ABSTRACT
Carving, Modelling and Agostino the journey of San Sigismondo to the monastery of Augauno, a pillar surmounted by the statue of an angel appears among the surrounding mountains like a lighthouse encompassed. Still more in the landscape representing the influxion of the moon, sea and land are mingled in supernal agitation upon which a youth rides in a boat (PL 48). At the Tempio, the young Agostino evolved his style; under the influence of his patron, Sigismondo, who aroused choriambic visions, he created his masterpieces. The sea is vibrant with fish, boughs bend under the weight of birds, the active airs breed a flock of doves that descend to greet the new-born Venus from the sea to earth (PL 6). The land undulates with vegetables and animal life just as the sea with fish. But his preoccupation with sea-movement-his garments, though ostensibly disturbed by wind, cling to and disclose naked forms like seaweed waving on submerged rocks, or they are like water falling clear as the bather rises to leave the pool-was undoubtedly stimulated by Venice whither he came after leaving Florence. Sigismondo made him-to his presentiment of movement added a sense of spell. A spell was upon the spirit of Agostino, the spell of Isotta1 communicated to him by his master upon whom it first lay, a spell which when enlarged over the varying subjects of Agostino's work, brings to mind the afflicting magnetism of the moon that confounds the height with the depths, transforming landscape into the basin of a forgotten sea.
