The roof surfaces being one
succession of over-arching curves become receptive of innumerable waves
of light and broad unities of soft shadows, giving the whole an
incomparable quality of tone and low juicy color.
Never use your gold but on curved or undulating surfaces. Flat planes of
gold only give the effect of a monotonous metallic yellow, and can never
be beautiful, owing to the absence of the variations that come with
waves of shadow. By letting out the reins of imagination we might feel
that in this a tenth century Giorgione has given off the mental
impressions of all the golden autumn of his life. His material gave him
an advantage over his great followers of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, insomuch that glass has a living and glowing quality of light
not existing in the somewhat clouded purity of oil or fresco.
In St. Mark's we have an example of the superb treatment in deepest and
most Titianesque scales applied to curved forms, but to find a similarly
complete example of the use of lighter tones and on flat surfaces, we
must turn to Ravenna. I can give you no adequate description of the wall
mosaics of Ravenna.
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