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Pedestrian effort

- National Football League (NFL), Faqs.org.

2. a pedestrian (average, ordinary, dull, unimaginative) painter:

If you look up the word “eclectic” in the dictionary you’ll find it refers to a mixing of different styles usually in philosophy, architecture, or interior design. As in mixing various flavours in cooking, the hope is that the chosen styles will complement one another. However, just as too many cooks very often spoil the broth; in art, too many styles are very often just as tasteless. Thus the term “eclectic” has come to have something of a negative connotation. The Victorian era of the late nineteenth century is a prime example of this.

However, in the late sixteenth century there developed an eclectic school of art, perhaps even the first use of the term as related to art. It was founded in Bologna in 1589 by the painter, etcher, and engraver, Lodovico Carracci, and called the Academy degli Incamminati (Academy of the Progressives), taking as its motto, “The school of those who regret the past, despise the present, and aspire to a better future.” The Italian Futurists 350 years later echoed this same sentiment.

Lodovico Carracci was, at best, a rather pedestrian painter. Though he studied under the great Mannerists, Tintoretto, and later Fontana; not only they, but also his fellow students tried to talk him out of a career in art. By all accounts he was a rather dull, “plodding” painter, though he has two or three excellent pieces of work to his credit such as Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes. However, Lodovico was best known by the work of those whom he trained, and particularly by his talented nephews, Annibale, and Agostino. For eleven years, they worked with him, teaching and painting in their popular art academy, establishing what has since come to be known as the School of Bologna in painting. Their students include Albani, Guido Remi, Domenichino, Lanfranco, Spada Riarini, and Bonzi (Il Gobbo)--none of them exactly household names today, but all outstanding practitioners of the painter’s art of their time.