File:Antonio Pollaiuolo (1907) (14578360520).jpg

Identifier: antoniopollaiuol00crut (find matches)
Title: Antonio Pollaiuolo
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Cruttwell, Maud
Subjects: Pollaiolo, Antonio, 1426?-1498 Pollaiolo, Piero, ca. 1443-1496
Publisher: London : Duckworth and Co. New York : C. Scribner's Sons
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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o CiufFagni, now in the Duomo. Antonios relief, representing the Birth of the Baptist(Plate XXXVI.), is on the left side of the Altar. It isone of the most poetic of his works, realistic only in thesense that it gives a faithful genre picture of a con-temporary Florentine interior. In composition it bearsmuch resemblance to the same scene in the embroideries.Here, as there, we look into the deep interior of a room,in which the bed is placed midway. A servant bringsrefreshments behind, and the child with its nursesoccupies the foreground. But the embroidery lacks theexquisite stag-like figure of the Virgin, who enterswith her attendant, a figure which recalls so stronglythe Flora in the Primavera of Botticelli, as to suggestthat he had it in mind in painting her. The scene istreated with greater solemnity than in the embroidery—the figure in the bed, there verging on caricature,is of great beauty and severity, although the attitudehardly differs. The foreground scene—the washing of
Text Appearing After Image:
oo do W Q <w PuC i-i w o RELIEF OF THE SILVER ALTAR 173 the child—is sacramentally solemn, notwithstandingthe realism of detail, as for example the woman feelingthe temperature of the water. The severity of thecomposition, of the attitudes, and expressions, of thedraperies with their long straight folds, is remarkableat this period of Antonios development. A few yearslater and he will be executing the most bizarre andvoluptuous work of the quattrocento—the Arts andSciences round the Tomb of Sixtus. Technically the work is admirable. The depth ofspace is as usual presented with wonderful realism.The perspective is faultless, and the space values betweenthe figures rendered with a success quite marvellous,when it is considered that even those at the end of theroom are in high relief. All are wrought in one pieceof metal, with the exception of the Virgin, which isattached to the background with a screw. The Altar is in a state of almost perfect preserva-tion. During the five centu

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