Page:St. Nicholas (serial) (IA stnicholasserial321dodg).pdf/64

30 hind him. From the mill is issuing a man with a sack of flour on his shoulders, which he will set upon the back of the donkey that waits patiently before the door, while a little way along the road stands a dog, all alert and impatient to start. These incidents illustrate Memling’s fondness for detail, and his delight in the representation of facts as facts.

By comparison, Botticelli is a painter, not of facts, but of ideas, and his pictures are not so much a representation of certain objects as a pattern of forms. Nor is his coloring rich and lifelike, as Memling’s is; it is often rather a tinting than actual color. His figures do not attract us by their suggestion of bulk, but as shapes of form, suggesting rather a flat pattern of decoration, Accordingly, the lines which inclose the



figures are chosen with the first intention of being decorative.

You will see this at-once if you compare the draperies of the angels in the two pictures. Those of Memling’s are commonplace compared with the fluttering grace of Botticelli’s. But there is more in this flutter of draperies than mere beauty of line: it expresses lively and graceful movement. These angels seem to have alighted like birds, their garments still buoyed up with air and agitated by their speed of flight, each being animated with its individual grace of movement. Compared with the spontaneousness and freedom of these figures, those of Memling look heavy, stock-still, and posed for effect.

Now, therefore, we can appreciate the truth