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. 1910 edition. Excerpt: ...the physical pain undergone by the two thieves: as late as Benedetto Antelami, death, although imminent, has not arrived. His predecessors figured Christ erect on the cross with open eyes, and it should be added with each foot nailed separately to the cross.1 Gradually the head drooped downwards; there ...
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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. 1910 edition. Excerpt: ...the physical pain undergone by the two thieves: as late as Benedetto Antelami, death, although imminent, has not arrived. His predecessors figured Christ erect on the cross with open eyes, and it should be added with each foot nailed separately to the cross.1 Gradually the head drooped downwards; there was a progression from calm to discomfort, and then by successive stages to torture; and by 1400 one constantly sees the thieves, including Dismas to whom the doors of Paradise were opened, represented in hideous and distressing contortions. Perhaps the influence of the uncompromising friars may have contributed to this; they may have found it difficult to make their passionate appeals to a serene and placid Redeemer. In any case by the thirteenth century the mystic aspect of the Crucifixion had become inadequate. Aspects of its more human side and historical incidents made their appearance; so also scenes of torture and persecution, ugly crimes committed under Diocletian, together with the more unsavoury episodes of martyrdom, came into vogue, and the more remote the chance of their recurrence the more popular they became. Nothing could be less edifying than the conversion of so splendid an edifice as Santo Stefano Rotondo at Rome into a common charnelhouse. With regard to the Crucifixion such vagaries were not only out of place but were sternly repressed. It is a theme in which a special measure of reserve is required, for not only must exaggeration give offence, but a face of petrified anguish, especially one which must be isolated, is in itself distracting. Italian sculptors, apart from their reverend demeanour, were far too shrewd to fall into such errors of judgment; and if Spanish art had undergone an evolution equally slow and...
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Seller's Description:
Book. Octavo; Reprint of the 1909 edition published by J. Murray, London; G; Hardcover; Spine, green with gold print; Boards in green cloth, clean and strong; Text block has spotting to edges and endpapers, slight smudging to endpapers, relaxed rear hinge, else clean and tight; xiv, 348 pages, frontispiece, illustrated (b&w plates). [Shelf: Sculpture]. 1362779. FP New Rockville Stock.
