File:Italian cities (1903) (14773494181).jpg

Identifier: italiancities01blas (find matches)
Title: Italian cities
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Blashfield, Edwin Howland, 1848-1936 Blashfield, Evangeline Wilbour, d. 1918
Subjects: Art -- Italy Cities and towns -- Italy Italy -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York : Scribner's
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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counter a smallanvil, a goldsmiths hammer, graver, and pincers, anda goatskin bellows. A charcoal drawing or two wasstuck on the wall; from a peg hung a fine jewelledsirdle, and on a bracket over the door were someelaborately chiselled silver trenchers. At the backa door led into the studio, lighted from the nextstreet, where the students worked under themasters supervision, drawing, painting, modelling,and carving. The life of these art students was divided intothree sharply defined stages. The child of eightor ten who was learning the rudiments of thecraft was called an apprentice; the youth whoaided in the execution of important commissions,an assistant (companion would be the literal trans-lation of the Italian word); and the fully fledgedyoung artist who had begun to fly alone, a maestro,or master. The whole training was eminentlypractical; there were no medals, no exhibitions,no public awards. Now and then there was a 188 FLORENCE UFFIZI LORENZO DI CREDI HEAD OF AN UNKNOWN YOUTH
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THE FLORENTINE ATITIST great competition for some important civic monu-ment, like the doors of the Baptistery or the fa9adeof the cathedral, to which not only Italians, butartists from beyond the Alps were invited to senddesigns; but these were very rare, and by the endof the fifteenth century had practically ceased toexist. There were no academies; no public artschools and no government appropriations forartistic instruction; no official institutions, butthe state, while ignoring art in the abstract,encouraged the individual artist. To producesomething which somebody would want to possess,to turn his knowledge of the beautiful, his masteryof technical processes to some concrete end, wasthe object of the education of the future artist,a work-a-day genius ignorant of our modern for-mula of art for arts sake. Pietro Vanucci paintedthe Florentines on altar-curtains, while waiting forthe time when, as Perugino, he should work on thewalls of the Sistine Chapel; Eodolfo Ghirlandajo told sad

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