Portrait of Savonarola (sä-vō-nä-rō'-lä)

Fra Bartolommeo della Porta (bär-tō-lōm'-mā-ō),

1475-1517

WO fundamental principles or social forces were, in the centuries of the Renaissance, in fiercest conflict. The religious and social philosophy of the Middle Ages, when in darkness, humanity, despairing of earth and hoping alone in heaven, had suffered so deeply, was now warring with a new ideal, which sought to again realize something of the beauty and glory of the world, believing in the dignity of man, the worth of ideas, and the possibility of well-being here for mankind.

The new theories and the new ideals were yet imperfect, falling short here of full development, breaking out there in excess. Against these excesses, but in reality against the essential and vital spirit of the new age, some men, earnest and sincere at times like Savonarola, yet often narrow and reactionary, waged bitter warfare.

With all charity for their motives, with due regard for their virtues, remembering the good which in part came from their efforts, and with sympathy for their fate, when in the struggle they fell as did Savonarola, we may hold it well for humanity that the old could not be restored, or that which was of truth and vitality in the new civilization be destroyed.

The world needs such men as Savonarola, whose features are preserved for us in the portrait painted, it is believed, by that charming and amiable painter, friend of Raphael, Fra Bartolommeo. Their stern virtues and their zealous philippics are tonics, healing if bitter potions, for the moral life of the body politic and social. But the controlling destinies of a nation are better placed in other hands.

ENUINE talent in his own modest field and continued good fortune combined to give Landseer, during most of a long life, an unusual success. His father was an engraver in London, who gave his precocious son early training, and from the age of twelve the boy began to draw and paint animals which met quick approval. From 1816 he studied in the Royal Academy, where during his life he constantly exhibited.

Landseer settled in London, became a social favorite and was knighted in 1850. His pictures, well made and harmless, just hit the British taste of his time and sold well. At his best he had a happy talent in depicting the forms of animals, particularly dogs and deer, great facility of execution and industry, but he lessened the real value of much of his work by surrounding his animals with a sentimentality foreign to their natures, endowing them with human traits and emotions, and often sinking to an unhealthy sort of animal genre style.

The strong and boldly modeled "Study of a Lion" here shown is fortunately quite free from any such affectation. It was made late in the artist's life, a reversion to the vigor and truth of his earlier days. Broadly conceived and wrought with free touches, avoiding detail to attain plastic energy, it suited well its purpose, to aid the sculptor in modeling the lions for the Nelson Monument in Trafalgar Square. This sketch, with another like it, is in the National Gallery near the monument.

Landseer's later life was clouded by illness, but his pictures are numerous and still quite popular.

Virgin, Infant Jesus and Saint John
Sandro Botticelli (bot-te-chel'-le), 1447-1510

ERITY in representation or any special fidelity to the traditions of religious art cannot be counted among the merits of Botticelli. His decorative refinement of color and his original, naïve fancy, always breaking out in the unexpected, make him interesting and usually attractive. Although he was an earnest student of Dante, and at one time a devoted adherent of Savonarola and the ascetic enthusiasts, there is almost nothing in his work to show traces of this.

From his master, Filippo Lippi, an artist of original genius and the creator of definite types, Botticelli had learned to depict the Madonna with a delicate beauty, rather of earth and with the traits of a Florentine maiden of good breeding, than spiritual or exalted by devotion.

This conception he has given in the group before us, from the painting in the Louvre. Later and in other moods he often painted a type of Madonna, less sympathetic and readily understood, and more in harmony, it would seem, with the artist's own fanciful, sometimes erratic nature.

The Mother and Child here are absorbed in themselves and make a complete picture, without the St. John, whom they quite ignore, and whom the artist has not in any manner united to the pair. In return, the youth gives them no attention, but his eyes and thoughts are fixed on the outside beholders, of whom he is here in fact one. The result is that we ourselves, as we look at the picture, always find our eyes and our attention slipping from the chief figures to the face of the boy, with his look of questioning uncertainty.