Volltext Seite (XML)
358 EARLY CHRISTIAN ART. Chap. XIII. His ideas of proportion were, indeed, different from those of his master; and his partiality for long slender shapes discloses almost at once who it was that assisted Giotto in the Southern transept of the Lower church at Assisi. But he was not even true to a fixed standard in this, though better perhaps then other pupils of Giotto. Fancy he did not possess; and he seldom desired to express ac tion without falling into an exaggeration of vehemence. The affected air of the heads was increased by constant neglect in defining the forms of eyes, which he usually gave with long lids, hardly open and unfinished at the corners. He drew with that sort of facility which the Italians call bravura, making the heads long, narrow, and without projection at the back. A peculiar obliquity was given to the face by the false line of the cheek and chin, which instead of contrasting with that of the nose, gene rally followed it in an aquiline course. The neck always seemed inordinately long, the short, coarse, hands and feet neglected in drawing, the nude stiff and hard, the draperies broad but arranged. Without the sobriety of Giotto, he painted the vestments in gay contrasts and of changing hues. His colour was laid in with an ease and consistency of texture that betrayed facility and haste; and he seldom took the trouble to fuse his tones. His shadows were dark, 1 their mass patchy. The idea of relief by light and shade was imperfect, and the surface generally flat. Taddeo’s execution was, in fact, rapid, de corative and conventional. Yet to a distant observer, his style was effective, and sometimes imposing. Lower than Giotto in the scale of art, he was essentially inferior to him in rendering character and expression, — lacking, at once, his softness and gravity, his elegance and severe simplicity. That the religious feeling, peculiar to Giotto, could not be maintained by Taddeo is evident in the annuncia- 1 Dark verde, and the lights stippled in a somewhat purple tone, the outlines of a wine-red.