_Carlo Crivelli_ (Venetian: painted 1468-1493). _See_ 602.
This important picture is one of Crivelli's masterpieces and is very
characteristic of his genius and its limitations. The work, it will be
seen, is not so much a picture as a collection of panel pictures built
up into a gorgeous piece of decoration. The panels in the two lower
tiers were painted for the old church of San Domenico, at Ascoli; the
central panel of the Madonna and Child is inscribed with the painter's
name and the date 1476. The church was rebuilt in 1776, and some years
afterwards the picture came into the possession of Cardinal Zelada at
Rome, who added the four upper pictures by the same painter. In 1852
the picture passed to Prince Anatole de Demidoff, at Florence, where it
was put into its present magnificent frame. Crivelli's artistic aim, it
has been said, was the development and perfection of isolated figures
for elaborate altar-pieces of this kind, and those before us are among
the best he ever did: "in them calm dignity, strength of character,
gentleness, and grace, can all be treated by him with perfect success
apart from the disturbing elements of emotion and action." The type of
the Virgin here is very characteristic, with her high-arched eyebrows,
small mouth, and hair tightly drawn back from the forehead. So too
are the hands, with very long fingers, in which affectation borders
on dislocation. Very natural, on the contrary, is the figure of the
infant Christ, "fast asleep with one hand under his head while with the
other he grasps his mother's middle finger--a picture drawn from the
life." The decorative details are characteristic. Note the dolphins
on the base of the throne. The festoons are meant to represent real
offerings of fruit, tied with string and fastened with nails. On one
side of the Virgin is St. Peter, an impressive figure: his costume
shows the use of raised ornaments and imitation gems, which is common
in Crivelli's earlier works, but which he gradually dropped. Beyond St.
Peter is St. John the Baptist in the wilderness: the hard and severe
style of the figure is remarkable. "The landscape in which he stands
should not be passed over, with the stream flowing at his feet and the
tree-stems broken off so as not to interfere with the gold background
which sets off the upper half of the figure." On the other side of the
Virgin is St. Catherine of Alexandria, and beyond her St. Dominic--a
figure "admirable in its expression of piety and humility and in the
personality with which Crivelli has invested it." The half-length
figures in the second tier are St. Francis, with the stigmata; St.
Andrew, with cross and book--a very grand head; St. Stephen, with the
stones of his martyrdom; and St. Thomas Aquinas, with book and the
model of a church. In the top tier are St. Jerome, also carrying the
model of a church; the Archangel Michael, trampling on the dragon and
weighing in a pair of scales a man and a woman who are of light weight;
St. Peter Martyr, with the sword of his martyrdom, and St. Lucy,
carrying a plate with eyes upon it. The reference is to the legend
which relates that in order to discourage the suit of a youth who loved
her for the beauty of her eyes, she plucked them out with her own hands
and sent them to him in a dish. The youth, struck with remorse, became
a Christian, and Lucy's sight was miraculously restored to her.