CHAPTER V
Women of the Renaissance In the Work of Early Masters. Character and Art Give Birth to Poetry. Broadening of Woman's Influence In Flanders.
Painting was a newer art five hundred years ago, when a painter's equipment was knowledge and use of the engraver's tools, of the mixing of pigments, and of the Bible, from which most of his subjects were drawn.
Judging from some early pictures, development was unequal as well as slow. Some faces do not give the pleasure nor accent the refinement or mentality we might hope for. True, the faces of Barbara and Margaret are beautiful, but we must realize that the ideal of the artist was doubtless added to the natural beauty of the model. The eloquence of spirit is essential to great expression, be it in Goethe's drama, Giotto's portrait of Dante, or Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech. The true, the rugged, the lovely, all express beauty when in harmony with their nature and necessity.
Artists of palette and brush have often preserved the features and fashions of their loves and friends, happy or unhappy, who served as models for beauty, for Saints, Madonnas, or Magdalenes. Notice for, not of, beauty.
Leonardo da Vinci painted the portrait of the wife of his friend and called it "La Belle Joconde." It did not satisfy him. Perhaps it is not a fair example or type of a woman of her day, yet it may be, for the artist painted on it many times during four years and was still dissatisfied with it. It seems to be a face into which one can read his own interpretation, yet of it Vasari said, "It is rather divine than human, as life-like as nature itself." As a portrait it seems most worthily to represent the genius of the great Leonardo, so why may we not consider it worthy of the original—the woman herself? The attributes expressive of an attractive woman are there—intelligence, sweetness, and modesty—and some people are drawn to it while others are repelled; we read that the people of her day considered it a marvel.
In the Uffizi Gallery is a Madonna and child with angels. Barring the angels, it seems a real portrait of a womanly woman and her baby, rather than a picture of a model—an imagined Madonna. It has the feeling of real life, so we may safely let it present to us a true woman of the fifteenth century. The true woman? Yes, with the serene sweetness that comes to the heart of woman whom love has satisfied. The painting is a masterpiece by Sandro Botticelli. The painting is his, the charm of the woman must have been hers,
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