Page:Cyclopedia of painters and paintings (IA cyclopediaofpain03cham).pdf/390



ORCAGNA or ORGAGNA, ANDREA, born in Florence in 1308 (?), died there in 1368. Florentine school; son of Cione, a Florentine goldsmith; known during his life as L'Arcagnolo, corrupted later into Orcagna. Pupil in painting of his brother Nardo, and in sculpture more probably of Neri Fioravanti than of Andrea Pisano, who was dead in 1352, when Orcagna was enrolled in the guild of the stone cutters. In 1343 he had become a member of the painters' guild, though his earliest known frescos in the choir of S. M. Novella, now completely repainted, were not executed before 1354. In painting he carried out the maxims of Giotto, and did all possible to do without a knowledge of perspective. With less fertility of invention, dramatic power, and force of expression than that great master, he had more tenderness and grace, and though not his equal, stands next greatest among the fourteenth century painters. The faces of his tall, dignified, well-proportioned, and carefully draped figures are Giottesque in type, his compositions are mediæval in character, and his style combines the soft qualities of the Sienese with the grand severity of the Florentine school. His greatest works are frescos, which have for the most part suffered so much from time and restoration as to make it difficult to judge of their original qualities of colour. Those of the Strozzi Chapel, S. M. Novella,—Last Judgment, Paradise, and Hell (the latter completely repainted by Nardo?)—are grandly conceived in the Dantesque spirit. Though ordered in 1354, they were probably painted before the altarpiece of this chapel, dated 1357, in which the dignified, nobly draped SS. Thomas and Peter are in Orcagna's best style. The colouring, as in the panel of St. Zanobius and two other Saints, in the Duomo, Florence, and in that of Saints, in S. Croce (1363), is fine, clear, and luminous. This chapel contains also a picture in three parts, by Orcagna, of the Apotheosis of S. Giovanni Gualberto and episodes of his Legend, and a Madonna with Pope Gregory and Job, dated 1365. Other works are: Descent of the Holy Spirit, cloister of the Badia, Florence; altarpiece in the refectory of the nuns of the Hospital of S. Matteo, Florence; and altarpiece in three divisions representing the Coronation of the Virgin, National Gallery, London. In 1355 Orcagna was made Head Master of the Oratory of Or San Michele, and in 1359 he completed the beautiful Gothic tabernacle in the church, with all its fine bas-reliefs and rich architectural ornament. At Orvieto, where he held the office of Head Master of the Cathedral from June, 1358, to Sept., 1360, he made a mosaic for the façade. The latest notice of him (1369) as a painter, is in the records of the guild of St. Luke at Florence. The Triumph of Death, the Last Judgment, and the Inferno, frescos in the Campo Santo, Pisa, long attributed to Orcagna, are now supposed to be works of the Sienese school, perhaps by the Lorenzetti; and the Legend of S. Ranieri is given to an Andrea of Florence, who survived Orcagna, and was confounded with him by Vasari. As the Loggia de' Lanzi, at Florence, was not begun until 1376, it cannot have been built by Drcagna.—Vasari, ed. Mil., i. 593, 617; C. & C., Italy, i. 425; Burckhardt, 314; Dohme, 2i.

ORCHARDSON, WILLIAM QUILLER, born in Edinburgh in 1835. Subject painter, pupil of Trustees' Academy; painted portraits in Edinburgh until 1863, when he removed to London and exhibited at Royal Academy, An Old English Song. Elected an A.R.A. in 1868, and R.A. in 1878. Works: Hamlet and Ophelia, Chris