This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1860 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VI. THE GERMAN SCHOOLS FROM 1500 TO 1550. During this period the realistic tendency adopted in Germany attained, by means of a greater command of the materials and qualities of art, partly founded on the improved sciences of proportion and perspective, to a higher truthfulness of ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1860 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VI. THE GERMAN SCHOOLS FROM 1500 TO 1550. During this period the realistic tendency adopted in Germany attained, by means of a greater command of the materials and qualities of art, partly founded on the improved sciences of proportion and perspective, to a higher truthfulness of representation. A number of spirited inventions, embodying scenes not only of a religious character, but taken also from allegory and from common life, thus found expression. In the abundance of these inventions, in the feeling for style with which they were composed, and in mastery of drawing, the German artists decidedly surpassed their Netherlandish cotemporaries, such as Quentin Massys, Lucas van Leyden, &c. On the other hand, as regards colour, they are found, with few exceptions, to be in arrear of the Netherlands; in their treatment, also, the draughtsmanlike feeling prevails in the indication of the outline, and in the frequently hatched shadows, which give a certain hardness peculiar to their pictures. Nor do they stand quite on an equality with the painters of the Netherlands in management of detail, though gold grounds, with few exceptions, had been abolished, and landscape backgrounds, frequently of great finish, introduced. Indeed we find them, in some cases, painting landscape for its own sake. Still more do the Germans fall short of the excellence of cotemporary Italian masters. But while admitting that their inferiority in those qualities--ideality of conception, simplification and beauty of forms, and grace of movement-- which give the highest charm to the works of a Leonardo, a Eaphael, and a Correggio, is partly owing to a difference in their innate feeling for art, partly to the less favourable conditions of beauty in man, nature, and...
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