1272—1336.
Heads of SS. John and Paul.
Room XVII., No. 276.
Originally published in The Century Guild Hobby Horse (Kegan Paul, Trench and Co.) vol.1 #1 (Apr 1886).
We now come to a time when, who will, may freely court the Muse. Even Tuscan shepherd-boys can turn to painting the lives of those that shepherd flocks of men. And with what earnestness do they seek to portray these apostles of an "idea"—a creed that is felt verily to be the people's "heart-influence." Look upon this fragment:[1] blackened and burnt though it be, we see through its strong but fire-fouled lines the presence of a mighty yet tender soul: one trained in boyhood to be gentle by tending and bold in defence of the sheepfold.
From this fragment before us, we see how great has been the advance of pictorial skill in a single generation. For what individuality of vision is there here; and, combined with it, how great dramatic power of presentation: a power such as makes Cimabue's work appear archaic beside it. Yet in this we miss the quiet lyrical beauty that gives such poetic and lasting interest to Cimabue's conceptions. The animal vigour and practical energy that characterizes Giotto, overwhelm the more sensitive and far-reaching qualities of the poetic nature. Full of sentiment is this work: but sentiment of a dramatic kind, to the full expression of which, the painter has firmly fashioned every line; and the restless ocean has not more sharply defined limit than has each mass of flowing hair and robe, boundaries which it may not pass. Considering how lately art was the slave of theological rule and the handicraft of an hereditary caste, we wonder when looking upon this at its directness of portrayal, and at its spontaneity of execution. The artist—self elect; free alike to choose his aim and means, can now have larger outlook on the world: he is freer to deal with the facts of life, as he, a single soul, may see them : as he, a single soul, may know them. Experience has at length taught man that the unseen soul's presence is to be traced here and there as it registers its revolution through its fleshly orbit, by the body's bowing down to prayer, and in its rising up for praise. Moreover, the artist is now well aware that if this spiritual energy is to be expressed, the telling features and speaking gestures of man must be exactly observed, and no less faithfully rendered.
Thus we behold in the twilight of this art the dawn of the renascent school: so dramatic in its character. For this strong setting of the features: this fast clenching of the hands: this flowing of the hair, tell us Giotto has studied, and for dramatic purpose, the eloquence of the emotions. And yet had he not by his own strong nature so far freed himself from the then accepted conventionalities of art, as to allow him free power of individual observation, watching closely the birth and death of passion upon the face of feature's world, he could never have made the advance he did, and so presented as he has in his best-known frescoes the tenderest scenes in the drama of human life. But, though Giotto was a great power in himself, the circumstances and larger mental condition of the time materially helped to initiate this new departure. New subjects, akin to the wider social sympathies; themes, never before treated by the painter were now demanded, thus necessitating originality of treatment. Subjects from the new phases of life, either monastic, political, or scholastic, were now asked for, each contributing some novel interest that called for forcible, didactic, and dramatic illustration. Portraiture naturally became now a necessity, since the chief interest of these new movements centred round some knightly or priestly personality. The "Death of St. Francis," which Giotto was commissioned to paint for the Franciscan order, was chief among these in contributing new subject-matter to the artist.
However, much as these novel circumstances assisted Giotto, this man was fashioned from the beginning to be an artist: a man to look upon the world from a higher vantage ground than his fellows, as his work and these two equally creditable stories of his origin assure us.
The one story of his birth into art tells us how Cimabue, when walking in the fields of Vespignano, came upon the shepherd boy whom he found scratching upon a slate the form of some pet in his flock. And from the sheepfold,[2] Cimabue took the stripling, to shepherd men and mirror the periods and the passions of man's life.
Another story tells us how the boy, when apprenticed by his father to a wool-merchant, was in the habit of stopping on his weary way to the hated office before Cimabue's shop, daily to feast his hungering eyes on the captivating works of the painter, and how one day making bold to enter, remained all day with Cimabue, to whom in course of time Giotto's father was bound to apprentice him.
Yes: such was the simple origin of this Giotto who in later life was so marked a man, that we find him spoken of with great praise by both Danté and Petrarch. One of so ample a nature as to figure a familiar character in the novels of Boccaccio and Franco Sacchetti; one too, whose pungent wit lives in the records of Vasari. Strong, ready of hand and head, this burly peasant was a true man of the world, yet capable of seeing poetry in the simplest acts of life; religion, in the strict fulfilment of social claims. To him all life's contests and all earth's labours were canopied by a heaven of harmony and crowned by an equal calm. The first in order of agencies that unite men and call them to hear the voice of God, are the arts and through them the sciences. It is only after having gone through that severe training which the practice of the arts and the culture of the sciences bestow, that man is able to raise himself into communion with the saints who sit for ever at the feet of the apostles and prophets. This, Giotto's experience so far taught him, that he sculptured round the base of his Belfry, the arts and sciences, putting over these the sacraments of the Church, which are beneath the feet of the prophets. Thus was consecrated in the Florentine mind as a calling to God, each industrial occupation and each scientific research. Again: so well balanced in mind was Giotto, and like Horace teaching in verse, virtue is the mean of extremes, that when painting the story of Saint Francis' life for the monks, lest his own conception of the influence of poverty should be inferred from that of the Franciscans, he writes a sonnet expressing his firm belief that voluntary poverty leads to sin as surely as does involuntary poverty, and like other extremes is tainted by some inherent evil.
"I call it shame and ill
To name as virtue that which stifles good."
. . . . . . "Let every edifice
Of work or word secure foundation find."
To have been able to look across five hundred years into the face of such a hero of his day as was Giotto would indeed have been a privilege of our generation; but the portraits of the two close friends, Giotto and Danté, painted by the former in the chapel of the Podesta, Florence, were destroyed by fire; and we have but a fragment of a restored copy of Danté's head. However, all who have learned the a, b, c, of art, can read between the lines of this strong handwriting on the wall, and discern the character of him, who, taken from the sheepfold, became the ablest artificer of his day in all Christendom. Because mosaicist,[3] sculptor, and architect (his chef d'œuvre, the Bell-Tower at Florence), indeed because comprehending and executing all arts in his great grasping manhood, he was chosen by the Republic as superintendent of all edifices erected in the Commune, But the special qualities with which Giotto's name as a painter will be associated are those of masculine handling, a simplicity of mind, a largeness and directness of vision that at once harmonized and dignified the familiar incidents of common life he liked so well to introduce into his frescoes.[4] Thus time has marked him out from other men, not only as a great painter, but as a steady and independent thinker of rare practical ability. He, of all others, was most able to mark the current mind changes by signs of the times, significant enough to him. The Aristotelian philosophy was fast striking root in the public mind, and too abstract for any but the most cultured, it needed for its larger growth some concrete shape. The artists were at this time the most zealous students of Aristotle, most eager therefore to illustrate ideas that gave them such novel subjects for their brush. Soon then were walls frescoed with paintings embodying the types of moral and political science, forcibly illustrating on the one hand the benefits that are the legacy of good government, and on the other, the vices that hurry on the heels of tyranny. Thus art becomes now a powerful instrument in counselling rulers and a safe agent in teaching the people the limit and power of political government. Its social service is for the first time established, by setting before the people conditions of national prosperity, and types of personal character. Of these works, the chief were the frescoes of Giotto, both in the Arena Chapel, Padua, and in the palace of the Podesta, Florence. Then came the frescoes in the Spanish Chapel at Florence, by Simone di Martino, and by Taddeo Gaddi; lastly, those in the Town Hall of Siena, by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1265-1338), perhaps the most mature and perfect of all.
From this fragment then, and other works of Giotto, we see how eager this man is to recognize the reality of life, and catch its outward physiognomy—the first since the Greeks to dare look Nature full in the face—one whose strength of soul won him the friendship of Italy's greatest poet; one whose ability in art won him the art directorship of the most magnificent city in the world.
Such was the universal enthusiasm for art during the dawn of this industrial epoch which produced Giotto, that at a time when the city was engaged in war after war with her neighbours, and when party strife between Pope and Emperor ran so high, the exile Dante dared not issue from his prison gates, Florence was producing her most splendid art, and this Giotto the artist allowed free pass, alike through friendly land and through the camp of foes.
So dependent are the arts on the freedom that crowns industrial activity.
1. This fragment is from frescoes illustrating the life of St. John, painted in his chapel at the Carmine Church, Florence. Other fragments, likewise preserved from the fire which destroyed this chapel, are to be found at Liverpool (in the Colquit Street Gallery) and at Pisa.
2. The last man in whom the spirit of reform had been centred was Mohammed—himself a shepherd boy.
3. The mosaic, "The Galilean Fishermen," over the west door of St. Peter's, Rome, is by Giotto.
4. In these and other qualities we are reminded of one of our greatest painters, Forde Maddox Brown, who in so many ways may be not inaptly compared with Giotto.