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Title: Masters in Art, Part 32, v. 3, August, 1902: Giotto
A Series of Illustrated Monographs
Author: Anonymous
Release Date: June 15, 2013 [EBook #42952]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MASTERS IN ART, GIOTTO ***
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AUGUST, 1902 GIOTTO PRICE, 25 CENTS
Masters in Art
A Series of Illustrated Monographs
Issued Monthly
GIOTTO
PART 32 VOLUME 3
Bates and Guild Company
Publishers
144 Congress Street
Boston
MASTERS IN ART
A SERIES OF ILLUSTRATED MONOGRAPHS: ISSUED MONTHLY
PART 32 AUGUST, 1902 VOLUME 3
Giotto
CONTENTS
Plate I. Madonna Enthroned Academy: Florence
Plate II. Allegory of Poverty Lower Church of
St. Francis: Assisi
Plate III. Allegory of Chastity Lower Church of
St. Francis: Assisi
Plate IV. The Nativity Arena Chapel: Padua
Plate V. The Entombment Arena Chapel: Padua
Plate VI. The Resurrection Arena Chapel: Padua
Plate VII. The Death of St. Francis Bardi Chapel, Church
of S. Croce: Florence
Plate VIII. The Birth of St. John the Baptist Peruzzi Chapel, Church
of S. Croce: Florence
Plate IX. The Feast of Herod Peruzzi Chapel, Church
of S. Croce: Florence
Plate X. The Raising of Drusiana Peruzzi Chapel, Church
of S. Croce: Florence
Portrait of Giotto by Paolo Uccello: Louvre, Paris Page 20
The Life of Giotto Page 21
Julia Cartwright
The Art of Giotto Page 27
Criticisms by Vasari, Van Dyke, Colvin, Ruskin,
Symonds, E. H. and E. W. Blashfield, Quilter
The Works of Giotto: Descriptions of the Plates and Page 35
a List of Paintings
Giotto Bibliography Page 39
_Photo-engravings by Folsom & Sunergren: Boston. Press-work
by the Everett Press: Boston._
PUBLISHERS' ANNOUNCEMENTS
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BATES & GUILD COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
144 CONGRESS STREET, BOSTON, MASS.
_Copyright, 1902, by Bates & Guild Company, Boston_
[Illustration: MASTERS IN ART PLATE I
GIOTTO
MADONNA ENTHRONED
ACADEMY, FLORENCE
]
[Illustration: MASTERS IN ART PLATE II
PHOTOGRAPH BY ALINARI
GIOTTO
ALLEGORY OF POVERTY
LOWER CHURCH OF ST. FRANCIS, ASSISI
]
[Illustration: MASTERS IN ART PLATE III
PHOTOGRAPH BY ALINARI
GIOTTO
ALLEGORY OF CHASTITY
LOWER CHURCH OF ST. FRANCIS, ASSISI
]
[Illustration: MASTERS IN ART PLATE IV
GIOTTO
THE NATIVITY
ARENA CHAPEL, PADUA
]
[Illustration: MASTERS IN ART PLATE V
PHOTOGRAPH BY RAYA
GIOTTO
THE ENTOMBMENT
ARENA CHAPEL, PADUA
]
[Illustration: MASTERS IN ART PLATE VI
PHOTOGRAPH BY RAYA
GIOTTO
THE RESURRECTION
ARENA CHAPEL, PADUA
]
[Illustration: MASTERS IN ART PLATE VII
PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDERSON
GIOTTO
THE DEATH OF ST. FRANCIS
BARDI CHAPEL, CHURCH OF S. CROCE, FLORENCE
]
[Illustration: MASTERS IN ART PLATE VIII
PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDERSON
GIOTTO
THE BIRTH OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST
PERUZZI CHAPEL, CHURCH OF S. CROCE, FLORENCE
]
[Illustration: MASTERS IN ART PLATE IX
PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDERSON
GIOTTO
THE FEAST OF HEROD
PERUZZI CHAPEL, CHURCH OF S. CROCE, FLORENCE
]
[Illustration: MASTERS IN ART PLATE X
PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDERSON
GIOTTO
THE RAISING OF DRUSIANA
PERUZZI CHAPEL, CHURCH OF S. CROCE, FLORENCE
]
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF GIOTTO BY PAOLO UCCELLO LOUVRE, PARIS
This portrait of Giotto was painted in the first half of the fifteenth
century by Paolo Uccello, a Florentine artist. It is a detail of a
picture containing five heads, representing, besides Giotto, Uccello
himself, Donatello, Brunelleschi, and Manetti. Vasari took the
engraving for his biography of Giotto from this likeness, which was
probably based upon some older portrait of the artist. He is here
represented in a red cloak and head covering; and it would seem that
Uccello's brush has somewhat flattered him, for we are told that he
was "singularly ill-favored" in outward appearance.]
Giotto di Bondone
BORN 1266(?): DIED 1337
FLORENTINE SCHOOL
JULIA CARTWRIGHT 'THE PAINTERS OF FLORENCE'
"In a village of Etruria," writes Ghiberti, the oldest historian of the
Florentine Renaissance, "Painting took her rise." In other words, Giotto
di Bondone[1] was born, between 1265 and 1270, at Colle, in the Commune
of Vespignano, a village of the Val Mugello fourteen miles from
Florence. There the boy, who had been called Angiolo, after his
grandfather, and went by the nickname of Angiolotto, or Giotto, kept his
father's flocks on the grassy slopes of the Apennines, and was found one
day by Cimabue, as he rode over the hills, drawing a sheep with a sharp
stone upon a rock. Full of surprise at the child's talent for drawing,
the great painter asked him if he would go back with him to Florence; to
which both the boy and his father, a poor peasant named Bondone, gladly
agreed. Thus, at ten years old, Giotto was taken straight from the
sheepfolds and apprenticed to the first painter in Florence. Such is the
story told by Ghiberti and confirmed by Leonardo da Vinci, who, writing
half a century before Vasari, remarks that Giotto took nature for his
guide, and began by drawing the sheep and goats which he herded on the
rocks.
[Footnote 1: Pronounced Jot´toe dee Bon-doe´nay.]
Another version of the story of Giotto's boyhood is that he was
apprenticed to a wool-merchant of Florence, but that instead of going to
work he spent his time in watching the artists in Cimabue's shop; upon
which his father applied to the master who consented to teach the boy
painting. The natural vivacity and intelligence of the young student
soon made him a favorite in Cimabue's workshop, while his extraordinary
aptitude for drawing became every day more apparent. The legends of his
marvelous skill, the stories of the fly that Cimabue vainly tried to
brush off his picture, of the round O which he drew before the pope's
envoy with one sweep of his pencil, are proofs of the wonder and
admiration which Giotto's attempts to follow nature more closely excited
among his contemporaries. This latter story is told by Vasari as
follows: "The pope sent one of his courtiers to Tuscany to ascertain
what kind of man Giotto might be, and what were his works; that pontiff
then proposing to have certain paintings executed in the Church of St.
Peter. The messenger spoke first with many artists in Siena; then,
having received designs from them, he proceeded to Florence, and
repaired one morning to the workshop where Giotto was occupied with his
labors. He declared the purpose of the pope, and finally requested to
have a drawing that he might send it to his holiness. Giotto, who was
very courteous, took a sheet of paper and a pencil dipped in a red
color, then, resting his elbow on his side to form a sort of compass,
with one turn of the hand he drew a circle, so perfect and exact that it
was a marvel to behold. This done, he turned smiling to the courtier,
saying, 'Here is your drawing.' 'Am I to have nothing more than this?'
inquired the latter, conceiving himself to be jested with. 'That is
enough and to spare,' returned Giotto. 'Send it with the rest, and you
will see if it will not be recognized.' The messenger, unable to obtain
anything more, went away very ill-satisfied and fearing that he had been
fooled. Nevertheless, having despatched the other drawings to the pope
with the names of those who had done them he sent that of Giotto also,
relating the mode in which he had made his circle, without moving his
arm and without compasses; from which the pope, and such of the
courtiers as were well versed in the subject, perceived how far Giotto
surpassed all the other painters of his time."
No doubt the boldness and originality of his genius soon led Giotto to
abandon the purely conventional style of art then in use, and to seek
after a more natural and lifelike form of expression. And early in his
career he was probably influenced by the example of the sculptor
Giovanni Pisano, who was actively engaged on his great works in Tuscany
and Umbria at this time. The earliest examples of Giotto's style that
remain to us are some small panels at Munich; but a larger and
better-known work is the 'Madonna Enthroned,' in the Academy at
Florence, which, although archaic in type, has a vigor and reality that
are wholly wanting in Cimabue's Madonna in the same room. But it is to
Assisi that we must turn for a fuller record of Giotto's training and
development.
Here, in the old Umbrian city where St. Francis had lived and died, was
the great double church which the alms of Christendom had raised above
his burial-place. Unfortunately the records of the Franciscan convent
are silent as to the painters of the frescos which cover its walls, and
neither Cimabue nor Giotto is once mentioned. But Ghiberti, Vasari, and
the later Franciscan historian, Rudolphus, all agree in saying that
Giotto came to Assisi with his master Cimabue and there painted the
lower course of frescos in the nave of the Upper Church....
In 1298 Giotto was invited to Rome by Cardinal Stefaneschi, the pope's
nephew and a generous patron of art. At his bidding Giotto designed the
famous mosaic of the 'Navicella,' or 'Ship of the Church,' which hangs
in the vestibule of St. Peter's. Little trace of the original work now
remains. More worthy of study is the altar-piece which he painted for
the cardinal, and which is still preserved in the sacristy of St.
Peter's.
Pope Boniface, we are told by Vasari, was deeply impressed by Giotto's
merits, and loaded him with honors and rewards; but the frescos which he
was employed to paint in the old basilica of St. Peter's perished long
ago, and the only work of his now remaining in Rome besides the
'Navicella,' is the damaged fresco of Pope Boniface proclaiming the
Jubilee, on a pillar of the Lateran Church. This last painting proves
that Giotto was in Rome during the year 1300, when both his
fellow-citizens Dante and the historian Giovanni Villani were present in
the Eternal City. The poet was an intimate friend of the painter; and,
after his return to Florence, Giotto introduced Dante's portrait in an
altar-piece of 'Paradise' which he painted for the chapel of the Podestà
Palace. But since this chapel was burned down in 1332, and not rebuilt
until after Giotto's death, the fresco of Dante, which was discovered
some years ago on the walls of the present building, must have been
copied by one of his followers from the original painting.
It was probably during an interval of his journey back to Florence, or
on some other visit to Assisi during the next few years, that Giotto
painted his frescos in the Lower Church of St. Francis in that city.
Chief among these are the four great allegories on the vaulted roof
above the high altar, illustrating the meaning of the three monastic
Virtues, Obedience, Chastity, and Poverty, whom, according to the
legend, the saint met walking on the road to Siena in the form of three
fair maidens, and whom he held up to his followers as the sum of
evangelical perfection.
These allegories are not the only works which Giotto executed in the
Lower Church of Assisi. Ghiberti's statement that he painted almost the
whole of the Lower Church is confirmed by Rudolphus, who mentions the
series of frescos of the childhood of Christ and the 'Crucifixion' in
the right transept as being by his hand. In their present ruined
condition it is not easy to distinguish between the work of the master
and that of his assistants; but the whole series bears the stamp of
Giotto's invention.
The next important works which he painted were the frescos in the Arena
Chapel at Padua, built in 1303, by Enrico Scrovegno, who two years later
invited Giotto to decorate the interior with frescos. When Dante visited
Padua, in 1306, he found his friend Giotto living there with his wife,
Madonna Ciutà, and his young family, and was honorably entertained by
the painter in his own house. The poet often watched Giotto at work,
with his children, who were "as ill-favored as himself," playing around,
and wondered how it was that the creations of his brain were so much
fairer than his own offspring. Giotto's small stature and insignificant
appearance seem to have been constantly the subject of his friends'
good-humored jests; and Petrarch and Boccaccio both speak of him as an
instance of rare genius concealed under a plain and ungainly exterior.
But this unattractive appearance was redeemed by a kindly and joyous
nature, a keen sense of humor, and unfailing cheerfulness, which made
him the gayest and most pleasant companion....
The fame which Giotto already enjoyed beyond the walls of Florence was
greatly increased by his works in Padua, and before he left there he
received and executed many commissions. From Padua, Vasari tells us, he
went on to the neighboring city of Verona, where he painted the portrait
of Dante's friend and protector, Can Grande della Scala, as well as
other works in the Franciscan church, and then proceeded to Ferrara and
Ravenna at the invitation of the Este and Polenta princes. All his works
in the cities of North Italy, however, have perished, and it is to
Florence that we must turn for the third and last remaining cycle of his
frescos.
The great Franciscan church of Santa Croce had been erected in the last
years of the thirteenth century, and the proudest Florentine families
hastened to build chapels at their own expense as a mark of their
devotion to the popular saint. Four of these chapels were decorated with
frescos by Giotto's hand, but were all whitewashed in 1714, when Santa
Croce underwent a thorough restoration. The frescos which he painted in
the Guigni and Spinelli chapels have been entirely destroyed; but within
the last fifty years the whitewash has been successfully removed from
the walls of the Bardi and Peruzzi chapels, and the finest of Giotto's
works that remain to us have been brought to light. Here his unrivaled
powers as a great epic painter are revealed, and we realize his intimate
knowledge of human nature and his profound sympathy with every form of
life.
The exact date of these frescos remains uncertain, but they were
probably painted soon after 1320. Recent research has as yet thrown
little light upon the chronology of Giotto's life, and all we can
discover is an occasional notice of the works which he executed, or of
the property which he owned in Florence. Vasari's statement, that he
succeeded to Cimabue's house and shop in the Via del Cocomero, Florence,
is borne out by the will of the Florentine citizen Rinuccio, who, dying
in 1312, describes "the excellent painter Giotto di Bondone" as a
parishioner of Santa Maria Novella, and bequeathes a sum of "five pounds
of small florins" to keep a lamp burning night and day before a crucifix
painted by the said master in the Dominican church.
Of Giotto's eight children, the eldest, Francesco, became a painter, and
when his father was absent from Florence managed the small property
which Giotto had inherited at his old home of Vespignano. The painter's
family lived chiefly at this country home, of which Giotto himself was
very fond; and contemporary writers give us pleasant glimpses of the
great master's excursions to Val Mugello. Boccaccio tells us how one
day, as Giotto and the learned advocate Messer Forese, who, like
himself, was short and insignificant in appearance, were riding out to
Vespignano, they were caught in a shower of rain and forced to borrow
cloaks and hats from the peasants. "Well, Giotto," said the lawyer, as
they trotted back to Florence clad in these old clothes and bespattered
with mud from head to foot, "if a stranger were to meet you now would he
ever suppose that you were the first painter in Florence?" "Certainly he
would," was Giotto's prompt reply, "if beholding your worship he could
imagine for a moment that you had learned your A B C!" And the novelist
Sacchetti relates how the great master rode out to San Gallo one Sunday
afternoon with a party of friends, and how they fell in with a herd of
swine, one of which ran between Giotto's legs and threw him down. "After
all, the pigs are quite right," said the painter as he scrambled to his
feet and shook the dust from his clothes, "when I think how many
thousands of crowns I have earned with their bristles without ever
giving them even a bowl of soup!"
A more serious instance of Giotto's power of satire is to be found in
his song against Voluntary Poverty, in which he not only denounces the
vice and hypocrisy often working beneath the cloak of monastic
perfection, but honestly expresses his own aversion to poverty as a
thing miscalled a virtue. The whole poem is of great interest, coming as
it does from the pen of the chosen painter of the Franciscan Order, and
as showing the independence of Giotto's character.
The extraordinary industry of the man is seen by the long list of
panel-pictures as well as wall-paintings which are mentioned by early
writers. These have fared even worse than his frescos. The picture of
'The Commune' in the great hall of the Podestà Palace, which Vasari
describes as of very beautiful and ingenious invention, the small
tempera painting of the 'Death of the Virgin,' on which Michelangelo
loved to gaze, in the Church of Ognissanti, Florence, the 'Madonna'
which was sent to Petrarch at Avignon, and which he left as his most
precious possession to his friend Francesco di Carrara, have all
perished. One panel, however, described by Vasari, is still in
existence--an altar-piece originally painted for a church in Pisa, and
now in the Louvre.
In 1330 Giotto was invited to Naples by King Robert, who received him
with the highest honor, and issued a decree granting this chosen and
faithful servant all the privileges enjoyed by members of the royal
household. Ghiberti tells us that Giotto painted the hall of King
Robert's palace, and Petrarch alludes in one of his epistles to the
frescos with which he adorned the royal chapel of the Castello dell'
Uovo. "Do not fail," he writes, "to visit the royal chapel, where my
contemporary, Giotto, the greatest painter of his age, has left such
splendid monuments of his pencil and genius." All these works have been
destroyed, and another series of frescos, which he executed in the
Franciscan church of Santa Chiara, were whitewashed in the last century
by order of a Spanish governor, who complained that they made the church
too dark!
King Robert appreciated the painter's company as much as his talent, and
enjoyed the frankness of his speech and ready jest. "Well, Giotto," he
said, as he watched the artist at work one summer day, "if I were you I
would leave off painting while the weather is so hot." "So would I were
I King Robert," was Giotto's prompt reply. Another time the king asked
him to introduce a symbol of his kingdom in a hall containing portraits
of illustrious men, upon which Giotto, without a word, painted a donkey
wearing a saddle embroidered with the royal crown and scepter, pawing
and sniffing at another saddle lying on the ground bearing the same
device. "Such are your subjects," explained the artist, with a sly
allusion to the fickle temper of the Neapolitans. "Every day they seek a
new master."
In 1333 Giotto was still in Naples, and King Robert, it is said,
promised to make him the first man in the realm if he would remain at
his court; but early in the following year he was summoned back to
Florence by the Signory, and, on the twelfth of April, 1334, was
appointed Chief Architect of the State and Master of the Cathedral
Works. Since the death of its architect, Arnolfo, in 1310, the progress
of the cathedral had languished; but now the magistrates declared their
intention of erecting a bell-tower which in height and beauty should
surpass all that the Greeks and Romans had accomplished in the days of
their greatest pride. "For this purpose," the decree runs, "we have
chosen Giotto di Bondone, painter, our great and dear master, since
neither in the city nor in the whole world is there any other to be
found so well fitted for this and similar tasks." Giotto lost no time in
preparing designs for the beautiful Campanile which bears his name; and
on the eighth of July the foundations of the new tower were laid with
great solemnity. Villani describes the imposing processions that were
held and the immense multitudes which attended the ceremony, and adds
that the Superintendent of Works was Maestro Giotto, "our own citizen,
the most sovereign master of painting in his time, and the one who drew
figures and represented action in the most lifelike manner." Giotto
received a salary of one hundred golden florins from the state "for his
excellence and goodness," and was strictly enjoined not to leave
Florence again without the permission of the Signory. In 1335, however,
we hear of him in Milan, whither he had gone by order of the Signory at
the urgent request of their ally Azzo Visconti, Lord of Milan. Here, in
the old ducal palace, Giotto painted a series of frescos of which no
trace now remains, and then hurried back to Florence to resume his work
on the Campanile.
Another invitation reached him from Pope Benedict XII., who offered him
a large salary if he would take up his residence at the papal court at
Avignon. But it was too late; and, as an old chronicler writes, "Heaven
willed that the royal city of Milan should gather the last fruits of
this noble plant." Soon after his return to Florence Giotto fell
suddenly ill, and died on the eighth of January, 1337. He was buried
with great honor in the cathedral.
More than a hundred years later, when Florence had reached the height of
splendor and prosperity under the rule of the Medici, Lorenzo the
Magnificent placed a marble bust on Giotto's tomb, and employed Angelo
Poliziano to compose the Latin epitaph which gave proud utterance to the
veneration in which the great master was held alike by his
contemporaries and by posterity:
"Lo, I am he by whom dead Painting was restored to life; to whose right
hand all was possible; by whom Art became one with Nature. None ever
painted more or better. Do you wonder at yon fair tower which holds the
sacred bells? Know that it was I who bade her rise towards the stars.
For I am Giotto--what need is there to tell of my work? Long as verse
lives, my name shall endure!"
The Art of Giotto
GIORGIO VASARI 'LIVES OF THE PAINTERS'
The gratitude which the masters in painting owe to nature is due, in my
judgment, to the Florentine painter Giotto, seeing that he
alone--although born amidst incapable artists and at a time when all
good methods in art had long been entombed beneath the ruins of
war--yet, by the favor of Heaven, he, I say, alone succeeded in
resuscitating Art, and restoring her to a path that may be called the
true one.
JOHN C. VAN DYKE 'HISTORY OF PAINTING'
It would seem that nothing but self-destruction could come to the
struggling, praying, throat-cutting population that terrorized Italy
during the medieval period. The people were ignorant, the rulers
treacherous, the passions strong; and yet out of the Dark Ages came
light. In the thirteenth century the light grew brighter. The spirit of
learning showed itself in the founding of schools and universities.
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, reflecting respectively religion,
classic learning, and the inclination toward nature, lived and gave
indication of the trend of thought. Finally the arts--architecture,
sculpture, painting--began to stir and take upon themselves new
appearances.
In painting, though there were some portraits and allegorical scenes
produced during the Gothic period, the chief theme was Bible story. The
Church was the patron, and art was only the servant, as it had been from
the beginning. It had not entirely escaped from symbolism. It was still
the portrayal of things for what they meant rather than for what they
looked. There was no such thing then as art for art's sake. It was art
for religion's sake.
The demand for painting increased, and its subjects multiplied with the
establishment at this time of the two powerful orders of Dominican and
Franciscan monks. The first exacted from the painters more learned and
instructive work; the second wished for the crucifixions, the
martyrdoms, the dramatic deaths wherewith to move people by emotional
appeal. In consequence painting produced many themes, but, as yet, only
after the Byzantine style. The painter was more of a workman than an
artist. The Church had more use for his fingers than for his creative
ability. It was his business to transcribe what had gone before. This he
did, but not without signs here and there of uneasiness and discontent
with the pattern. There was an inclination toward something truer to
nature, but as yet no great realization of it. The study of nature came
in very slowly.
The advance of Italian art in the Gothic age was an advance through the
development of the imposed Byzantine pattern. When people began to stir
intellectually the artists found that the old Byzantine model did not
look like nature. They began not by rejecting it but by improving it,
giving it slight movements here and there, turning the head, throwing
out a hand, or shifting the folds of drapery. The Eastern type was
still seen in the long pathetic face, oblique eyes, green flesh-tints,
stiff robes, thin fingers, and absence of feet; but the painters now
began to modify and enliven it. More realistic Italian faces were
introduced; architectural and landscape backgrounds encroached upon the
Byzantine gold grounds; even portraiture was taken up. The painters were
taking notes of natural appearances. No one painter began this movement.
The whole artistic region of Italy was at that time ready for the
advance.
Cimabue seems the most notable instance in early times of a
Byzantine-educated painter who improved upon the traditions. He has been
called the father of Italian painting; but Italian painting had no
father. Cimabue was simply a man of more originality and ability than
his contemporaries, and departed further from the art teachings of the
time without decidedly opposing them. He retained the Byzantine pattern,
but loosened the lines of drapery somewhat, turned the head to one side,
and infused the figure with a little appearance of life.
Cimabue's pupil, Giotto, was a great improver on all his predecessors
because he was a man of extraordinary genius. He would have been great
in any time, and yet he was not great enough to throw off wholly the
Byzantine traditions. He tried to do it. He studied nature in a general
way, changed the type of face somewhat, and gave it expression and
nobility. To the figure he gave more motion, dramatic gesture, life. The
drapery was cast in broader, simpler masses with some regard for line,
and the form and movement of the body were somewhat emphasized through
it. In methods Giotto was more knowing, but not essentially different
from his contemporaries; his subjects were from the common stock of
religious story, but his imaginative force and invention were his own.
Bound by the conventionalities of his time, he could still create a work
of nobility and power. He came too early for the highest achievement. He
had genius, feeling, fancy--almost everything except accurate knowledge
of the laws of nature and of art. His art was the best of its time, but
it was still lacking, nor did that of his immediate followers go much
beyond it technically.
SYDNEY COLVIN 'ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA'
Giotto, relatively to his age one of the greatest and most complete of
artists, fills in the history of Italian painting a place analogous to
that which seems to have been filled in the history of Greek painting by
Polygnotus. That is to say, he lived at a time when the resources of his
art were still in their infancy, but considering the limits of those
resources his achievements were the highest possible. At the close of
the Middle Age he laid the foundations upon which all the progress of
the Renaissance was afterwards securely based. In the days of Giotto the
knowledge possessed by painters of the human frame and its structure
rested only upon general observation and not upon any minute, prolonged,
or scientific study; while to facts other than those of humanity their
observation had never been closely directed. Of linear perspective they
possessed few ideas, and these elementary and empirical, and scarcely
any ideas at all of aërial perspective or of the conduct of light and
shade.
As far as painting could ever be carried under these conditions, so far
it was carried by Giotto. In its choice of subjects his art is entirely
subservient to the religious spirit of his age. Even in its mode of
conceiving and arranging those subjects, it is in part still trammeled
by the rules and consecrated traditions of the past. Thus it is as far
from being a perfectly free as from being a perfectly accomplished form
of art. Many of those truths of nature to which the painters of
succeeding generations learned to give accurate and complete expression,
Giotto was only able to express by way of imperfect symbol and
suggestion. But in spite of these limitations and shortcomings, and
although he had often to be content with expressing truths of space and
form conventionally or inadequately, and truths of structure and action
approximately, and truths of light and shadow not at all, yet among the
elements over which he had control he maintained so just a balance that
his work produces in the spectator less sense of imperfection than that
of many later and more accomplished masters. He is one of the least
one-sided of artists, and his art, it has been justly said, resumes and
concentrates all the attainments of his time not less truly than all the
attainments of the crowning age of Italian art are resumed and
concentrated in Raphael.
In some particulars the painting of Giotto was never surpassed,--in the
judicious division of the field and massing and scattering of groups, in
the union of dignity in the types with appropriateness in the
occupations of the personages, in strength and directness of
intellectual grasp and dramatic motive, in the combination of perfect
gravity with perfect frankness in conception, and of a noble severity in
design with a great charm of harmony and purity in color. The earlier
Byzantine and Roman workers in mosaic had bequeathed to him the high
abstract qualities of their practice--their balance, their
impressiveness, their grand instinct of decoration; but while they had
compassed these qualities at an entire sacrifice of life and animation,
it is the glory of Giotto to have been the first among his countrymen to
breathe life into art, and to have quickened its stately rigidity with
the fire of natural incident and emotion.
It was this conquest, this touch of the magician, this striking of the
sympathetic notes of life and reality, that chiefly gave Giotto his
immense reputation among his contemporaries, and made him the fit
exponent of the vivid, penetrating, and practical genius of emancipated
Florence. His is one of the few names in history which, having become
great while its bearer lived, has sustained no loss of greatness through
subsequent generations.
JOHN RUSKIN 'GIOTTO AND HIS WORKS IN PADUA'
In the one principle of close imitation of nature lay Giotto's great
strength and the entire secret of the revolution he effected. It was not
by greater learning, nor by the discovery of new theories of art; not by
greater taste, nor by "ideal" principles of selection that he became the
head of the progressive schools of Italy. It was simply by being
interested in what was going on around him, by substituting the
gestures of living men for conventional attitudes, and portraits of
living men for conventional faces, and incidents of every-day life for
conventional circumstances, that he became great, and the master of the
great.
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 'RENAISSANCE IN ITALY'
The tale told about Giotto's first essay in drawing might be chosen as a
parable: he was not found beneath a church roof tracing a mosaic, but on
the open mountain, trying to draw the portrait of the living thing
committed to his care. What, therefore, Giotto gave to art was, before
all things else, vitality. His Madonnas are no longer symbols of a
certain phase of pious awe, but pictures of maternal love. The Bride of
God suckles her divine infant with a smile, watches him playing with a
bird, or stretches out her arms to take him when he turns crying from
the hands of the circumcising priest. By choosing incidents like these
from real home life, Giotto, through his painting, humanized the
mysteries of faith, and brought them close to common feeling. Nor was
the change less in his method than his motives. Before his day painting
had been without composition, without charm of color, without suggestion
of movement or the play of living energy. He first knew how to
distribute figures in the given space with perfect balance, and how to
mass them together in animated groups agreeable to the eye. He caught
varied and transient shades of emotion, and expressed them by the
posture of the body and the play of feature. The hues of morning and of
evening served him. Of all painters he was most successful in preserving
the clearness and the light of pure, well-tempered colors. His power of
telling a story by gesture and action is unique in its peculiar
simplicity. There are no ornaments or accessories in his pictures. The
whole force of the artist has been concentrated on rendering the image
of the life conceived by him. Relying on his knowledge of human nature,
and seeking only to make his subject intelligible, no painter is more
unaffectedly pathetic, more unconsciously majestic. While under the
influence of his genius we are sincerely glad that the requisite science
for clever imitation of landscape and architectural backgrounds was not
forthcoming in his age. Art had to go through a toilsome period of
geometrical and anatomical pedantry before it could venture, in the
frescos of Michelangelo and Raphael, to return with greater wealth of
knowledge on a higher level to the divine simplicity of its childhood in
Giotto.
In the drawing of the figure Giotto was surpassed by many meaner artists
of the fifteenth century. Nor had he that quality of genius which
selects a high type of beauty and is scrupulous to shun the commonplace.
The faces of even his most sacred personages are often almost vulgar. In
his choice of models for saints and apostles we already trace the
Florentine instinct for contemporary portraiture. Yet, though his
knowledge of anatomy was defective and his taste was realistic, Giotto
solved the great problem of figurative art far better than more learned
and fastidious painters. He never failed to make it manifest that what
he meant to represent was living. Even to the non-existent he gave the
semblance of reality. We cannot help believing in his angels leaning
waist-deep from the blue sky, wringing their hands in agony above the
Cross, pacing like deacons behind Christ when he washes the feet of his
disciples, or sitting watchful and serene upon the empty sepulcher. He
was, moreover, essentially a fresco-painter, working with rapid decision
on a large scale, aiming at broad effects, and willing to sacrifice
subtlety to clearness of expression.
The health of Giotto's whole nature and his robust good sense are
every-where apparent in his solid, concrete, human work of art. There is
no trace of mysticism, no ecstatic piety, nothing morbid or hysterical
in his imagination. Imbuing whatever he handled with the force and
freshness of actual existence, he approached the deep things of the
Christian faith and the legend of St. Francis in the spirit of a man
bent simply on realizing the objects of his belief as facts. His
allegories of 'Poverty,' 'Chastity,' and 'Obedience,' at Assisi, are as
beautiful and powerfully felt as they are carefully constructed. Yet
they conceal no abstruse spiritual meaning, but are plainly painted "for
the poor laity of love to read." The artist-poet who colored the
virginal form of Poverty, with the briars beneath her feet and the roses
blooming round her forehead, proved by his well-known _canzone_ that he
was free from monastic Quixotism and took a practical view of the value
of worldly wealth. His homely humor saved him from the exaltation and
the childishness that formed the weakness of the Franciscan revival.
Giotto in truth possessed a share of that power which belonged to the
Greek sculptors. He embodied myths in physical forms adequate to their
intellectual meaning.
E. H. AND E. W. BLASHFIELD 'ITALIAN CITIES'
When we ask, where did Giotto get the wonderful power of expression that
he shows in his work? we reply, a little from masters and a great deal
from himself; but if we are asked, how did he learn to make a wall
effective by color and patterns? we must answer that he worked upon
traditional lines, that some of his immediate forerunners were nearly as
effective as he, and that some of his remote forerunners were more
effective.
When we say enthusiastically of Giotto, "There was a decorator for you!
There was a muralist far more purely _decorative_ than some later and
even greater men!" we are thinking, not of the superiority of his
drawing and composition, but of the simple flatness of his masses, free
from any elaborate modeling, the lightness and purity of his color, the
excellence of his silhouette and his pattern. But the essentially
decorative qualities did not belong especially to Giotto; they belonged
to the history and development of mural painting, to the Greeks, the
Romans, the Byzantines, who had learned--centuries before St. Francis,
centuries even before the Master whom Francis served, came into the
world--had learned, we say, that dimly lighted interiors require flat,
pure colors with little modeling.
Now nearly all the interiors of the ancient world were dimly lighted;
the medieval Italian churches with their narrow lancet windows of low
toned jewel-like glass were as dark as any of the antique buildings, so
that the use of flat masses of pure color, the planning of an agreeable
disposition of spots and of a handsome silhouette to these spots,
became the canons of medieval painting. These early artists had mastered
thoroughly the great controlling principle of decoration, the principle
of the harmony of the painting with the surrounding architecture.
Because the fourteenth century had not gone beyond this fortunate
simplicity to the complexity of the fifteenth, and because it had
attained to a science of draughtsmanship unknown to the thirteenth
century and earlier times, we call the fourteenth century the golden age
of the mural painter. The layman not infrequently supposes that this
condition of things obtained because Giotto deliberately eschewed
elaborate modeling, and said to mural painting, "Thus far and no farther
shalt thou go!" In eight cases out of ten this misconception comes
because the layman has been reading Ruskin; in the other two cases,
because he has been reading Rio or Lord Lindsay. In reality, Giotto said
nothing of the sort; he was a great artist, he saw and felt with
simplicity and dignity; doubtless he would, under any circumstances,
have modeled with restraint, but if he had known how to do so he would
have put more modeling in his figures than he did.
Fifty years ago John Ruskin made Giotto the fashion. The connoisseurs of
the seventeenth century, the men whose fathers had perhaps seen Raphael,
had surely seen the Urbinate's great rival, made small account of the
earlier painters; to them the _Giotteschi_ were barbarous, rubbish. With
Ruskin, however, the great son of Bondone took his place upon a throne.
He sat there rightfully by virtue of the greatest talent which was given
to any painter between Masaccio and the last great Greek or Roman artist
of imperial days; but his ministrant swung the censer before him with
such misplaced enthusiasm that the face of the great Tuscan was clouded
for half a century, until modern criticism dared to say nay to the poet
of the 'Stones of Venice' and the 'Modern Painters.' Ruskin never
admired anything that was unworthy, though he often fiercely contemned
the worthy. He saw and praised Giotto's simplicity of treatment, but how
strangely he praised, how utterly he misunderstood the artist's aim and
insisted upon bringing back to the marksman game that was no spoil of
his! Ruskin mistook timidity for reverence, and ascribed to the painter
as a deliberate choice that which was in reality forced upon him by
inexperience.
The reasoning which Ruskin, Rio, and others of their school followed is
peculiar. We will take as an example a fresco in which heavily draped
figures stand before a city gate upon greensward. In the said greensward
every little blade and leaf is made out; there is no effect; you and I
with our modern ideas would not like it at all. The critic, on the
contrary, is enraptured. He cries, "Only see, Giotto has painted every
leaf; he felt that everything that God made should be lovingly and
carefully studied!" The draperies, on the contrary, are rather broadly
and simply handled, and the author implies that it is because the artist
knew that the stuffs, which were only artificial, not natural, were
unworthy the careful study he had given the leaves. Such criticism as
this utterly misled a portion of the English reading world for at least
thirty years. The right treatment by the painter was wrongly praised by
the writer. Giotto was lauded especially for leaving out that which he
was incapable of putting in; his figures are but little modeled, and
this slight modeling happens to be admirably suited to the kind of
decoration which he was doing, but it was slight because he did not know
how to carry it further. When he painted a Madonna on a panel to be seen
and examined at close quarters that which was a virtue in his decoration
became a fault in his easel-picture. Take the grass and draperies just
mentioned; Giotto had not yet learned to paint drapery realistically,
but he had the sentiment of noble composition, and he arranged his folds
simply and grandly and painted them as well as he knew how, pushing them
as far as he could. When he came to the grass, he found it much easier
to draw a lot of little hard blades and leaves than to generalize them
into an effect. He did not know how to generalize complicated detail.
The drapery was one piece, and he could arrange it in a few folds, but
the blades of grass were all there, and he thought he must draw every
one. Ruskin, and Rio, and Lord Lindsay, all regard this incapacity as a
special virtue based upon a spiritual interpretation of the relative
importance of things in nature and art. They account as truth in Giotto
what was really the reverse of truth. In looking at such a scene as that
represented in the fresco no human being could see every blade of grass
separately defined. A general effect of mass would be truth, and Giotto
would have grasped it if he could have done so, but he was not yet a
master of generalization.
A whole class of writers upon Christian art is like the prior in
Browning's poem, who says to Fra Lippo Lippi:--
"Your business is to paint the souls of men.
"Give us no more of body than shows soul;"
but these writers, while appreciating the effect of certain qualities in
Giotto and his followers, wholly misunderstood their intention. He did
not leave his figures half modeled for the praise of God or for the sake
of expressing soul. We might just as well say that it was for the sake
of spiritual aspiration that his foreshortened feet stood on the points
of their toes, or that his snub profiles were intended to suggest
meekness....
It is an important fact in painting, especially in decorative painting,
that in measure as an artist refines his work he may with advantage
suppress one detail after another of its modeling. But this knowing what
to leave out is one of the most subtle, one of the last kinds of
knowledge that come to the painter. This system of elimination argues
upon his part the possession of a high degree of technical
accomplishment. When he can draw and paint every detail of his subject,
then, and not till then, he can suppress judiciously. Great painters
have thus instinctively commenced by making minutely detailed studies.
Now, Giotto never made one such in his life; he did not know how. He was
a beginner possessing magnificent natural gifts, still a beginner, a
breaker of new paths. He drew and painted the human body exactly as well
as he knew how to, leaving out elaborate modeling simply because he was
unable to accomplish it. One lifetime would not have sufficed this
pioneer of art for the achievement of all that he did and for the
compassing of a skilful technique as well....
If we pass on to those qualities of a painter which were particular to
Giotto, not merely as a muralist but as an individual man, we find that
like other masters of his time he cannot yet subtly differentiate
expression, but that, unlike others, his expression is more intense,
more forceful, more varied. His heads have long narrow eyes, short snub
noses, firm mouths, square jaws, and powerful chins; he divides them,
not individually, but typically, into adolescent, adult, and aged heads.
His feet are unsteady; his hands not yet understood; his draperies are
for their time wonderful--simply, even grandly arranged, and if they do
not express the body, at least they suggest it and echo its movements.
His animals, too small and often faulty enough, are sometimes excellent;
and, like every other medieval artist, if he wanted to put in a sheep or
a horse or a camel, he put it in without any misgivings as to knowledge
of the subject. Neither did this architect entertain any scruples
regarding architecture when he chose to paint it, and, like his fellows,
he set Greek temple of Assisi, Romanesque convent, and Gothic church,
all upon the same jackstraw-like legs,--that is to say, columns which
made toys of all buildings, big or little. First and last and best, we
see him as a miracle of compositional and dramatic capacity, and with
this last quality he took his world by storm.
Men before him had tried to tell stories, but had told them
hesitatingly, even uncouthly; Giotto spoke clearly and to the point.
This shepherd boy, whose mountain pastures could be seen from her
Campanile, taught grammar to the halting art of Florence. He taught the
muse of the fourteenth century to wear the buskin, so that his
followers, however confused their composition might be, were at least
clear in the telling of their story. Indeed he was such a dramaturgist
that men for a full hundred years forgot, in the fascination of the
story told, to ask that the puppets should be any more shapely, that
they should look one whit more like men and women.
HARRY QUILTER 'GIOTTO'
The main characteristics of Giotto's style are, first, a lighter, purer
tone of color than had been in use before the time of Cimabue, and a
greater variety and purity of tint than had been attained by that
master; second, the introduction into his compositions of a certain
amount of natural detail which had been before totally neglected, and
the substitution of the portraits of actual men and women for the
imaginary beings that had formerly filled up the backgrounds of the
Byzantine pictures; third, the power of illustrating the real meaning of
his subject, not merely suggesting it as had formerly been the case; and
fourth, his unrivaled dramatic power.
This dramatic power shows itself in almost every work that Giotto has
left us, and even survives in the achievements of his pupils. His
pictures are not scenes alone, they are _situations_. Besides their
appropriateness of gesture and oneness of feeling, they possess the
great characteristic of dramatic art in making the scene live before
you, subduing its various incidents into one strain of meaning, yet
keeping each incident complete and individual, as well as making it help
the main purpose. A minor point in which the same quality shows is in
the amount of emotion which this painter is capable of expressing by a
single gesture--an amount so great that it occasionally runs some danger
of lapsing into caricature, as is especially plain in such pictures as
'The Entombment' in the Arena Chapel. But in all his scenes Giotto has
succeeded, not only in choosing the most appropriate figures for
illustrating his meaning, but in seizing the very moment which is most
significant.
But, after all, the main characteristic of Giotto's style is so
intangible that it can only be felt, not described. This characteristic
is the simple faith in which each of these compositions abounds; the
feeling conveyed to the spectator that thus, and not otherwise, did the
occurrence take place, and that the painter has not altered it a jot or
tittle for his own purpose.
The Works of Giotto
DESCRIPTIONS OF THE PLATES
'MADONNA ENTHRONED' PLATE I
This panel-picture, an early work, was painted for the Church of
Ognissanti, Florence, and is now in the Academy of that city.
Notwithstanding the fact that Giotto has adhered to the conventional
composition of the Byzantine masters, there is a freshness and more
lifelike appearance in this work than is observable in those of his
predecessors; and in the more natural attitudes of the figures--notably
in the kneeling angels--as well as in the greater freedom in the
treatment of the draperies, we see the advance that he has already made
in the development of art.
The Madonna, clad in a white robe and long bluish mantle, and holding
the Child, whose tunic is of a pale rose color, upon her knee, is seated
upon a throne placed against a gold background. The angels kneeling in
front with vases of lilies in their hands are robed in white; those just
above them, bearing a crown and box of ointment, are in green. Saints
and angels are grouped on either side.
The color of the picture has darkened and lost much of its original
freshness, and shows little of the purity of tint seen in many of
Giotto's frescos.
'ALLEGORY OF POVERTY' PLATE II
Among Giotto's most famous works are the four frescos which cover the
arched compartments of the vaulting of the Lower Church of St. Francis
at Assisi. One represents the saint enthroned in glory; the others are
allegorical depictions of the three vows of the Franciscan
Order,--Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience. The finest of the series is
that reproduced in this plate, in which Giotto has represented the
mystic marriage of St. Francis with Poverty. Hope and Love are the
bridesmaids, angels are the witnesses, and Christ himself blesses the
union. The bride's garments are patched, ragged and torn by brambles,
children throw stones at her and mock her, and a dog barks at her; but
the roses and lilies of paradise bloom about her, and St. Francis looks
with love upon his chosen bride. To the left a young man gives his cloak
to a beggar; on the opposite side a miser grasps his money-bag, and a
richly clad youth scornfully rejects the invitation of the angel at his
side to follow in the train of holy Poverty. Above, two angels, one
bearing a garment and a bag of gold, the other a miniature
palace--symbolical of worldly goods given up in charity--are received by
the hands of the Almighty.
'ALLEGORY OF CHASTITY' PLATE III
This fresco, in the Lower Church of St. Francis at Assisi, is one of the
series to which that reproduced in the previous Plate also belongs. It
represents the different stages of perfection in the religious life. On
the left St. Francis receives three aspirants to the Franciscan Order;
on the right three monks are driving evil spirits into the abyss below;
and in the central group angels pour purifying water upon the head of a
youth standing naked in a baptismal font. Two figures leaning over the
wall behind present him with the banner of purity and shield of
fortitude, and two angels standing near bear the convert's garments. The
mail-clad warriors, holding lash and shield, are emblematic of the
warfare and self-mortification of those who follow St. Francis. In the
tower of the crenelated fortress in the background is seated Chastity,
veiled and in prayer, to whom two angels bring an open book and the palm
of holiness.
'NATIVITY,' 'ENTOMBMENT,' AND 'RESURRECTION' PLATES IV, V, AND VI
The Arena Chapel, Padua, was built in the year 1303 by Enrico Scrovegno,
a wealthy citizen of that place, upon the site of a Roman amphitheater
or arena. The outside of this little building is devoid of all
architectural embellishment, but any exterior bareness is more than
counterbalanced by the interior, the decoration of which was, in 1305 or
1306, intrusted to Giotto, at that time the acknowledged master of
painting in Italy. With the exception of the frescos in the choir, which
were added by his followers in later years, all the paintings in the
chapel--thirty-eight in number--are by his hand, and present a scheme of
decoration that is unsurpassed even in the churches of Italy. "Though
they lack the subtleties of later technical development," write Vasari's
recent editors, "these frescos of the Arena Chapel, in their
composition, their simplicity, their effectiveness as pure decoration,
and in their dramatic force, are some of the finest things in the whole
history of art, ancient or modern."
Arranged in three tiers on the side walls of the chapel, Giotto's
frescos illustrate the apocryphal history of Joachim and Anna, the life
of the Virgin, scenes from the life of Christ, and below, allegorical
figures of the Virtues and Vices. On the entrance wall is a 'Last
Judgment,' and opposite, a 'Christ in Glory.' The vaulted ceiling,
colored blue and studded with gold stars, is adorned with medallions of
Christ and the Virgin, saints and prophets. "Wherever the eye turns,"
writes Mr. Quilter, "it meets a bewilderment of color pure and radiant
and yet restful to the eye, tints which resemble in their perfect
harmony of brightness the iridescence of a shell. The whole interior,
owing perhaps to its perfect simplicity of form and absence of all other
decoration than the frescos, presents less the aspect of a building
decorated with paintings than that of some gigantic opal in the midst of
which the spectator stands."
'THE NATIVITY,' reproduced in Plate IV, is the first of the second tier
of frescos. It is painted almost wholly in a quiet harmony of blue and
gray. Ruskin has called attention to the natural manner in which the
Virgin turns upon her couch to assist in laying down the Child brought
to her by an attendant, and to the figure of St. Joseph seated below in
meditation. On the right are the shepherds, their flocks beside them,
listening to the angels who, "all exulting, and as it were confused with
joy, flutter and circle in the air like birds." On the left the ox and
ass stretch their heads towards the Virgin's couch.
'THE ENTOMBMENT,' Plate V, is impressive in its passionate intensity.
The women seated on the ground supporting the dead Christ are
overwhelmed with grief, other mourners are grouped around; and in the
figure of St. John with his arms extended Giotto has preserved the
antique gesture of sorrow. Angels wheel and circle through the air in a
frenzied agony of grief. In the background a barren hill and the
leafless branches of a tree are relieved against a darkening sky.
'THE RESURRECTION,' Plate VI, shows us the soldiers in deep sleep beside
the red porphyry tomb on which two majestic, white-robed angels are
seated. Mary Magdalene, in a long crimson cloak, kneels with
outstretched arms at the feet of the risen Christ, who by his expressive
gesture warns her, "Noli me tangere!"
This fresco and that of 'The Resurrection' are among the most impressive
in the chapel, and are comparatively little injured by time and
dampness.
'THE DEATH OF ST. FRANCIS' PLATE VII
The last in the series of eight frescos painted by Giotto in the Bardi
Chapel of the Church of Santa Croce, Florence, this picture, which is by
many considered his masterpiece, shows us the closing scene in the life
of St. Francis of Assisi. Julia Cartwright writes of it: "The great
saint is lying dead on his funeral bier, surrounded by weeping friars
who bend over their beloved master and cover his hands and feet with
kisses. At the head of the bier a priest reads the funeral rite; three
brothers stand at the foot bearing a cross and banner, and the
incredulous Girolamo puts his finger into the stigmatized side, while
his companions gaze on the sacred wounds with varying expressions of awe
and wonder; and one, the smallest and humblest of the group, suddenly
lifts his eyes and sees the soul of St. Francis borne on angel wings to
heaven. Even the hard outlines and coarse handling of the restorer's
brush have not destroyed the beauty and pathos of this scene. In later
ages more accomplished artist often repeated the composition, but none
ever attained to the simple dignity and pathetic beauty of Giotto's
design."
'THE BIRTH OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST' PLATE VIII
The Peruzzi Chapel in the Church of Santa Croce, Florence, was decorated
by Giotto with scenes from the lives of St. John the Baptist and St.
John the Evangelist. "The frescos in this chapel have suffered greatly
from repainting," writes Mr. F. Mason Perkins, "but the monumental style
in which they were originally conceived is still unmistakably apparent;
and they are certainly to be considered as products of the most mature
period of Giotto's activity, in all probability later in date by some
years at least than those in the Bardi Chapel. The fresco here
reproduced represents the birth and the naming of St. John the Baptist.
In one room St. Elizabeth is seen reclining on her couch and waited upon
by her attendants; in an adjoining chamber Zacharias is seated writing
upon a tablet the name by which the new-born child is to be called."
'THE FEAST OF HEROD' PLATE IX
This fresco in the Peruzzi Chapel in the Church of Santa Croce,
Florence, is one of the most celebrated of Giotto's works. Herod and his
guests are represented at table under a portico suggestive in its
classic decorations of the later Renaissance. Salome, a lyre in her
hand, has been dancing to the music of a violin played by a youth in a
striped tunic--a figure which has been the subject of enthusiastic
praise from Mr. Ruskin and other writers. The girl pauses in her dance
as a soldier in a Roman helmet brings the head of John the Baptist into
the hall and presents it to Herod. Through an open door Salome is seen
again, kneeling before her mother and bearing the charger upon which
rests the head of St. John. In the distance, at the other side of the
picture, we see the barred window of the tower where the Baptist has
been imprisoned.
"Although little more than its outlines are left," writes Kugler, "this
work unites with all Giotto's grander qualities of arrangement,
grouping, and action, a closer imitation of nature than he had before
attained. Seldom, even in later times, have fitter action and features
been rendered that those which characterize the viol-player as he plies
his art and watches the dancing Salome."
'THE RAISING OF DRUSIANA' PLATE X
The story of the incident which Giotto has here portrayed has been told
as follows: "When St. John had sojourned in the island of Patmos a year
and a day he returned to his church at Ephesus; and as he approached the
city, being received with great joy by inhabitants, lo! a funeral
procession came forth from the gates; and of those who followed weeping
he inquired, 'Who is dead?' They said, 'Drusiana.' Now when he heard
that name he was sad, for Drusiana had excelled in all good works, and
he had formerly dwelt in her house; and he ordered them to set down the
bier, and having prayed earnestly, God was pleased to restore Drusiana
to life. She arose up and the apostle went home with her and dwelt in
her house."
"This fresco in the Peruzzi Chapel in the Church of Santa Croce,
Florence, shows Giotto in all his strength and greatness," write Crowe
and Cavalcaselle. "Life and animation are in the kneeling women at the
Evangelist's feet, but particularly in the one kneeling in profile,
whose face, while it is obvious that she cannot see the performance of
the miracle on Drusiana, expresses the faith which knows no doubt. See
how true are the figure and form of the cripple; how fine the movement
of Drusiana; how interesting the group on the right in the variety of
its movements; how beautiful the play of lines in the buildings which
form the distance; how they advance and recede in order to second the
lines of the composition and make the figures stand out."
A LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL PAINTINGS BY GIOTTO, WITH THEIR PRESENT
LOCATIONS
Transcriber's Note: Subsection headings surrounded by '=' characters;
for example, =Paris, Louvre=
ENGLAND. =Alnwick Castle, Duke of Northumberland's Collection=: Panel
with Sposalizio, St. Francis receiving the Stigmata, etc.--FRANCE.
=Paris, Louvre=: St. Francis receiving the Stigmata--GERMANY. =Munich
Gallery=: Small Panels of Crucifixion, Last Supper, etc.--ITALY.
=Assisi, Church of St. Francis, upper church=: Frescos from the Life of
St. Francis; =Lower Church=: Allegorical Frescos of Chastity, Obedience,
and Poverty, and St. Francis in Glory (see Plates II and III); Frescos
from the Lives of Christ and the Virgin, and Miracles of St.
Francis--=Bologna, Academy=: Saints and Angels--=Florence, Academy=:
Madonna Enthroned (Plate I)--=Florence, Church of Santa Croce, Bardi
Chapel=: Frescos from the Life of St. Francis (see Plate VII); =Peruzzi
Chapel=: Frescos from the Lives of St. John the Baptist and St. John the
Evangelist (see Plates VIII, IX, and X)--=Padua, Arena Chapel=: Frescos
from the Lives of Christ and the Virgin (see Plates IV, V, and VI); Last
Judgment; Christ in Glory; Allegorical Figures of the Virtues and Vices;
=sacristy=: Crucifix--=Padua, Church of Sant' Antonio=: Frescos of
Saints--=Rome, Church of San Giovanni Laterano=: Pope Boniface VIII.
proclaiming the Jubilee--UNITED STATES. =Boston, Mrs. J. L. Gardner's
Collection=: Presentation in the Temple.
Giotto Bibliography
A LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL BOOKS AND MAGAZINE ARTICLES DEALING WITH GIOTTO
ALEXANDRE, A. Histoire populaire de la peinture: école italienne.
(Paris, 1894)--BALDINUCCI, F. Notizie dei professori del disegno da
Cimabue in quà. (Florence, 1681)--BERENSON, B. Florentine Painters of
the Renaissance. (New York, 1896)--BLASHFIELD, E. H. and E. W. Italian
Cities. (New York, 1900)--BRETON, E. Ambrogio Bondone dit le Giotto.
(St. Germain-en-Laye, 1851)--BURCKHARDT, J. Der Cicerone, edited by W.
Bode. (Leipsic, 1898)--CALLCOTT, LADY. Description of the Chapel of the
Annunziata dell' Arena in Padua. (London, 1835)--CARTWRIGHT, J. The
Painters of Florence. (London, 1901)--CENNINI, C. Treatise on Painting:
Trans. by Mrs. Merrifield. (London, 1844)--COLVIN, S. 'Giotto' in
'Encyclopædia Britannica.' (Edinburgh, 1883)--CROWE, J. A., AND
CAVALCASELLE, G. B. History of Painting in Italy. (London,
1866)--DOBBERT, E. 'Giotto' in 'Dohme's Kunst und Künstler,' etc.
(Leipsic, 1878)--FEA, C. Descrizione della cappella di S. Francesco
d'Assisi. (Rome, 1820)--FÖRSTER, E. Beiträge zur neuern Kunstgeschichte.
(Leipsic, 1835)--FRANTZ, E. Geschichte der christlichen Malerei.
(Freiburg im Breisgau, 1887-94)--GHIBERTI, L. Commentario sulle arti.
(Extracts from manuscript copy are quoted by Milanesi, Cicognara,
Perkins, and Frey)--GORDON, L. D. The Story of Assisi. (London,
1900)--HOPPIN, J. M. Great Epochs in Art History. (Boston,
1901)--JAMESON, A. Memoirs of Italian Painters. (Boston,
1896)--JANITSCHEK, H. Die Kunstlehre Dante's und Giotto's Kunst.
(Leipsic, 1892)--KUGLER, F. T. Italian Schools of Painting. Revised by
A. H. Layard. (London, 1900)--KUHN, P. A. Allgemeine Kunst-Geschichte.
(Einsiedeln, 1891 et seq.)--LEE, V. Euphorion. (London, 1884)--LINDSAY,
LORD. Sketches of the History of Christian Art. (London, 1885)--LÜBKE,
W. History of Art. (New York, 1878)--MANTZ, P. Chefs-d'oeuvre de la
peinture italienne. (Paris, 1870)--MÜNTZ, E. Histoire de l' Art pendant
la Renaissance: Les Primitifs. (Paris, 1889)--OLIPHANT, MRS. The Makers
of Florence. (London, 1888)--PERKINS, F. M. Giotto. (London,
1901)--QUILTER, H. Giotto. (London, 1880)--RIO, A. F. De l' Art
chrétien. (Paris, 1861-7)--RUMOHR, C. F. V. Italienische Forschungen.
(Berlin, 1827)--RUSKIN, J. Giotto and his Works in Padua. (London,
1854)--RUSKIN, J. Fors Clavigera. (Orpington, 1883)--RUSKIN, J. Mornings
in Florence. (Orpington, 1875)--RUSKIN, J. Modern Painters. (London,
1846-60)--SACCHETTI, F. Delle Novelle. (Florence, 1724)--SCHNAASE, C.
Geschichte der bildenden Künste. (Düsseldorf, 1843-4)--SELVATICO, P. E.
Sulla cappellina degli Scrovegni nell' Arena di Padova. (Padua,
1836)--STILLMAN, W. J. Old Italian Masters. (New York, 1892)--SYMONDS,
J. A. Renaissance in Italy. (London, 1875)--TAINE, H. Voyage en Italie.
(Paris, 1866)--THODE, H. Franz von Assisi. (Berlin, 1885)--THODE, H.
Giotto. (Leipsic, 1899)--TIKKANEN, J. J. Der Malerische Styl Giotto's.
(Helsingfors, 1884)--VASARI, G. Lives of the Painters. (New York,
1897)--WOLTMANN, A., AND WOERMANN, K. History of Painting: Trans. by
Clara Bell. (New York, 1895)--ZIMMERMANN, M. G. Giotto und die Kunst
Italiens in Mittelalter. (Leipsic, 1899).
MAGAZINE ARTICLES
ARCHIVIO STORICO DELL'ARTE, 1892: 'Die Kunstlehre Dante's und Giotto's
Kunst' di Janitschek (C. de Fabriczy)--CENTURY MAGAZINE, 1889: Giotto
(W. J. Stillman)--JAHRBUCH DER PREUSSISCHEN KUNSTSAMMLUNGEN, 1885 and
1886: Studien zu Giotto (K. Frey)--MONTHLY REVIEW, 1900: Art before
Giotto (R. E. Fry). 1900: Giotto (R. E. Fry). 1901: Giotto (R. E.
Fry)--NUOVA ANTOLOGIA, 1867: Giotto (C. Laderchi). 1875: Aneddoto dell'
O e la supposta gita di Giotto ad Avignone (G. B. Cavalcaselle). 1880:
La chiesa di Giotto nell' Arena di Padova (C. Boito). 1881: San
Francesco, Dante e Giotto (G. Mestica). 1900: Dante e Giotto (A.
Venturi)--PENN MONTHLY, 1881: Cimabue and Giotto (W. de B.
Fryer)--PORTFOLIO, 1882: Assisi (J. Cartwright)--REPERTORIUM FÜR
KUNSTWISSENSCHAFT, 1897: Die Heimath Giotto's (R. Davidsohn). 1899: Die
Fresken im Querschiff der Unterkirche San Francesco (P.
Schubring)--REVUE DE L'ART CHRÉTIEN, 1873: Evolutions de l'Art chrétien
(G. d. Saint-Laurent). 1885: Giotto. Naturalisme et mysticisme (E.
Cartier). 1885: Le Poème de Giotto. (E. Cartier)--ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR
BILDENDE KUNST, 1898 and 1899: Die malerische Dekoration der S.
Francesco-kirche in Assisi (A. Aubert).
Three Beautiful Books
By PHILIP L. HALE
Three valuable handbooks on great portraits and Madonnas of the world.
Printed in beautiful type, on heavy antique paper with broad margins,
and daintily bound in buckram of special weave, with title-design
stamped in gold. Each book contains about 80 pages 8 × 11 inches in
size, including twenty exquisite full-page reproductions of famous
paintings, some of which have rarely been reproduced.
The author, Mr. Philip L. Hale, a son of the late Edward Everett Hale,
is himself a painter and art critic of reputation. The text is unique,
comprising a critical analysis and comparison of the work of the master
painters, not from the too common view-point of a critic who walks the
galleries, but from that of a painter, who with brushes in hand is even
now working on the same problems those he writes about have worked on.
It has all the charm and spontaneity of an informal studio chat; and
gives a new and fresh appreciation of art.
Price, Each, Boxed and Postage Prepaid, $1.50
The Madonna
A critical analysis of the way the master painters pictured the Madonna,
illustrated with full-page reproductions of the following masterpieces:
Sistine Madonna, Madonna of the Chair, Madonna of the House of Alba,
Raphael; Virgin of the Rocks, St. Anne, the Virgin, and Christ-child, Da
Vinci; Assumption of the Virgin, Madonna of the Pesaro Family, Madonna
with the Cherries, Titian; Virgin adoring the Christ-child, Correggio;
Madonna of the Sack, Del Sarto; Immaculate Conception, Murillo; Virgin
and Child, Crivelli; Nativity, Correggio; Meyer Madonna, Holbein;
Madonna of Castelfranco, Giorgione; Madonna of the Two Trees, Bellini;
Vow of Louis XIII., Ingres; Coronation of the Virgin, Botticelli;
Madonna and Child with Two Angels, Fra Filippo Lippi; Madonna and Three
Dominican Saints, Tiepolo.
Great Portraits: Women
An essay on the painting of women's portraits, illustrated by twenty
full-page plates reproducing the following great portraits:
Mona Lisa, Da Vinci; Countess Potocka, Artist Unknown; Mrs. Sheridan,
Mrs. Siddons, Gainsborough; Nelly O'Brien, Reynolds; Unknown Princess,
Da Vinci; Bust of Unknown Lady, in Louvre; Parson's Daughter, Romney;
Sarah Bernhardt, Bastien-Lepage; His Mother, Whistler; Madame
Destouches, Ingres; Madame Molé-Raymond, Lebrun; Miss Farren, Lawrence;
Shrimp Girl, Hogarth; Madame Récamier, David; Violante, Palma Vecchio;
Doña Isabel Corbo de Porcel, Goya; Princess Christina, Holbein; His
Daughter Lavinia, Titian; Queen Henrietta, Van Dyck.
Great Portraits: Children
A treatment of the subject of children's portraits similar to that of
women's portraits, with twenty full-page plates of these beautiful
canvases:
Portrait of Countess Mollien, Greuse; Louis, Dauphin of France, La Tour;
Madame Louise of France, Nattier; Rubens's Sons, Rubens; The Blue Boy,
Gainsborough; Don Garcia with a Bird, Bronzino; Queen of Sicily, Goya;
Boy with a Sword, Manet; Strawberry Girl, Reynolds; St. John the
Baptist, Donatello; William II. of Nassau, Van Dyck; Holbein's Wife and
Children, Holbein; Madame Vigée Lebrun and Daughter, Lebrun; The Broken
Pitcher, Greuse; Portrait of Miss Alexander, Whistler; King of Rome,
Lawrence; Infanta Margarita, Maids of Honor, Don Baltasar Carlos on
Horseback, Velasquez; Child with Blond Hair, Fragonard.
BATES & GUILD COMPANY
144 Congress St., Boston, Mass.
KLASSIKER DER KUNST
The German Series of Art Monographs
Each volume contains practically the complete work of the painter to
whom it is devoted, with a biographical sketch (in German). We recommend
these books, on account of their completeness in the way of
illustrations, as supplementary to MASTERS IN ART.
Prices given are net, and on mail orders postage must be added. The list
to date follows. New volumes are constantly being published, and prices
of these will be sent on request.
I Raphael (275 pictures) $2.00, postage extra, 28 cents
II Rembrandt, Paintings (643 pictures) 3.50 " " 50 "
III Titian (274 pictures) 1.75 " " 28 "
IV Dürer (473 pictures) 2.50 " " 38 "
V Rubens (551 pictures) 3.00 " " 44 "
VI Velasquez (172 pictures) 1.75 " " 25 "
VII Michelangelo (169 pictures) 1.50 " " 26 "
VIII Rembrandt, Etchings (402 pictures) 2.00 " " 32 "
IX Schwind (1,265 pictures) 3.75 " " 56 "
X Correggio (196 pictures) 1.75 " " 25 "
XI Donatello (277 pictures) 2.00 " " 28 "
XII Uhde (285 pictures) 2.50 " " 34 "
XIII Van Dyck (537 pictures) 3.75 " " 48 "
XIV Memlinc (197 pictures) 1.75 " " 28 "
XV Thoma (874 pictures) 3.75 " " 52 "
XVI Mantegna (270 pictures) 2.00 " " 28 "
XVII Rethel (280 pictures) 2.25 " " 28 "
BATES & GUILD COMPANY
144 CONGRESS STREET, BOSTON
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Masters in Art, Part 32, v. 3, August,
1902: Giotto, by Anonymous
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