WOMAN IN ART
change in environment, but more by the development of the spirit within. Those were years of strong contrasts—a reconstruction period. The world is passing through another in our day.
The art of the renaissance, or of the Italian masters, presents human development more vividly than do books, for man not only expresses himself in his work, but his enlightenment makes him faithful to his subject. Madonnas chosen fifty years apart chronologically show an uplifting influence.
In the subject of Motherhood In Art we see much beside the painter's craft, manifold as it is in technique, drawing, composition, color, etc. History, development of character and science, all depict the working of the spirit in the life of man, or the lack of it, which saddens the life.
Much in art had expressed the symbolic in the beginning of the fourteenth century when, thanks to Massaccio, the knowledge of perspective and foreshortening, the more perfect study of the human form in the handling of light and shade, gave more of naturalness to the results of art, and figures stood out independent of their background, and the phrase and fact of "realism" was applied to art.
Fra Angelico was the first of the Dominican Order to claim art as his birthright, and the last of the great painters to express his love of beauty in the terms of symbolism. Not all of his drawing was after the perfection of the Greeks, yet much was superior to the art prior to his time.
As "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," so was the spirit of the man expressed in the output of his brush. Love, purity and peace seem dominant in his nature, and on his canvas or wall. Of the angels and Madonnas that illumined the gray convent walls, the "Madonna of the Star" is typical of his work and subject, that subject being uppermost in his religious thought and life, and the technical being the result of his youthful work as illuminator of letters and borders of manuscripts. His angels of music, with their jeweled wings and elaborately bordered robes, emphasize the fact of his early training in that particular and minute form of art. "The Madonna of the Star" is very beautiful in its color against a background of radiating gold lines, signifying the sacredness of the mother and child, and which, as an accessory to a painting, was reminiscent of Byzantine art and symbolism.
Madonnas were usually represented seated, enthroned, and there is a churchly dignity in the standing Madonna, the child on her arm, but the
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