The baroque antithesis to Raphael and Diirer is here represented by Rubens’ Christ Bearing the Cross* (engraving by Pontius with a variant anterior to the picture in Brussels). The recessional movement most brilliantly developed, and made still more interesting by an upward movement. The stylistically new factor we are looking for certainly does not lie in the merely material motive of the direction of movement, but, as it is a question of a principle of present- ment, in the way in which the theme is handled, how every recessional element …
PAINTING 75 tion. It is not a question of the degree of recession in the space represented, but in what way recession is made effective. Even where the seventeenth century apparently indulges in pure compositions in breadth, a closer com- parison must prove the fundamentally different point of departure. The spiral into-the-picture movement which Rubens loves will certainly be sought for in vain in Dutch pictures, yet this system of Rubens’ is only one type of re- cessional composition. There need even be no plastic oppositions of foreground and background: …
The course of the development of art, however, cannot simply be reduced to a series of separate points. Individuals fall into larger groups. Botticelli and Lorenzo di Credi, for all their differences, have still, as Florentines, a certain resemblance when compared with any Venetian, and Hobbema and Ruysdael, however divergent they may be, are immediately homogeneous as soon as to them, as Dutchmen, a Fleming like Rubens is opposed. That is to say: to the personal style must be added the style of the school, the country, the race. Let …
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Made in the seventeenth century, like The Feast of Herod (recto); Tomyris with the Head of Cyrus (verso).