento. The crimson robes with yellow high lights, the indigo blues and apple greens, all belong to the Giottesque tradition; but, none the less, this picture was probably executed at a period when the more original artists had already established the new ideas of fifteenth-century art. The master who executed this was clearly a reactionary who clung to the old, convenient receipts for the fabrication of handsomely decorated altarpieces. His works are not uncommon in and around Florence, and may be easily recognized by the peculiar alert expression of the eyes and the gaiety and piquancy of his faces. One of his pictures in the corridor of the Uffizi is reproduced here ([Plate V]); another is in Fiesole cathedral. The artist shows some evidence of the influence of Lorenzo Monaco, though this is more apparent in the draperies of the Uffizi picture than in the Highnam Madonna. The latter seems in essentials to be rather a continuation of the purely Florentine Giottesque tradition of the end of the fourteenth century, and is probably a somewhat earlier work. ¶ Whoever our artist may be, his work scarcely rises above the level of tasteful and accomplished craftsmanship, and his chief interest is as an example of one phase of the work of the period of transition to the style of the quattrocento. One is apt to forget that long after Masaccio and Castagno had realized in paint the new plastic ideas of Donatello, the older firms of ecclesiastical furnishers went on contentedly in the earlier manner, which was, in fact, better adapted to the requirements of the altarpiece. Even in the next generation Neri di Bicci only made a sufficient pretence to structural draughtsmanship and modelling to pass muster among his contemporaries.
MUSSULMAN MANUSCRIPTS AND MINIATURES AS ILLUSTRATED IN THE RECENT EXHIBITION AT PARIS
❧ WRITTEN BY E. BLOCHET ❧
PART I
THE exhibition of Mussulman art held during the months of May and June in the Pavillon de Marsan at Paris afforded an opportunity such as is rarely given of studying the art of the Mussulman nations. The objects brought together included some fine examples of their various classes, and most of them, coming as they did from private collections, had not before been seen by the public. ¶ The art of miniature-painting is one of those in which the Mussulmans have excelled, especially the Persians and the Turks, who, since the appearance upon the world’s scene of the hordes of Jenghis Khan, have lived by Iranian culture and civilization. Also it is one of the least known, for we have to go in search of specimens of this art to the manuscripts in which they are scattered without order and, at least at first sight, without logic. Moreover, as will presently be seen, only a very restricted few of these paintings are signed and dated, so that it is only by external considerations that we can succeed in identifying a period and a country of origin. ¶ The Mussulman religion has always been shy of encouraging the art of painting; in fact, the tradition of Islam formally forbids it. This absolute prohibition was borrowed by Mohammed from the Jews, and he also reckoned upon establishing a distinction between his Faithful, of whom he wished to make a nation of iconoclasts, and the Byzantine Christians and Mazdean Persians, who decorated their palaces with carvings and their books with paintings. He who draws a human figure, or even a representation of any kind of animal, says the Sunna, shall give it his soul at the Day of Judgement, and thus perish amid the torments of hell. Fortunately for the history of art, the Mussulmans did not observe this prohibition more strictly than did Solomon that of the Bible, when he introduced figures of animals into the Temple; but it did not fail to weigh heavily upon the artistic development of a whole world, and it forced the latter to confine itself vaguely to geometrical decoration, while systematically renouncing statuary and figured representations, which enabled Greek art to attain its full splendour. ¶ Passing through the galleries of the Pavillon de Marsan, one was struck by the smallness of the space occupied by figured representations among the number of objects there brought together. Here and there, at very rare intervals, one found a few bronzes representing animals; while as for the carpets, the accoutrements, the copper vessels, the glass lamps, it was only exceptionally that they bore anything but inscriptions in large neskhi letters, taken from verses of the Koran or from the traditions attributed to the prophet Mohammed. Nor did any but a certain number of Persian manuscripts contain other than those commonplace decorations which we find throughout the Islam world, from the Hispano-Arab monuments of Seville and Granada to the mosques raised by the descendants of Timur Bey in the countries that form the frontier of Chinese Turkestan. ¶ The impression of a person seeing once, and a little quickly, an exhibition, however limited, of Mussulman paintings, is that all these miniatures are so many isolated artistic fancies, scarcely connected one with the other, and that the painters who have executed them have confined themselves to following the whims of their imagination, without troubling to know what had been done before them, or to inquire into the workmanship of artists contemporary with themselves.
MINIATURE FROM THE MAKAMAT OF HARIRI; ARAB MS. BELONGING TO M. CHARLES SCHEFER