The Renaissance[I]n the streets of Milan... moved a people as fantastic, changeful, and dreamlike. To Leonardo least of all men could there be anything poisonous in the exotic flowers of sentiment which grew there. It was a life of brilliant sins and exquisite amusements...-from "Leonard Da Vinci"With his thoughtful sensibility and appreciation of the artistic experience, Walter Pater exerted a dramatic influence over the Aesthetics of the mid to late 19th century: a movement of creative intellectuals, from writer Oscar Wilder to painter James McNeill Whistler, who held that art should be sensual and beauty the highest ideal. Pater's "cult of beauty" also profoundly affected 20th-century arts, literary, and cultural criticism.Here, in a series of essays first reprinted in 1873 from the iconoclastic journal Fortnightly Review, Pater embraces and explores the works of Botticelli, Della Robbia, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, and others. This collection, sometimes entitled Studies in the History of the Renaissance, is criticism as beautiful as the art it considers.Also available from Cosimo Classics: Pater's Marius the Epicurean: His Sensations and Ideas.British essayist and critic WALTER HORATIO PATER (1839-94) was educated at Oxford University. He also wrote Imaginary Portraits (1887), Appreciations (1889), and the posthumously published Greek Studies (1895). |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 24 | |
SANDRO BOTTICELLI | 41 |
LUCA DELLA ROBBIA | 52 |
THE POETRY OF MICHELANGELO бо | 60 |
LEONARDO DA VINCI | 81 |
THE SCHOOL OF GIORGIONE ΙΟΥ | 107 |
JOACHIM DU BELLAY | 128 |
WINCKELMANN | 147 |
CONCLUSION | 194 |
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abstract æsthetic æsthetic criticism antique art of Italy artistic Aucassin Aucassin and Nicolette beauty become Bellay Botticelli character characteristic charm church classical color culture curious Dante death delicate divine dream effect element expression faint fancy feeling fifteenth century Florence Florentine flowers French French language genius Giorgione gods Goethe grace Greek art Greek religion hand Hellenic human mind ideal imaginative impression intellectual interest Italian Italy Joachim du Bellay legend Leonardo light living Luca della Robbia matter medieval ment Michelangelo middle age modern mystical nature Nicolette pagan painter painting passed passion peculiar penetrate perfect perhaps philosophy Pico picture Pitti Palace Plato Pleiad poem poetry poets pure Raphael realise refined religious Renaissance Rome Ronsard Saint sculpture secret seems sense sensuous sentiment songs spirit story strange sweetness Tannhäuser taste things thought tion Titian touch tradition true Vasari Winckelmann youth
Popular passages
Page 195 - Conclusion' was omitted in the second edition of this book, as I conceived it might possibly mislead some of those young men into whose hands it might fall.
Page 104 - Hers is the head upon which all ' the ends of the world are come,' and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed...
Page 197 - The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit, is to rouse, to startle it to a life of constant and eager observation. Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest...
Page 41 - For the essence of humanism is that belief of which he seems never to have doubted, that nothing which has ever interested living men and women can wholly lose its vitality — no language they have spoken, nor oracle beside which they have hushed their voices, no dream which has once been entertained by actual human minds, nothing about which they have ever -been passionate, or expended time and zeal.
Page xxvii - What is this song or picture, this engaging personality presented in life or in a book, to me? What effect does it really produce on me?
Page 104 - Giocondo's house. That there is much of mere portraiture in the picture is attested by the legend that by artificial means, the presence of mimes and flute-players, that subtle expression was protracted on the face.
Page 195 - To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought.