Leader Scott

“ This hiatus is generally supposed to be a time when Art was utterly dead and buried, its corpse in Byzantine dress lying embalmed in its tomb at Ravenna. But all death is nothing but the germ of new life. Art was not a corpse, it was only a seed, laid in Italian soil to germinate, and it bore several plants before the great reflowering period of the Renaissance.
The seed sown by the Classic schools formed the link between them and the Renaissance, just as the Romance Languages of Provence and Languedoc form the link between the dying out of the classic Latin and the rise of modern languages. ”

“ Michelangelo only echoed the opinion of others when he said to Raphael, "There is a little fellow in Florence who will bring the sweat to your brow if ever he is engaged in great works." His style of composition was important, his figures varied and life-like, his draperies dignified. "The main excellence, however, in which Andrea stands unique among his contemporaries rests in the incomparable blending of colour, in the soft flesh tints, in the exquisite chiaroscuro, in the transparent clearness even of his deepest shadows, and in his entirely new manner of perfect modelling." ”

“ But as the sun rises, nature takes her real tints gradually. We see every thing in its own colour; the gold and the rose has faded away with the truer light, and a stern realism takes its place. The human form must be expressed, in all its solidity and truth, not only in its outward semblance, but the hidden soul must be seen through the veil of flesh. And in this lies the reason of the decline; only to a few great masters it was given to reveal spirituality in humanity—the others could only emulate form and colour, and failed.
It is impossible to contemplate art apart from religion ”