Resumen de Morality versus Aesthetics in Critical Interpretations of Frederic Leighton, 1855-75
From the exhibition reviews of the mid-Victorian period, two artists called Frederic Leighton seem to emerge.* First, there is Leighton the High Artist, the ambitious and accomplished painter of serious subjects from history and scripture, including Cimabue 's celebrated Madonna carried in procession through the streets of Florence of 1855, Dante in exile of 1864 and the Old Testament subjects of the 1860s. The critics found this Leighton easy to approve: adept at describing and evaluating works with significant narrative content and strongly-characterised figures, they delighted in writing about pictures such as the Dante (Fig. 16), explaining the historical circumstances that drove Dante into a cruel exile from his native Florence to the dissolute court at Verona and drawing out the moral implications of the story. They delt particularly on the contrast between the austere figure of the poet and the frivolity of t the Veronese courtiers. Virtually all tlle critics of the Royal Academy exhibition of 1864 applauded these contrasting characterisations as demonstrating a valuable moral lesson.
