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Page:Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters.djvu/117

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86 UPPI. others we 'see perpetuated the man- nered forms and draperies of Sandro Botticelli. Filippino completed the frescoes of the Brancacci Chapel in the Carmine at Florence, which were left unfinished hy Maso da Panicale and Masaccio. The works of Filippino are — the Restoring the Youth to Life, part of which was painted hy Masaccio; the Crucifixion of St. Peter ; St. Peter and St. Paul before Nero or the Pro- consul; and St. Peter liberated from prison. His figures are executed with peculiar energy and ease ; the women are beautiful; the profiles of his Madonnas especially so ; the men dig- nified, and the forms full of life ; the emotions are forcibly expressed, as also the dramatic action, which is ren- dered with strict natural truth. He understood better the rendering of mere appearances— one of the most es- sential, though not the highest, quali- ties in pictorial art — than any of his eon- temporaries. Filippino's works are also distinguished for their rich architecture and other ornamental accessories, the result of the study of Boman anti- quities. He is said to have been the first Florentine painter who adopted the ancient arabesques. Baphael, in his cartoon of Paul preaching at Athens, adopted the figure of St. Paul in the picture of that Saint visiting St. Peter in Prison, in the Brancacci Chapel. This figure till recently has been attri- buted to Masaccio ; it is now, by Eugler and the editors of the new edition of Vasari (1846-54, seq. 12mo,), in lists accompanying plans of the chapel, given to Filippino, to whom Yasari gave it in his first edition, but the pas- sage was omitted in the second. Bumohr, however, one of the earliest of the accurate investigators of the his- tory of Italian art, in his Italian Be- searches (II. 246) gives the whole side wall on the left to Masaccio, with the exception of certain portions of the Besuscitation of the Youth, executed later by Filippino ; and Dr. Gaye, in his valuable Carieggio Inedito D'Artisti (II. 471—2), taking into consideration the distinction of style, assigns the fresco of St Paul visiting St. Peter, positively to Masaccio, while he assigns the opposite fresco of the Liberation of St. Peter, to Filippino : in Engler's Handbook, and in the new edition of Yasari referred to, no special notice whatever is taken of this fresco in the text. The most important fresco in the chapel, however, Peter and Paul before Nero, is now unanimously, with the exception of Bosini in his History of Paintings^ assigned, to Filippino, a restitution due to Bumohr and Gaye; for Yasari had himself, in his first edition, given it to Filippino, and the inti-oduction of certain portraits in it, independent of the distinction of style, Tenders it impossible that either Maso- linoj or Masaccio can have executed that work; on the other hand, the fresco of the Fall, which has been attri- buted to Filippino, is now assigned to Masolino da Panicale. Works. Florence, the Badia, the Yirgin appealing to St. Bernard (1480) : Uffi:y, Yirgin and Infant Christ (1485); Adoration of the Kings, marked on the back, Filippus me pinxit de Lipis Flo- rerUinus, addi 29 di Marzo, 1426: Brancacci Chapel, in the Chiesa del Carmine, about 1485, three frescoes and a portion of a fourth (mentioned above) from the Life of St. Peter: Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel, scenes from the Lives of the Apostles John and Philip (1487-1502). Rome, Santa Maria, Sopra Minerva, Capella Caraffa, the Glorification of the Madonna and of St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1493). Bologna, San Domenico, the Marriage of St. Catherine (1501). Mtmich Gallery, Christ with the Stigmata appearing to the Yirgin. Berlin Gallery, the Cruci- fied Saviour ; the Yirgin and St. Fran-