Norton in his estimate of the
comparative merit of different artists. We think he sometimes makes Mr.
Ruskin's mistake of attributing to positive religious sentiment what is
rather to be ascribed to the negative influence of circumstances and
date. We cannot help thinking that the mere arrangement of their
figures by such painters as Cima da Conegliano and Francesco Francia,
the architectural regularity of their disposition, the sculpturesque
dignity of their attitudes, and the consequent impression of
simplicity and repose which they convey, have much to do with the
religious effect they produce on the mind, as contrasted with the more
dramatic and picturesque conceptions of later artists. When we look at
John Bellino's "Gods come down to taste the Fruits of the Earth," we
cannot think him essentially a more religious man than his great pupil
who painted that truly divine countenance of Christ in "The
Tribute-Money." At the same time we go along with Mr. Norton heartily,
where, in the concluding pages of his book, with equal learning and
eloquence, he points out the causes and traces the progress of the
moral and artistic decline which came over Italy in the sixteenth
century, and whose effect made the seventeenth almost a desert.
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