The
remaining four are all of Luca's school,--later work therefore, all
these five, than any we have been hitherto examining, entirely
different in manner, and with late flower-work beneath them instead of
our hitherto severe Gothic arches. And it becomes of course instantly a
vital question--Did Giotto die leaving the series incomplete, only its
subjects chosen, and are these two bas-reliefs of Sculpture and
Painting among his last works? or was the series ever completed, and
these later bas-reliefs substituted for the earlier ones, under Luca's
influence, by way of conducting the whole to a grander close, and
making their order more representative of Florentine art in its fulness
of power?
I must repeat, once more, and with greater insistence respecting Sculpture
than Painting, that I do not in the least set myself up for a critic of
authenticity,--but only of absolute goodness. My readers may trust me to
tell them what is well done or ill; but by whom, is quite a separate
question, needing for any certainty, in this school of much-associated
masters and pupils, extremest attention to minute particulars not at all
bearing on my objects in teaching.
Of this closing group of sculptures, then, all I can tell you is that
the fifth is a quite magnificent piece of work, and recognizably, to my
extreme conviction, Luca della Robbia's; that the last, Harmonia, is
also fine work; that those attributed to Giotto are fine in a different
way,--and the other three in reality the poorest pieces in the series,
though done with much more advanced sculptural dexterity.
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