“THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN ART” 207

upon me!’-He forthwith gave all he had to the poor for the love of God, and went up into a mountain where there was a great hermitage, and dwelt there the rest of his days in penitence and sanctity, surviving down to the days of Pope Martin, who reigned from 1281 to 1284. ‘Certain youths,’ adds Ghiberti, ‘who sought to be skilled in statuary, told me how he was versed both in painting and sculpture, and how he had painted in the Romitorio [hermitage] where he lived; he was an excellent draughtsman and very courteous. When the youths who wished to improve visited him, he received them with much humility, giving them learned instructions, showing them various proportions, and drawing for them many examples, for he was most accomplished in his art. And thus,’ he concludes, ‘with great humility, he ended his days in that hermitage,’ “-Vol. iii. pp. 257-259.

39. We could have wished that Lord Lindsay had further insisted on what will be found to be a characteristic of all the truly Christian or spiritual, as opposed to classical, schools of sculpture-the scenic or painter-like management of effect. The marble is not cut into the actual form of the thing imaged, but oftener into a perspective suggestion of it-the bas-reliefs sometimes almost entirely under cut, and sharpedged, so as to come clear off a dark ground of shadow; even heads the size of life being in this way rather shadowed out than carved out, as the Madonna of Benedetto da Majano in Santa Maria Novella,¹ one of the cheeks being advanced half an inch out of its proper place-and often the most

¹ [This work by Benedetto (1442-1498) is a group in white marble over the tomb of Filippo Strozzi; Ruskin describes it in his Florence diary of 1845:-

“Maria Novella.-. ... The first place I used to walk to on entering was the tomb of Filippo Strozzi. It furnishes another instance of a sweet defiance of rule in sculpture, for the countenance of the Madonna (it is a Virgin and Child in a medallion) is so carelessly executed that the two sides are unlike each other; but it is full of sweetness, and almost too like flesh, more like a painting than stone. This would be felt more but for the simple hood-like cap, which gives the whole group a Michael Angelesque grandeur of line. The upward look and action of the Christ is superb; the common Madonnas of Raffaelle are all of the earth, earthy, compared to it; but it is not easily felt nor seen neither, for the priests let the people hang garlands of muslin roses and pewter offerings around its neck and the Madonna’s arms till the group looks like a chimney sweeper’s belle on the first of May. I was much surprised to hear this noble work ascribed to Benedetto da Majano, whose undoubted work in the pulpit of Sta. Croce is far inferior to it, and though cleverly ... [word missing] comes in my mind rather under the general head of cinquecento work than with any distinctive power. Its under portions are peculiarly rich in quantity and wanting in invention, but its cypress landscapes (representing the birth-place of St. Francis) are pretty and characteristic. The rose border round even this Madonna of Sta. Maria is somewhat poor and commonplace.”]

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