French Historians

"Salomom Reinach, Apollo , 2nd Italian edition on the third French one, Italian Institute of Arts Graphics Publisher, Bergamo, C.E.1906."

"Giovanni Bellini, who lived for about 86 years (C.E.1430?–1516), went through so many different stages that one would call him a school of painting rather than a painter. His first works are still fine and dry, close to Mantegna, not free from harshness and bizarre designs; the compositions of his mature age are masterpieces, which are missing almost nothing, not even a reflection of the palette of Giorgione, his pupil, who died six years before him. This great artist, teacher of many students, traveled the entire path from Mantegna to Titian during a laborious existence. There was only one thing he lacked: the gift or taste for representing movement. (pp. 171-172)"

"The life of Raffaello Santi (or Sanzio) forms a complete contrast to that of Leonardo. If he, who lived for a long time, produced little, Raphael, who died at the age of 37, instead left an immense work, which has come down to us, almost in its entirety. (p. 192)"

"The large painting of Bruges, in which Van Paele appears as a donor , allows us to appreciate the greatness of Giovanni's genius and at the same time the limits traced to him by nature. He has no religious feeling, no fervor; the Virgin is ugly, the Baby Jesus is stunted, Saint George is a peasant in armour. But Giovanni van Eyck is the greatest portraitist of all time. Never has a more penetrating eye scrutinized the living form, never has a more capable hand fixed its image on the table. (p. 219)"

"[...] the famous painting by Guido Reni, L'Aurora, in the Palazzo Rospigliosi in Rome (C.E.1609), although somewhat strident in color and too easy to draw, it is one of the great works of decorative painting. Guido Reni also created some types of Christ, the Virgin and the Magdalene, who can be accused of a certain sentimental affectation; but it is certain that their prodigious success shows them to be responsive - and this is no small merit - to the religious ideal of the time. (p. 247)"

"Claudio Lorrain He is the undisputed master of that false and conventional genre called the Italian landscape, in which the great scenery of nature, expertly manipulated, serves as the backdrop to a historical or mythological composition. The temples, trees and of Claudio Lorrain have very little of reality; his characters have even less; but what saves his paintings, what gives them legitimate admiration, is the poetic feeling of space, sky, water, light. (p. 279)"

"[...] Meissonier treated anecdotal subjects of the 18th century with prodigious mastery as a miniaturist and a science of form, superior even to that of the Dutch. But the most beautiful of his little paintings pales next to a Pieter de Hoock or a Vermeer, because Meissonier draws too much, colors more than he paints and never knows how to envelop the form in a luminous and caressing atmosphere. (pp. 309-310)"

"[...] the dominant school [of the romantic tendency] was that of the Nazarenes, based in Rome and which aimed in particular at imitating the Italian C.E.15th century. [...]; they painted as badly as Ingres, they drew much less well and they differed from him in their love of large symbolic compositions which are tedious and require comment. (pp. 320-321)"

"In the first half of the nineteenth century, the greatest of English artists was Turner (C.E.1775-1851), a painter in love with light to the point of ecstasy, a Claudio Lorrain romantic, feverish and sometimes theatrical, [...]. (p. 322)"

"The saw in Raphael an apostate from the Ideal and an apostle of savoir faire; they took Botticelli and Mantegna as examples. But they were not vulgar "smugglers". The salient character of their school is intellectualism, the disdain of art for art's sake; they want to narrate and teach, move the soul of the crowds, descend among the people and convert them to beauty. (pp. 322-323)"

"[On the Pre-Raphaelites] Although several of them preceded, since C.E.1848, the French school on the path of plenarianism and divisionism, they are not impressionists; they have a horror of sloppy and hasty execution; their workmanship, meticulous and pedantic, superimposes, without trying to harmonize them, intense and raw colors. This arid and fictitious art, however placed at the service of a very high ideal, must have ended up tiring. (p. 323)"

"Will the art of the future be above all realist? I don't believe it. One of the beautiful discoveries of the 19th century, photography, made reality more familiar. Which artist, even if he were a Van Eyck, would want to fight with the sensitized plate today? We ask of art what photography, even polychrome, cannot give us: the suggestive beauty of shapes and movements, the radiance, the intensity, or the mystery of colour, in a word, the equivalent, in the field of art, to what poetry is in that of literature. (p. 330)"

"Antonio Canova is the deity of Italian art in the first twenty years of the C.E.19th century. He was hailed "prince of sculpture and art reformer in Italy". And whatever the judgment that today's artists make of him, it remains and will always remain that he greatly advantaged himself over his predecessors in style and execution. His monuments to Pope Rezzonico (Clement XIII) and Pope Ganganelli (Clement XIV) made such an impression as to mark a new artistic era. (p. 335)"

"However, among all [the painters who came to Rome to study ancient models] Vincenzo Camuccini, born there in C.E.1775, stood out. He followed David's ideas, but also took care of the study of the Italian Renaissance masters or, rather, of Raphael, with little advantage of his complexion. He was an easy designer and a quick executor, but of little inspiration and no originality. Therefore, perhaps, his portraits are more appreciated today than his great compositions on Roman subjects or from the heroic period of Christianity. In all of them he piled up reminiscences of ancient sculptures and sixteenth-century paintings, with so little fusion, that Pierre Guérin said: «He fed on Raphael and of the ancients, but he did not digest them!...". (p. 338)"

"Bertel Thorvaldsen: No one was a more fanatical supporter of the theories of Mengs, Winckelmann and David than he was. Indeed, it seemed dangerous and useless to him to seek the laws and principles of art in reality, when they had already materialized in Greek statuary, from which it was best to derive them. (pp. 338-339)"

"In other Italian cities [like in Florence] different ideals were not followed, and classicism reigned everywhere without envy, cold and composed even in architecture, when a cry of war. Lorenzo Bartolini had launched it. Having grown up indomitable amidst misfortunes and hostilities, he had strengthened his spirit for the fight, which he sustained until he broke down the doors of the Academy and installed himself as arbiter of official teaching in Florence. (pp. 339-340)"

"While the outcry raised by the audacious polemic of Bartolini spread throughout Italy, as he dared to slap the pseudo-classicists to the point of introducing a hunchback as a model into the school; Romanticism arose against classical painting, initially confined to a few aspects, then overwhelming everything: in themes, in attitudes, in colour. (p. 340)"

"To speak of an Aryan race of three thousand years ago is to put forward a gratuitous hypothesis; but to speak of it as if it still existed today is quite simply absurd."

"Reinach challenged the very concept of an Aryan race—“To speak of an Aryan race … is to put forward a gratuitous hypothesis; to speak of it as though it still existed today is quite simply to talk nonsense” (1892: 90)."

"When the history of the evolution of the historical sciences of the 19th century is told, it will be rightly emphasized that it was in the period from 1880 to 1890 that – timidly at first, but later with an assurance that was better and better justified by the facts – a reaction against the ‘mirage oriental’ was set in motion; the revindication of the rights of Europe against the claims of Asia in the obscurity of the first civilizations."

"Egypt has possessed temples far more remarkable than the Parthenon in Athens; but its heavy buildings do not impose themselves except for their size; they are decorated without sobriety and sometimes without good taste. The most significant flaw of the Egyptian temple is that it is too long in proportion to its height, and that it has too many external walls compared to the few openings. From this aspect the Egyptian temple and the Gothic church present the most absolute contrast: here, too many spaces; there, too many voids; Greek and Renaissance art were able to find the right intermediate point. (pp. 17-18)"

"What is most admirable in the Parthenon is the correctness of the proportions. The relationship between the height of the pediments and the other dimensions of the temple has been determined with such precision that the whole is neither too light nor too heavy, that the lines harmonize to produce, at the same time, the impression of elegance and strength. No less surprising is the technical perfection of the construction. The large marble boulders, the drums of the columns are brought together and supported by and metal pins, but without cement, with joints as precise as those of the finest goldsmith's work. Never has modern art, which uses cement so profusely, been able to rival the workers of Ictino. (p. 50)"

"[...] the art of Lysippus presents itself as a Doric reaction against Attic art, which played an increasing role in sentiment and could seem soft and sensual. Lysippus modified the Canon of Polycletus, i.e. the classical tradition of the C.E.5th century, with a more pronounced tendency towards elegance, giving the body almost eight times the length of the head (instead of seven), making the joints and muscles stand out at the expense of their fleshy envelope. His heads express neither meditation nor passion, they are limited to being nervous and refined. (p. 60)"

"For the invincible impetus and the conquering energy, for the thrill of life transfused into the marble, for the happy contrast between the tumultuous fluttering of the cloak and the adhering of the tunic to the belly and the , this statue [the Nike of Samothrace] is the most beautiful expression of the movement that ancient art has transmitted to us. The sculptor has not only translated the muscular strength and triumphal elegance, but the intensity of the sea breeze, of that breeze that Sully-Prudhomme makes one feel in an equally winged verse: Un peu du grand zéphir qui souffle à Salamine.... (pp. 63-64)"

"A very widespread kind of snobbery consists in speaking ill of Greek art after Phidias, as of Italian art after Raphael. The least flaw of those who delight in this is that they understand nothing of the evolution of art. If Greek art had stopped at the pediments of the Parthenon, it would have remained just as incomplete as that of Assyria and Egypt, because all its incomparable greatness would not have been embraced as is done now by admiring it, at the same time, in the products of his childhood, his adolescence and his mature age. (p. 70)"

"[Commenting on the Apollo of the Belvedere] Apollo's body offers an absolute contrast to those of the gods and giants of the Pergamon frieze. There the muscles are all indicated, as if the artist took pleasure in giving them special prominence; here, however, the skeleton is covered with flesh, and on the flesh you can see the epidermis and you can see more elegance than strength. (p. 70)"

"The head of the Belvedere Apollo presents characters that connect to the school of Scopa. The god has shot an arrow and his gaze is frowning; but he is both passionate and restless. The gods, in Hellenistic art, no longer know Olympian serenity; even if victorious and omnipotent, they are afflicted by some cures. (p. 70)"

"The graceful art of the C.E.18th century never exerted its influence except on small holiday buildings and interiors. The origin of the rococo style is probably to be found in the carving work which was transferred from the furniture to the apartments. No more pillars, nor colonnades, nor architraves; but garlands, festoons, shells, a profusion of sinuous lines, wrapped and intertwined, so that it seems that every ornament wants to be a surprise. With this, an exquisite sense of proportion and prodigious execution. (p. 138)"

"Sejano had everything that was necessary to train those great villains, authors of the overthrow of states and of the most terrible revolutions. A body of the strongest and most robust to tolerate fatigue: an immoderate audacity, combined with a profound dissimulation: the talent of making oneself acceptable and dear, and of discrediting and degrading others: he knew how to make equal use of flattery and arrogance according to need: he showed an external air of modesty, while internally he was devoured by the desire to reign. And to succeed he sometimes employed liberality, and the lure of luxury and debauchery, most often activity and vigilance, qualities commendable in themselves, but which become extremely , when they are not he pretends to have them only to satisfy ambition. (volume III, book VI, pp. 8-9)"

"This famous man, [Gnaeus Domitius Afro] often praised by Quintilian as the greatest orator he had heard, was born in Nimes, a Roman colony, and having moved to Rome to improve his fortune, he was currently walking the path of honors. He had been Praetor a short time before; but since he held only a mediocre rank in the City, he sought opportunities to make a name for himself at whatever cost. He therefore accused Claudia [Pulcra, great-granddaughter of Augustus] of adultery with Furnius, of spells, and of magical operations directed against the Emperor. (volume III, book VI, pp. 29-30)"

"It was more difficult to gain access to Sejano than to the Emperor. The favor of an audience with this insolent Minister was only obtained with very warm requests, and with the willingness to serve him in his ambitious projects. It is stated that the spectacle of the servants, exhibited on this occasion before his eyes, greatly increased his arrogance. (volume III, book VI, pp. 44)"

"[...] History does not instruct only with the story of virtues: it presents of every , but always lessons, when one knows how to take advantage of them. (volume III, book VII, pp. 139)"

"[Caligula] No Prince ever found more favorable dispositions in those who had to obey him when he ascended the Throne. He was loved by the Armies and the Provinces, who almost all had seen him as a child in the company of his father Germanicus, whom he accompanied not only to the Rhine, but also to the East. The incredible love of the Roman People for Germanicus fell on his son, and the misfortunes of his family had made this feeling even more tender: by adding that of commiseration. He emerged from a tyranny, under which he had groaned for a long time, and the hatred against Tiberius changed into affection for Cajo Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus known as Caligula. . (volume III, book VII, pp. 143)"

"had none of those vices which directly society, and he also possessed to a high degree the contrary virtues, modesty, clemency, the love of justice, and the alienation of pomp, and a judicious liberality, which found inexhaustible sources in his wise and prudent economy. Humankind, happy under his Government, has given him to share his recognition with an esteem and admiration that still exists today. (volume IX, book XVIII, p. 43)"

"[Trajano] I have spoken more than once of his passion for wine, by which he was, according to one Author, obliged to take the precaution of forbidding the execution of the orders, which he gave after a long lunch. His unnatural debaucheries must cover him with eternal infamy. I also venture to count among his defects his insatiable ardor for the war, the good events of which made him rise in pride, and the sinister successes of which caused him great affliction in the last years of his life. (volume IX, book XVIII, p. 44)"

"Commodus had demonstrated himself from his early years as he was later to progress: devoid of elevation of soul, feeling, and courage, succumbing to all bad impressions, and contumacious to any kind of good , which we wanted to inspire him; a very strong inclination to pleasure, and a violent aversion to fatigue. If he had any ability, he had it only for those things, which did not befit his rank. He knew how to joust, dance and sing: he was a comedian and gladiator. But the teachers that his father placed around him to form his intellect and heart, and the lessons of wisdom and virtue that he himself gave him, found neither input nor good will in this Prince. (volume X, book XX, p. 10)"

"Cleandro was part of all the pleasures, or rather, of all the debaucheries of Commodus, and having thus gained his confidence, he was for some time the rival of Perenne, and in the end supported by the faction of the freedmen of the palace, of which he was the leader, he came to ruin it. Heir to his power, he abused it with all the wickedness typical of a vile soul, and brought into the ministry all the vices of a servile condition. Everything was for sale with him, the positions of the Senators, the commands of the army, the governments of the Provinces, and the Prefectures, and he was paid dearly for them. (volume X, book XXI, p. 74)"

"To multiply his earnings, Cleander multiplied his offices, and appointed, which had never been seen before, twenty-five Consuls for a single year. He respected neither the Laws nor things judged. Anyone who had money to give him was sure to be acquitted, an ancient form of part. past of absolve . </ ref>, whatever crime he had committed; or reinstated, if he had previously been convicted, and very often still with increased dignity and splendor. (volume X, book XXI, p. 75)"

"[Cleander] he did not immediately take up the position of Prefect of the Praetorium, too disproportionate to the baseness of his condition, but paved the way for it by degrading it and degrading it with frequent changes. He made and unmade the Praetorian Prefects as he pleased. He had one that lasted five days, and another that lasted six hours. Finally, when Cleander believed he had reduced this powerful office in proportion to his rank, he conferred it on himself, taking two colleagues, who were his creatures, and who depended entirely on him. Then three Praetorian Prefects were seen for the first time. (volume X, book XXI, p. 76)"

"The glory of Pertinax equaled and even surpassed the splendor of his dignities. He had proven himself equally capable of military and civilian employment. A good and skilled warrior, his name had become the terror of the Barbarians; and he had at the same time been able to maintain discipline with severity among the restless and seditious troops. In the Government of Rome he conducted himself with such sweetness, affability and goodness that he won the love of everyone. Simple model with such a sign, which even then recognized Lolliano Avito as his protector This senator from Vittore is called Lollio Genziano. But he is certainly the same one that Capitolinus in the life of Pertinax n. 1 names Lolliano Avito. [N.d.A.] </ Ref>, to whom he had become at least equal, but for whom he always retained great reverence and gratitude, having been the first author of his fortune; enemy of luxury, and lover of frugality, History accuses him of nothing other than excessive economy, and the habit of promising more than he intended to keep in order to please with nice words those whom he could not satisfy with Opera. (volume X, book XXI, p. 108)"

"[Pertinax] The esteem for his virtue was universal. When the news of the death of Commodus and the election of Pertinax reached the Provinces, the people hesitated to believe it. They feared that this was not a trap set by Commodus to have the opportunity to exercise his cruelties and his robberies. In that uncertainty many Governors took the decision to wait for the confirmation, and also to have the couriers imprisoned, being certain that if the news were true, Pertinax would have quickly forgiven them for a fault, which did not proceed from bad will. The peoples allied to the Empire had no less advantageous ideas of him. His filled him with joy; and they sent ambassadors to congratulate the Senate and the Roman people. (volume X, book XXI, p. 117)"

"If Niger was a severe General towards his soldiers, on the other hand he was their protector against injustice. The Roman soldiers were in a certain way of those who commanded them, and the custom had been introduced for them to pay certain supposed taxes, which degenerated into harassment. He suppressed these exactions in the army of which he had command; he forbade the to receive anything from their soldiers, and had two of them stoned to death, who had been guilty of this sort of extortion against his prohibition. He frequently had a beautiful saying on this subject. He said that an Officer must make himself feared and respected by his soldiers, and that he can never obtain this unless he is without fault and without blemish in what concerns interest. (volume X, book XXII, p. 153)"

"Jean-Baptiste-Louis Crevier, History of the Roman emperors from Augustus to Constantine, volume III, for Francesco Rossi stamp. of the Public, Siena, C.E.1777."

"is known throughout the world as the most renowned example of the prodigious rise and frightful fall of a favorite, who of fortune of him. (volume III, book VI, p. 7)"