WOMAN IN ART
but how few could, or have caught that charm in the transfer of spirit to canvas. Thought is moved to emotion as one looks into the beautiful, peaceful face; a throb of motherhood touches the heart; the sacredness of love is hers; the illusive shade of responsibility is there. You are looking at a painting, yet feel a vital something that quickens your own vitality. Spirit touches spirit. The mother inspired the painter, the painter the canvas, the canvas—after five hundred years—gives of its recorded spirit to your spirit. Is art developing? Is the ideal gliding down the arm and spirit lifting the heart of him who holds the brush? Is true beauty manifesting in the life of humanity? Yes, but not in all; development is sporadic.
"The Coronation of the Virgin," by Fra Philippo Lippi, is a beautiful picture in its entirety, a central panel and two wings. In the sixty-three faces representing priests, vergers, angels, and singing girls, not one is beaming with joy or happiness befitting the occasion; rather the faces seem stolid and lacking in interest. The color scheme and grouping are most satisfactory, but your enthusiasm gleaned from some other canvas fails to enthuse, for there is little or none in the stolid faces to call it out; hence the picture of beauty and interest is lacking in charm, although it is a most worthy representation of the work of that renowned ecclesiastical master.
But our subject is merely to trace by means of art as best we may the unfolding of woman's character during the centuries when there was little or no written history, and that little gave scant reference to woman unless as sovereign or court favorite.
The romance or poetry of the Renaissance depicts now and again a woman of unusual education and achievement. Such pen pictures prove that there were women of advancing mentality, of discernment, taste, and moral fiber, outside of court circles; in fact there seems to have been but slight morality in court society as we know of it. That human nature varied then as now we do know.
Dante's boyhood friendship grew into a life-long romance and love which death seemed not to part, even with the passing of his spiritualized Beatrice, who was ever an angel to him; yet his true wife and mother of his several children was stalwart, practical, energetic, yet with an ungovernable temper and rasping disposition that doubtless reconciled him in no small measure to his exiled life.
In those days men of talent and taste were wont to give to women of their
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