雙語+MP3|美國學(xué)生藝術(shù)史45 尋寶人和秘密

 
天國之門上雕刻了十個取自舊約故事的場景。圖44-2是第四場景的浮雕特寫圖，講的是亞伯拉罕的故事。 
45 A TREASURE HUNTER AND A SECRET尋寶人和秘密
 
HAVE you ever had spring fever? Both kinds of spring fever? 
Yes, there are two kinds. 
Do you remember how lazy and sleepy and tired you have sometimes felt on a warm spring day, when you didn’t want to study or work or play or even eat? That’s one kind of spring fever. 
Then again, do you remember how energetic and healthy and restless you have sometimes felt in spring? When you wanted to run and shout and turn handsprings, when sitting still was terrible, when you felt as if you could do anything hard and beat anybody at anything? That’s the second kind of spring fever. 
Well, after the Middle Ages, the whole world got spring fever; and it was the second kind, the full-of-energy spring fever, and it lasted not just a few days in spring but many years. 
Italy caught the fever first, about 1400. Just as life is born again in the spring after the dark winter and blossoms forth in green leaves and bright flowers, so new life was born again in painting, architecture, writing, sculpture, exploration, discovery, trade, and everything else, and blossomed forth after the dark of the Middle Ages. 
This Born Again time, we call the Renaissance—a word that means Rebirth. 
Now, one of the germs that had made the world catch this Renaissance fever was the interest people began to take in the skill and learning of ancient times. Statues and buildings that had been buried in the ground since Roman times were dug up. Old Roman and Greek writings were brought to light and read again. In learning what the Ancients had done in art the Renaissance people did some great things in art themselves. 
One of the first sculptors to make a thorough study of the Roman statues was named Donatello. He lived in Florence, but when still a very young man, he went to Rome with a friend named Brunelleschi. In Rome the two friends spent their time hunting through the old ruins for any beautiful Roman work they could find. Brunelleschi was more interested in architecture and he measured the old Roman buildings while Donatello looked for sculpture. Soon people called them the Treasure Hunters because they always seemed to be looking for buried treasure. 
When the two Treasure Hunters came back to Florence, Donatello made a beautiful marble gallery for singers, for the wall at one end of the cathedral. The outside of the gallery he filled with sculpture of little children, who look like cupids, dancing and singing. It is a very wonderful piece of work, full of life and action. 
Donatello’s next famous statue was set up on the outside of a church in Florence. It is of Saint George. Saint George was a Christian in the Roman army at a time when it was very unsafe to be a Christian. To show he was not afraid of being called a Christian, he wore on his shield a bright red cross with a white background. This has ever since been called the cross of Saint George and is a part of the flag of England, for Saint George was adopted by the English as their favorite saint. He was a brave man and when the Roman emperor began to persecute the Christians, Saint George went to him and asked him to stop. For this, and because Saint George was a Christian, the emperor had him killed. 
Of course Donatello didn’t know what the real Saint George looked like, as he had lived so long before, and so this statue is not a portrait statue. It is what Donatello thought a fine, brave young Christian officer in the Roman army ought to look like. So many other people, too, thought this was what Saint George ought to look like that the statue became very famous. It is very lifelike. 
“There is only one trouble with it,” some one told Donatello. 
“’What is that?” asked the sculptor, who was afraid the man had found some fault in the statue. 
 
No.45-1　SAINT GEORGE（《圣喬治》） 
DONATELLO（唐納泰羅　制） 
“The trouble is it can’t speak,” said the man. 
Donatello’s most famous work was of a man on horseback. I’ll tell you about that in the next chapter, for in this chapter I still have to tell you about a secret. Can you keep a secret? 
A sculptor who was a friend of Donatello’s had a secret. It was a very good secret and he didn’t tell any one except his adopted son. The adopted son had five sons of his own and when they grew up they were let into the secret, too. It was a family secret. 
The sculptor who had the secret in the first place was named Luca della Robbia. Like Donatello, he lived in Florence. He was a little younger than Donatello and so we call him the second great sculptor of the Renaissance. Luca della Robbia made statues in marble and bronze. One of his works in marble was a gallery to go on the end wall in the cathedral, opposite Donatello’s marble gallery. 
Luca della Robbia carved singing boys on this gallery as Donatello had on the other one. The two galleries are called the Singing Galleries. Luca della Robbia’s looks better than Donatello’s when you are close to it because Donatello’s is rougher and not so smoothly finished. But when you are as far away from the galleries as you would be on the floor of the cathedral, Donatello’s figures stand out better just because they are rougher. So it’s about even between them. 
They are both so valuable that they are now in a museum instead of in the cathedral. 
But we’ve almost forgotten about the secret. Luca della Robbia found it took a great deal of time to carve in marble, and marble was very expensive to buy. When he got through and was paid for his work, he generally found he hadn’t made much money. Bronze had the same drawbacks. He decided to try to find some material that could be quickly used and was inexpensive. He found it. What do yon think it was? Not wood or stone, and of course not marble or bronze, but clay. 
 
No.45-2　PART OF THE SINGING GALLERY 
（《唱歌畫廊》局部） 
LUCA DELLA ROBBIA（盧卡·德拉·羅比亞　制） 
“Well,” you say, “even the Greeks used clay. I remember the terra cotta figurines of Tanagra.” 
True, but wait. Luca della Robbia used terra cotta, but here comes in his secret. After he finished the clay statue, he put over it a coating of porcelain, which is something like glass. Then he baked the figure in an oven for just the right length of time. His secret was in mixing the porcelain or glaze, as it was called. When it was finished it would last in the rain and bad weather just as well as marble, whereas the terra cotta without the glaze would soon crumble away. Other sculptors tried it, but none did as fine work in glazed terra cotta as Luca della Robbia. His secret glazing process was very successful. 
Most of the sculpture Luca della Robbia did in glazed terra cotta was in relief. The relief part was generally white like marble, but the background was a beautiful shade of blue. 
Luca della Robbia taught his nephew, whom he had adopted as a son, the secret of the glazed terra cotta. The nephew’s name was Andrea della Robbia and Andrea became almost as famous as Luca. Andrea did most of his work in glazed terra cotta and he added many more colors to his reliefs, although he generally left the flesh part of his statues white. His best examples were reliefs of the Madonna and Child. 
For the outside of a children’s hospital in Florence, Andrea did a series of terra cotta high reliefs of babies in swaddling clothes. Each baby is on a separate round background. You may have seen plaster casts of these babies, but the plaster casts are white and so do not show the colors that Andrea della Robbia put on the originals. Each baby is called a bambino because that is the Italian for baby. 
 
No.45-3　BAMBINO（《襁褓嬰孩》） 
ANDREA DELLA ROBBIA（安德烈亞·德拉·羅比亞　制）