_Angelo Bronzino_ (Florentine: 1502-1572). _See 649._
_See also_ (p. xix)
"In the rich costume of the sixteenth century," says the Official
Catalogue,--and the picture therein resembles most portraits of the
time. For it is a remarkable thing how much great art depends on
gay and dainty gowns. Note first, in going round these rooms, how
fondly all the best painters enjoy dress patterns. "It doesn't matter
what school they belong to--Fra Angelico, Perugino, John Bellini,
Giorgione, Titian, Tintoret, Veronese, Leonardo da Vinci--no matter
how they differ in other respects, all of them like dress patterns;
and what is more, the nobler the painter is, the surer he is to do
his patterns well." Then note, as following from this fact, how much
of the splendour of the pictures that we most admire depends on
splendour of dress. "True nobleness of dress is a necessity to any
nation which wishes to possess living art, concerned with portraiture
of human nature. No good historical painting ever yet existed, or
ever can exist, where the dresses of the people of the time are not
beautiful; and had it not been for the lovely and fantastic dressing
of the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, neither French nor
Florentine nor Venetian art could have risen to anything like the rank
it reached" (see, _e.g._, under 294). And with regard to this nobleness
of dress, it may be observed lastly how "the best dressing was never
the costliest; and its effect depended much more on its beautiful and,
in early times, modest arrangement, and on the simple and lovely manner
of its colour, than on gorgeousness of clasp or embroidery" (_Cambridge
Inaugural Address_, p. 11; _A joy for ever_, § 54).