Excerpt from Historical Portraits: 1600-1700 It would be difficult to find a more striking illustration of the importance of the part formerly played by the Alps as a political and social barrier between the North and South of Europe, than the comparison of the state of the fine arts in the Cisalpine and Trans alpine regions at the close of the sixteenth century. In Italy the golden age of the Florentine and Roman schools was past, and the cults of mannerism, naturalism, and eclecticism which swayed the still flourishing schools of Venice, Bologna, and other centres, had one point, if only one, in common. It was universally accepted that the effect of forcible, even violent, relief to be obtained by the use of strong light and shade, was an essential quality in a truly fine picture. In the North the ideals which had inspired an earlier age in Italy still reigned supreme. It would be beside the point to pursue in this place an inquiry as to whether consideration for the decorative effect of a picture, which is inevitably marred by the use of glittering lights and deep shades, or a love of narrative detail and gay colouring for their own sakes, or a state of imaginative development unequal to supplying the detail which is presumed to exist behind the veil of shadow, lies at the root of the preference for a pictorial style marked by minute detail exhibited in a full light. Such a preference is well known to be instinctive in all races in the more primitive stages of culture. It would appear that in England during the sixteenth century these primitive conventions were so strong that they actually exerted some influence upon Torrigiano, Holbein, and Zuccaro, not to speak of other foreign artists possessing less commanding personalities who placed their services at the command of the Court of Britain. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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