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| Francesco Marmitta Madonna and Child with St Benedict and St Quentin ca. 1500-1505 oil on panel Louvre |
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| Sandro Botticelli Mystical Nativity (detail) ca. 1500 tempera on canvas National Gallery, London |
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| Luca Signorelli Christ in the garden of Gethsemane 1502 oil on panel Museo Diocesano, Cortona |
"If there is any causal connection at all between the beautiful and the ugly, it is from the ugly as cause to the beautiful as effect, and not the other way around. To put a complete ban on the concept of beauty would be as damaging for aesthetics as would the removal of the concept of psyche from psychology or that of society from sociology. The definition of aesthetics as being the theory of the beautiful, however, is sterile because the formal character of the concept of beauty tends to miss the bountiful content of the aesthetical. If aesthetics were nothing but an exhaustive and systematic list of all that can be called beautiful, we would gain no understanding of the dynamic life inherent in the concept of beauty. Actually, this concept is only a moment in the totality of aesthetic reflection. It points to something essential without being able to articulate that essence directly. To be sure, if people did not make statements about this or that artefact being beautiful in some manner or other, then all the interest in such an artefact would be unintelligible and nobody, artists and spectators alike, would have any reason to participate in that exodus from the realm of practical ends – in essence, self-preservation and the pleasure principle – an exodus that art by its very nature dictates."
– from Aesthetic Theory by Theodor Adorno (1970)
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| Andrea Solario Crucifixion 1503 oil on panel Louvre |
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| Mariotto Albertinelli The Visitation 1503 oil on panel Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence |
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| Vittore Carpaccio The Annuncation 1504 oil and tempera on canvas Ca' d'Oro, Venice |
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| Andrea Mantegna Introduction of the Cult of Cybele to Rome 1505-06 tempera on canvas National Gallery, London |
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| Giovanni Bellini Sacra Conversazione ca. 1505-1510 oil on panel Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| Titian Rustic Idyll ca. 1507-08 oil on panel Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University |
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| Andrea Solario The Lamentation ca. 1509 oil on panel Louvre |
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| Leonardo da Vinci Leda and the Swan ca. 1510-15 oil on panel Galleria Borghese, Rome |
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| Vittore Carpaccio Sermon of St Stephen 1514 tempera on canvas Louvre |
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| Sebastiano del Piombo The Visitation 1518-19 oil on panel transferred to canvas Louvre |
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| Raphael and workshop Portrait of a young man 1518-19 oil on panel Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |