Pictures in the Collection of P. A. B. Widener at Lynnewood Hall, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania: Early German, Dutch and Flemish Schools —— Early German, Dutch and Flemish Schools

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ISBN: 9780259874584 出版年：2018 页码：372 Peter Arrell Brown Widener Forgotten Books

David was at his happiest in depicting the quiet and conventional. He lacked passion and sense of the dramatic. Consequently the portrayal of these figures, with their solemn, rigid atti tudes, lay exaétly within the sphere of his talent and afforded him the opportunity to elaborate the detail of the work, and linger with rare art over the workmanship of the brocades and hangings, the stone carvings of the throne and the landscape background. If the whole impression created is somewhat cool and remote, this must be attributed to the unusual dimensions of a work planned to be viewed from a distance, and which, consequently, presented unsuspec'ted difliculties to a Flemish artist of that period. One must remember that Flemish painting developed from the art of miniature, and that from its early beginnings to Gerard David's time, hardly more than a dozen altarpieces of the compass of the St. Anne triptych have been preserved.