The fresco paintings by Giotto[1] and others, in the cemetery at Pisa,
are most noble. Giotto was a contemporary of Dante: and it is a curious
question, whether the painters borrowed from the poet, or _vice versa_.
Certainly M. Angelo and Raffael fed their imaginations highly with these
grand drawings, especially M. Angelo, who took from them his bold yet
graceful lines.
[Footnote 1:
Giotto, or Angiolotto's birth is fixed by Vasari in 1276, but there is
some reason to think that he was born a little earlier. Dante, who was
his friend, was born in 1265. Giotto was the pupil of Cimabue, whom he
entirely eclipsed, as Dante testifies in the well-known lines in
the Purgatorio:--
"O vana gloria dell'umane posse!
Com' poco verde in su la cima dura,
Se non e giunta dall' etati grosse!
Credette Cirnabue nella pintura
Tener lo campo: ed ora ha Giotto il grido,
Si che la fama di colui oscura."--C. xi. v. 91.
His six great frescos in the cemetery at Pisa are upon the sufferings and
patience of Job.--ED.]
* * * * *
People may say what they please about the gradual improvement of the Arts.
It is not true of the substance. The Arts and the Muses both spring forth
in the youth of nations, like Minerva from the front of Jupiter, all armed:
manual dexterity may, indeed, he improved by practice.
* * * * *
Painting went on in power till, in Raffael, it attained the zenith, and in
him too it showed signs of a tendency downwards by another path. The
painter began to think of overcoming difficulties. After this the descent
was rapid, till sculptors began to work inveterate likenesses of perriwigs
in marble,--as see Algarotti's tomb in the cemetery at Pisa,--and painters
did nothing but copy, as well as they could, the external face of nature.
Now, in this age, we have a sort of reviviscence,--not, I fear, of the
power, but of a taste for the power, of the early times.
_June_ 26. 1830.