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Torquenado Directory 06
Page 03
The loss at the Allia had been so great that enough men were not left to guard the walls of the city. It was therefore resolved that those in the vigor of their age should withdraw to the Capitol, taking with them all the provisions in the city; that the priests and Vestal Virgins should convey the objects of religious reverence to Caere; and that the rest of the population should disperse among the neighboring towns. But the aged senators, who had been Consuls or Censors, seeing that their lives were no longer of any service to the state, sat down in the forum on their curule thrones awaiting death. When the Gauls entered the city they found it desolate and deathlike. They marched on, without seeing a human being till they came to the forum. Here they beheld the aged senators sitting immovable, like beings of another world. For some time they gazed in awe at this strange sight, till at length one of the Gauls ventured to go up to M. Papirius and stroke his white beard. The old man struck him on the head with his ivory sceptre; whereupon the barbarian slew him, and all the rest were massacred. The Gauls now began plundering the city; fires broke out in several quarters; and with the exception of a few houses on the Palatine, which the chiefs kept for their own residence, the whole city was burnt to the ground.
At Augsburg there was still another school, which came into prominence in the sixteenth century with Burkmair and the Holbeins. It was only a part of the Swabian school, a concentration of artistic force about Augsburg, which, toward the close of the fifteenth century, had come into competition with Nuremberg, and rather outranked it in splendor. It was at Augsburg that the Renaissance art in Germany showed in more restful composition, less angularity, better modelling and painting, and more sense of the _ensemble_ of a picture. Hans Burkmair (1473-1531) was the founder of the school, a pupil of Schoengauer, later influenced by Duerer, and finally showing the influence of Italian art. He was not, like Duerer, a religious painter, though doing religious subjects. He was more concerned with worldly appearance, of which he had a large knowledge, as may be seen from his illustrations for engraving. As a painter he was a rather fine colorist, indulging in the fantastic of architecture but with good taste, crude in drawing but forceful, and at times giving excellent effects of motion. He was rounder, fuller, calmer in composition than Duerer, but never so strong an artist.
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