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Show FLORENCE, ITALY, June, 1910. S INCE a previous article, written in an endeavor to state the nature of the faith and practice fashioning this work, I have had the privilege of studying the work of that splendid group of Florentine sculptors and painters and architects, and the sculptor- painters and painter-sculptors, who were also architects: Giotto, Masaccio, Man- tepna, Amolfo, Pisano. Brunelleschi, and Bramante, Sansovino and Angelo, No line was drawn between the arts and .their epoch. Somzof the sculpture is good painting: most of the painting is good sculpture; and in both lie the patterns of archi- tecture. Where this confusion is not a blending of these arts, it is as amazing as it is unfortunate. To attempt to classify the works severely as pure painting, pure sculpture, or oure architecture would`be auite imuossible, if it were desirable for educational uurooses. `But be this as it may, what ihese men of Florence absorbed from their Greek, Byzantine and Roman forbears, they bequeathed to Europe as the kernel of the Renaissance; and this, if we deduct the Gothic influence of the Middle Ages, has constituted the soul of the Aca- demic fine arts on the Continent. From these Italian flames were 1iQhted mvriads of French. German and English lights that flourished, flickered feebly for aTime, and soon smoulderdd in the sensuality-and extravagance of later periods, until they were extinguished in banal architecture like the Rococo, or in nondescript structures such as the Louvre. This applies to those buildings which were more or less """"professional"""" embodiments of a strivinpr for the beautiful. those buildinQs which were """"Qood school"""" nerformances. which sough: consciously to be. beautiful. NGertheless, here a; elsewhere, ;he true basis for anv serious studv of the art of architecture is in those indigenous structures, the more humble buildings e;erywhere, which are to architecture what Folk-lore is to literature or folk-songs are to music, and with which architects were seldom concerned. In the aggregate of these lie the traits that make them characteristically German or Italian, French, Dutch, English or Spanish in nature, as the case may be. The traits of these structures are national, of the soil; and, though often slight, their virtue is intimately interrelated with environment and with the habits of life of the people. Their functions are truthfully con- ceived, and rendered directly with natural feeling. They are always instructive and often beautiful. So, underlying the ambitious and self-conscious blossoms of the human soul, the expressions of d4Maryolatry,"""" or adoration of divinity, or cringing to temporal power, there |
