WOMAN IN ART
instruction in the fable, the master mind and hand have rendered a beautiful transcription of it into art—allegory into symbolic.
Now for a domestic teaching, also from Italy. Said Kenyon Cox, "The art of Venice differed greatly from the rest of Italy. It was poetic, sensuous, or nationalistic, secular and even worldly, delighting in the pride of life and joy of living."
In certain epochs of art we notice a similarity of accessories, as of dress, house furnishings, styles, fabrics, et cetera, and the differences tell us pretty clearly of the country that claimed the artist or the sitter. Thus figuring it out through the centuries that produced the most art, we find a leather age, a wool age, and a silk age. We find it in the costumes of men as well as of women, and notably in the textures of Venice, The Netherlands and Spain. All were wealthy commercial people, lavish in expenditure.
Paolo Veronese portrays his own taste in common with the Venice of his day in a wall painting personifying "Industry."
An intensely practical woman of the New England type was once asked what she thought of this masterpiece of the Renaissance.
"What is she supposed to be doing?" asked the New Englander.
"Impersonating Industry," was the reply, "the woman, the basket, and the spider."
"Humph!" was her contemptuous rejoiner, "She would do it with much more grace had she been sweeping down the web with a broom."
To go back to Venice, this kind of industry was painted in the so-called silk age. The rich brocade of the robe lends almost a statuesque effect to the low-seated figure—a woman of superb physique. Her outer coat is embroidered green velvet, slightly confined by a gold satin girdle clasped at the hip with a huge mosaic medallion framed in Etruscan gold. The wall on which she is seated is architecturally treated; the gray yet warm sky sheds a creamy light, the whole framed in the massive showy gold of the period. The one bare foot is expressive of comfort in the warmth of Italy, also of the beginning of freedom from sacerdotal law governing the nude. The woman's upturned face, perfectly foreshortened, is beautiful in expression.
Guido Reni was a strong painter of womanhood; his handling of pigments, delicate, soft, and true. He left to art two types of woman: the quiet, refined type in deep thought, as a Sibyl. Her finger in the book indicates the student. The quill is suggestive of carefully prepared results, and proves that education underlies the sweet, thoughtful face. It is the most intellectual of that period.
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