File:The Venetian School of Painting (1912) (14597547617).jpg

Identifier: venetianschoolof1912phil (find matches)
Title: The Venetian School of Painting
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Phillipps, Evelyn March, d. 1915
Subjects: Painting Painters
Publisher: London : Macmillan and Co., limited
Contributing Library: Boston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Public Library

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s. 183 CHAPTER XX PALMA VECCHIO AND LORENZO LOTTO Among the many who clustered round Titianslong career, Palma attained to a place beside himand Giorgione which his talent, which was notof the highest order, scarcely warranted. Buthe was classed with the greatest, and influencedcontemporary art because his work chimed inso well with the Venetian spirit. A Bergamesqueby birth, he came of Venetian parentage, andlearnt the first elements of his art in Venice.He never really mastered the inner niceties of anatomy in its finest sense, and the broadgeneralisation of his forms may be meantto conceal uncertain drawing, but his large-bosomed, matronly women and plump children,his round, soft contours, his clean brilliancy, andthe clear golden polish in which his picturesare steeped, made a great appeal to the public.His invention is the large Santa Conversazione,as compared with those in half-length of theearlier masters. The Virgin and saints andkneeling or bending donors are placed under 184
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PALMA VECCHIO the spreading trees of a rich and picturesquelandscape. It is Palmas version of the Giorgion-esque ideal, which he had his share in establish-ing and developing. The heavy tree-trunk anddark foliage, silhouetted almost black againstthe background, are characteristic of his com-positions. As his life goes on, though he stillclings to his full, ripe figures and to the samesmooth fleshiness in his women, the featuresbecome delicate and chiselled, and the morerefined type and subtler feeling of his middlestage may be due to his companionship withLotto, with whom he was in Bergamo whenthey were both about twenty-five. He toucheshis highest, and at the same time keeps verynear Giorgione, in the splendid St. Barbara,painted for the company of the Bombadieri orartillerists. Their cannon guard the pedestal onwhich she stands ; it was at her altar that theycame to commend themselves on going forth towar, and where they knelt to ofi^er thanksgivingfor a safe return ; and she is a t

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