Bernhard Berenson

• Assisi.
  
  • S. Francesco, Upper Church. XX-XXV and first of Frescoes recounting the Life of St. Francis, done perhaps under Giotto’s directions. XXVI-XXVIII of same series done more upon his own responsibility.
    
    • Lower Church, Chapel of the Sacrament. Frescoes: Legend of St. Nicholas; Christ with SS. Francis and Nicholas and Donors, etc. (?). Before 1316. Madonna between SS. Francis and Nicholas (?).
      

Psychology has ascertained that sight alone gives us no accurate sense of the third dimension. In our infancy, long before we are conscious of the process, the sense of touch, helped on by muscular sensations of movement, teaches us to appreciate depth, the third dimension, both in objects and in space.

In the same unconscious years we learn to make of touch, of the third dimension, the test of reality. The child is still dimly aware of the intimate connection between touch and the third dimension.

• Berlin.
  
  • Von Kaufmann Collection. Head of female Saint.
• Florence.
  
  • Bargello. 139. Angel playing Viol.
  • Or San Michele. Tabernacle. Finished 1359.

• Agram (Croatia).
  
  • Strossmayer Collection: Albertinelli, Fra Angelico, Bugiardini, Cosimo Rosselli.
• Aix-en-Provence.
  
  • Musée: Alunno di Domenico.
• Altenburg.
  
  • Lindenau Museum: Amico di Sandro, Fra Angelico, Lorenzo Monaco, Mainardi, Pesellino, Pier Francesco Fiorentino, Sellajo.
• Amsterdam.
  
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It is a temptation to hasten on from Pollaiuolo and Verrocchio to Botticelli and Leonardo, to men of genius as artists reappearing again after two generations, men who accomplished with scarcely an effort what their precursors had been toiling after.

Michelangelo had a sense for the materially significant as great as Giotto’s or Masaccio’s, but he possessed means of rendering, inherited from Donatello, Pollaiuolo, Verrocchio and Leonardo,—means that had been undreamt of by Giotto or even by Masaccio. Add to this that he saw clearly what before him had been felt only dimly, that there was no other such instrument for conveying material significance as the human nude. This fact is as closely dependent on the general conditions of realising objects as tactile values are on the psychology of sight.

• Assisi.
  
  • S. Francesco, Lower Church, Over Tomb of Saint. Frescoes: Allegories of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, and Triumph of St. Francis. (The Francis between the two Angels in the “Obedience” and nearly all of the “Triumph” were executed by another hand, probably C.)
    
    • R. Transept.