[Gothic Art (3) [continued (21):]] European art in the 15th century [ce] [continued (8)][15th March 1991]

[Redbook8:349-350][19910315:1000ss][Gothic Art (3) [continued (21):]] European art in the 15^th century [ce] [continued (8)][15th March 1991]

19910315.1000

[continued]

‘It is therefore misleading to think of non-Italian art as being in some sort of decline c[irca] 1500[ce]. However, a change of taste was coming, and symptomatic of this was the tendency of non-Italian monarchs to invite Italian artists to their courts. This had hardly occurred during the earlier Gothic period.... It was especially at the French court that the idea of the inherent desirability of Italian art was propagated. The general reason stemmed from the belief that Italian art represented the revival of the art of Antiquity.* This had little or nothing to do with any general search for purity, restraint or balance**.... The architectural and figurative conventions used by the Italians carried with them all the sanctions of the Antique*** which by now had the support of about a century and a half of humanist propaganda. By the early 16th century, the Italians were thoroughly articulate on the subject of art; for the first time in the post-Classical period, principles**** in art emerge and aesthetic distinctions of right and wrong are enunciated in literary form.# It seems to have been felt that the Italians, by their near-monopoly of ancient art, also possessed the key to what was right and desirable.’

#*

*It is, by any account, remarkable that this should have happened almost exactly 2000/2048 years after the period to which it relates.

**m~?

***cf earlier ideas of G~ as a sector of Recall.

****s~

#G~

#*– ibid [Encylopaedia of Visual Art 4: 619-] 620

[continued]

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