Paul's cathedral in London, render the new architecture popular in
England.
[Sidenote: Sculpture]
Sculpture is usually an attendant of architecture, and it is not
surprising, therefore, that transformation of the one should be
connected with change in the other. The new movement snowed itself in
Italian sculpture as early as the fourteenth century, owing to the
influence of the ancient monuments which still abounded throughout the
peninsula and to which the humanists attracted attention. In the
fifteenth century archaeological discoveries were made and a special
interest fostered by the Florentine family of the Medici, who not only
became enthusiastic collectors of ancient works of art but promoted the
study of the antique figure. Sculpture followed more and more the Greek
and Roman traditions in form and often in subject as well. The plastic
art of Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was strikingly
akin to that of Athens in the fifth or fourth centuries before Christ.
The first great apostle of the new sculpture was Lorenzo Ghiberti
(1378-1455), whose marvelous doors on the baptistery at Florence
elicited the comment of Michelangelo that they were "worthy of being
placed at the entrance of paradise.
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