10

SINS AND SERMONS

A LMOST the first date that every boy and girl learns is 1492,the year that Columbus discovered America. Columbus was an Italian, but most of the people in Italy at that time were not interested in Columbus or what he was doing. They were interested in just two things. First they were interested in having a good time. The second thing they were interested in was art.They were interested in Greece and its art and learning — not in discovering new countries. This time was known as the beginning of the High Renaissance and began just about 1492.

When you look at a globe of the world, you can hardly find Italy, no larger than your little finger, sticking down into the Mediterranean Sea. And yet in this little finger of land lived, at the time we are talking about, the greatest artists there have ever been. We call these artists the Old Masters.It may seem strange that just there in Italy the greatest artists should have been born and lived, all within a few miles of one another. One explanation is that Italy was the center of the Christian religion, and up to this time Italian artists painted no pictures but religious ones.

An artist named Botticelli (Bot-tee-chel’lee), was one of the first Italian artists to paint pictures of things that were not told about in the Bible. Botticelli painted religious pictures too, but he liked especially to paint pictures of Greek gods and goddesses and other fanciful subjects, for the Renaissance was a time, as I’ve told you, when every one was interested in Greek art, history, and learning. Botticelli had a peculiar style of painting. His women usually had long legs and seemed to be dancing or floating along the ground instead of standing or walking. They were clad in very filmy, gauzy gowns as thin as a veil that showed their figures almost as if they had nothing on. Here is one called “The Allegory of Spring.”

Now, at the time of Columbus, there was living and preaching in Florence a monk named Savonarola, who some people think was mad. At any rate, he was such a powerful preacher that those who heard his sermons would do almost anything he told them to. He seemed to hypnotize them. Most of the people in Florence were very wicked. They thought of nothing but pleasure and having a good time, no matter how bad they were when they had a good time. Savonarola preached against the sins of this world, and prophesied death for those who did not repent and mend their ways.He preached against people who played games of cards or dice, who used rouge on their faces, who wore ornaments,who danced, who sang songs that were not hymns, or wrote books or painted pictures that were not religious. The people of Florence began to repent and so one day they brought all their ornaments and finery and fancy clothes and bad books to the public square and made a huge bonfire of them. It was much higher than a house. Many ugly things were burned up,probably most of them ought to have been burned. It might be a good idea if, once a year, we were to gather together all the flimsy ornaments, trashy pictures, and other rubbish in our houses and make a huge bonfire of them.

Botticelli had heard Savonarola preach, and he felt that he too had committed a sin in painting pictures of gods and goddesses and other subjects that were not religious. So he brought his paintings that were not religious and threw them on the bonfire. Fortunately for us, only a few of Botticelli’s pictures were burned and his best ones are still preserved in art galleries.

Here is one of the religious kind, a Madonna. Notice that it is circular in shape, not square-cornered as most pictures are. Circular pictures are called tondos , which means round.

This is called “The Madonna of the Coronation” (the crowning), because two angels are putting a crown on Mary to show that she is the Queen of Heaven. She is writing a song in a book while the infant Jesus seems to be guiding her hand. The song sung in church to-day is called the Magnificat because that is the Latin name, and so the picture too is often called “The Magnificat.” The song is a thanksgiving to God that He has chosen Mary from among all the women in the world, to be the mother of Jesus.

The boy holding the ink-well and the one holding the book were real boys. They did not live in the time of Christ, but in the time of Botticelli, so it may seem strange that they should have been put in the picture, but the Old Masters often did that sort of thing. When these two boys grew up both of them became popes.

The people whom Savonarola said were so wicked could stand him no longer, and even some of his own followers turned against him. Finally they got hold of him and hanged him on a cross placed in the public square. Then, not satisfied with that, they burned his body at the stake. And not satisfied with that, they threw his ashes into the river.

There was a young painter in Florence who, as Botticelli had done, had also burned all of his pictures that were not religious. He was so shocked by the way in which Savonarola had been treated that he gave up painting and became a monk himself. He took the name of Fra Bartolommeo and went to live in the monastery where Savonarola had lived and also where Fra Angelico before him had lived — the monastery of St. Mark’s. For six years he never painted a stroke or touched a brush. He did nothing but pray. Then he was persuaded to start painting once more, and after that he made many beautiful pictures — all of them, of course, religious. One picture he painted was of a saint named Sebastian. Saint Sebastian was shot to death with arrows, because he was a Christian. The picture which Fra Bartolommeo painted for his monastery showed Saint Sebastian without clothes and with arrows sticking in his body. The monks thought this so immodest that at last the picture was removed from the monastery.

Fra Bartolommeo painted a picture of his hero Savonarola.Now, Savonarola was not handsome at all. In fact, he had a very big nose, and was really ugly, so ugly that his enemies used to joke about it. But the painting of him that Fra Bartolommeo made shows that a picture can be great without being pretty.Fra Bartolommeo didn’t change Savonarola’s features at all.He painted the man just as he was, but the picture is beautiful because it shows some one who bore the most terrible suffering and agony for what he believed was right.

Most artists, when they draw or paint pictures of people,have real men or women to pose for them. Models, we call them. Instead of live models, Fra Bartolommeo used a wooden jointed doll which he dressed and arranged in the position he wanted the figure to be. Such a wooden doll is called a lay-figure or one to draw from.

Fra Bartolommeo was the first painter to put baby angels at the foot of his pictures of the Madonna, and other painters copied this idea. dLoU4w/IklvqvrNL3NpULWLr5FzItha8DUwTgEXt0zPk9klNELx1CcPTePUvom0a