1:37
But his pictures, generally speaking, are more
characterised by their laborious, finishing,
gentleness, and sweetness of character, than by
the energies of a lively imagination.
CC
Fra.
Bartolomeo di St. Marco,
of Florence,
OI18
of the
enamoured of
first who became
that superiority which grandeur and decision of
character gives to art; and, indeed, of all those
higher excellences which the philosophical mind
of Da Vinci had accomplished. In the pictures
of Bartolomeo we behold, for the first time, that
breadth of the clair-obscure-the deep tones of
colour,
with
their
philosophical
arrangement,
united
to
that
noble
folding
of
drapery aPP1'O'_
priate to, and significant of, every character it
covered; a point of excellence in this master,
from which Raphael caught his first conception
of that noble simplicity which distinguishes the
dignity of his draperies, and which it became
his pride through life to imitate.
Bartolomeo,
in his figure of
St. Mark,
has
convinced us how important and indispensable
is the union of mental conception with truth of