ART IN ITALY IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.
If we would gain a true and adequate conception of the works and merit
of any painter, it is necessary for us not only to examine his special
productions, but to become in some measure acquainted with the state
in which art was during his time. And not only is it necessary to take
into account the actual amount of progress then manifested in one
particular branch, such as painting, but to consider also the
tendencies of the age, if we would separate the influence exercised by
the artist's work, and define its true significance. Therefore readers
will not think it irrelevant to the right telling and understanding of
the life of Giotto, if they are first asked to consider for a short
time the condition of art in the year 1276; and in order to thoroughly
comprehend this condition, we must for a moment carry our thoughts
back a thousand years further still, and think of those days when art
and paganism flourished side by side in the Grecian republic.
It would be difficult at any time, impossible in the short space at
our disposal, to explain the peculiar action and reaction of Greek art
upon Greek religion; we must content ourselves with noting the fact
that the two were absolutely inseparable--that the religion owed its
influence over men's minds in no small degree to the power of art, is
as indisputable as that art gained enormously in dignity and strength
by being considered as the greatest exponent of religion, and by all
its most important achievements being consecrated to that service. But
if the Greek art was on the one hand indissolubly connected with the
national religion, it was, on the other, no less connected with the
national life. If the wisdom of Zeus, the pride of Juno, and the
tenderness of Venus ornamented one side of the amphora, the struggles
of the chase and the contests of the gymnasia adorned the other; nor
did it seem to the people that there was anything extraordinary in
thus mingling the doings of their neighbours, and the actions of their
gods. Why! their gods, after all, were but neighbours of a higher
order, and had even been known to succumb to the craft or bravery of
men. The barrier between seen and unseen scarcely existed; but nature
passed through almost imperceptible gradations, from the dryad of the
woodland, to the ruler of Olympus. Had their religion, their art, and
their life stood apart, as, unhappily, religion, art, and life stand
apart now, the rise of Christianity could never have produced the
withering effect upon all works of imagination which we know occurred;
for it could not have taken away, at one blow, both the motives and
the subjects of art, however it might have changed the mode of their
representation; nor would Christianity have been opposed to it in like
manner, had it not clearly perceived that it was one of the great
instruments in the hands of the pagan priests. Unable to pervert to
spiritual conceptions an art whose only conception of spiritual things
was the perfection of bodily ones, ascetic Christianity had no choice
but to discourage the practice of art altogether, and this is what
actually happened. Gradually as the study of the nude figure was
abandoned, the ignorance of the artists of the real outlines of the
human form increased; and gradually, as the first broad Christian
theory of fellowship and brotherhood, faded through the help of the
priest into a stern, asceticism, enforced by Church tradition, all
representations of vigour and manly beauty were considered to verge
upon the profane, till at last we find in the work of the fifth to the
tenth centuries, an almost total absence of all study of either nature
or man; the former being totally disregarded, the latter represented
under rude types, which were repeated from age to age without variety
or improvement. Splendour of material and colouring were made to atone
for poverty of conception and absence of thought, and the great art of
those ages was one which the Greeks had only considered worthy to
decorate the floors of their palaces. This art of mosaic, which about
the fourth century[5] began to supersede painting in tempera and
encaustic, was peculiarly fitted to be the servant of asceticism. In
the course of its practice all the flowing lines of drapery became
harsh and stiff, the limbs lost their suppleness and movement, the
face its expression and life, and in fact the whole picture became
less a representation of an occurrence, than a type to recall
some subject to the mind. If we remember that many of the facts
of the Christian religion were such as almost to defy absolute
representation, we shall discover another reason for the adoption of
this work. It is to be noted that, according to Pliny, mosaic began to
be in vogue in Rome about 170 years before Christ. Kugler asserts that
this art was an invention of the Alexandrian age, but in this he
appears to be mistaken, and it is more probable that the Greeks
received it from Persia and Assyria (through their Ægean colonies and
the histories of Phoenician merchants), in which countries the art
seems to have been of great antiquity,[6] The finest examples of these
wall mosaics are to be found in Rome and Ravenna, and, at a later
date, in the decoration of St. Mark's, at Venice, to which we shall
hereafter have occasion to refer. Another kind of art of great
importance at this time was Illumination, the earliest traces of which
are found towards the close of the second century, when the present
form of leaves sewn together at the back superseded the rollers which
had been previously used. The first embellishments were simple
enlargements and variety of colouring in the letters; from this, the
advance to borders and illustrative designs was comparatively
rapid.[7] The earliest examples of importance remaining at the present
day, are the _Dioscorides_, in the library at Vienna, and the
_Virgil_, in the Vatican, both of which are supposed to be of the
fourth century.
The influence of tradition, asceticism, and sacerdotalism, acted in a
precisely similar way to restrain the art of illumination, as it did
to destroy that of painting and sculpture. At first the Byzantine
school of illuminators greatly surpassed those of the Western world,
but, as Humphreys says, "They belonged to a sinking and not a rising
civilisation, and we find them gradually deteriorating after the tenth
century, and never originating a new style or gradually progressing to
more intricate or beautiful treatment of their subjects, but on the
contrary, uninfluenced by the change and progress that was at work in
Western Europe, they plodded on in the traditional track; the ancient
costume and the bright gold of their miniatures of the fifth century
still continuing in practice to the later period of Byzantine
illumination; and even in the year 1846, M. Papetie found the monks of
Mount Athos decorating portions of their monastery with figures of the
apostles and evangelists of the old approved pattern, and painted on
the traditional gold grounds, the exact counterpart of those of the
fifth century."[8]
We have spoken of the Byzantine mosaic and illumination, and have only
to mention their architecture to complete our account, for it must be
remembered that almost every artistic impulse of these centuries was
due either mediately or immediately to the influence of
Constantinople, which, however stationary, or even declining in its
civilisation, was yet the great centre of enlightenment.
It is quite impossible I believe to give in a few lines any
description of the peculiarities of Byzantine architecture, dependent
as that style was upon a combination of the Grecian, Roman, and
Arabian methods of building. We know that one element in the style was
the combination of the round dome with the ancient temple, and that
the shape and size of the building was in the first place determined
by the necessities of its worship. As is pointed out by Professor
Brown,[9] "the Christian mode of worship required a style of building
considerably different from the heathen temple. Instead of a mere
sacristry for the priest, the term at which the pomp of processions
ended, and in the front of which, under the vault of the sky,
sacrifices were performed, shelter was now required for the multitude
offering their prayers, according to ritual, and receiving instruction
from their pastors. New places for sacred edifices were therefore
required, and those of great dimensions, with ample space and superior
accommodation within the interior." The result of this demand led to
the selection and adaptation of the most suitable buildings which were
then available, and these happened to be the ancient basilicas or
halls of justice, of which, as they are the origin of all Christian
churches, the following description may be interesting to some of my
readers:[10] "A basilica was a public edifice of the ancient Romans,
consisting of an oblong interior divided in its width into three
divisions by two rows of columns. At the upper end it had a large
niche or tribune, where courts of justice were held. The basilica was
a place of general resort, like an exchange of modern times. These
places also became to be used by the Christians for their place of
meeting, and afterwards churches were built on the model of the
basilicæ, and the name of basilicæ is still affixed to the principal
churches in Rome. To a building of this kind there was added a
transept, to give a cruciform shape; and so the general plan of our
churches came to be adopted."
If the exigencies of room and haste led to the transposition of these
ancient exchanges into churches, and fixed the form of the Christian
architecture of the future; the zeal of the new faith also determined
in no small measure the style of adornment of their interiors. For,
again, the haste for their decoration was so great that the
importation of marble from the quarries nearly twenty miles from Rome
was too slow a method for the Christians to adopt, and they
"immediately commenced the work of demolition among the classic
edifices of antiquity erected by the pagan Romans, chiefly for the
value of the materials."[11] This was probably the origin of the
method of incrustation, which forms such a remarkable feature in the
Byzantine architecture, and indeed is, according to Ruskin, its most
typical feature. The process of changing a basilica into a cathedral
being somewhat akin to that of changing a barrack into a palace, the
rich materials had to be used as sparingly as possible, in order to
make them sufficient for the concealment of the original poverty of
the structure, and this naturally led to the blocks of marble being
divided into thin slabs, in order to gain as much surface decoration
as possible, and caused also the delicate proportions of symmetry and
uniformity in the Grecian temples to be neglected, since the
proportions had to be taken as they were found, and made the best of.
If we then add to this first origin of the Christian architecture, the
influences which were likely to attend upon its transference to the
East, we easily perceive how its more elaborate decorations and
peculiarities arose. The employment of coloured marbles, which arose
first from the necessity of making use of the scattered fragments of
the ancient temples, was continued, through a love for the
picturesqueness of the effect produced; the elements of size,
proportion, and simplicity, on which the structure of the Grecian
temples had been founded, once lost sight of, those of variety and
intricacy took their place. Eastern magnificence covered the walls
with gold and colours, while the necessities of excluding the fierce
sunshine of the East, narrowed the windows, and produced the chequered
gloom, through which the lustre of the golden crucifix, and the silver
lamp, alone shone clearly. Such was the rise of the Byzantine
architecture, which, however lacking it may be in strictness of taste
and correctness of method, has always been powerful over men's minds
to an almost unparalleled extent.[12]
And in this architecture and decoration everything was subordinated to
the religious impression; from its meanest detail, to the very shape
of the church itself, everything was a type of the Christian faith and
hope, and was neither valuable nor precious, save as the symbol of the
unseen divinity. It can be easily imagined how quickly art sank wholly
under this influence, and became the mere servant of the popular
superstition. As in ancient Greece, so in Byzantium, the priests used
art for their great lever to move the imaginations of the people; the
difference being only that as the religion was of a different kind, so
was the art. This world was a hospital; "health and heaven were to
come";[13] that was practically the belief of these early ages of the
Christian Church. It is indeed the theory of the Church at the present
day. So art no longer sought to find her gods in an apotheothised
humanity, but substituted arbitrary types for the things unspeakable;
thus a hand reaching down from the sky typified the Almighty; a dove
was the recognised symbol of the spirit, and so on.[14]
And as the Church gradually encroached more and more upon the lives of
the people, and as with its increasing influence it asserted its
supremacy on every domain of human life; so it extended its power of
repression upon the subjects as well as upon the methods of art. Not
only was the barrier raised against all representations of bodily
strength, grace, and beauty, but even in the delineation of sacred
subjects, the artist was forbidden to render them in any way human by
using his powers of conception and modification. Hardly even was a
variation of grouping or the introduction of a figure allowed in the
treatment of the religious events; and for hundreds of years St. John
and the Virgin stood in the same attitude, at the right and at the
left hand of the cross, and Christ, in the centre of the picture,
gazed upon the spectators with the placid eyes of divine power, of
which no agony could avail to dim the Godhead. To the end of the
eleventh century all expression of pain upon the face of the Saviour
was entirely absent, absolutely forbidden by the priesthood. He was
depicted as standing upon the cross with erect head and widely open
eyes,[15] and in aspect, as Crowe says, "either erect or menacing."
While this spirit of representation continued, it was manifestly
impossible for art to improve. All study of the nude discouraged, if
not forbidden, all the worth of material beauty despised, all
originality of conception sternly interdicted, and all expression of
human emotion considered as irreligious, the unhappy painters had no
opening left them for anything but slavish imitations of their
predecessors. It would take me too long to show how this
anti-naturalism of the Church came to be in some degree modified;
probably one of the chief causes was the recognition by the priesthood
of the progressive tendency of the times, and the consequent
relaxation of the harsh restrictions which had fixed the limits of
pictorial art. In every age the essential principle of the Catholic
religion in its dealings with secular matters has been an adoption of
the tendencies which it could not repress, and the endeavour to turn
them to its own advancement. It may well be that the growing
naturalism of pictorial representation from the twelfth century to the
end of the thirteenth was sanctioned by the Church from this cause. In
any case, during this period religious art took its first hesitating
steps in the right direction. Slowly the crucifixes represented the
Saviour with downcast head and closed eyes, and his body no longer
stood erect upon the cross, but swayed outward in the pain of death.
Such was the state of painting at the beginning of the thirteenth
century, purely devoted to religious subjects, and representing those
subjects according to established forms--influenced chiefly by the
traditions of ancient art which were received from the schools of
Byzantium, but fettered by those traditions being embodied in
Christian types, and complicated by the introduction of Church
symbolism. Thus, for instance, in the treatment of the drapery in the
mosaics executed at Venice by the Greek, Apollonius, something of the
ancient manner may be observed through all the figures; but the
rigidity of the lines, the meagreness of the bodies, and the
lifelessness of the composition are entirely due to the influences of
asceticism which prevailed in the early Church.
Sculpture was in an identical position till the celebrated pulpit at
Pisa was made by Niccola Pisano in 1260; in which the same imitation
of the antique, combined in a lesser degree with the restraining
influences above mentioned, forms a nearer approach to the Gothic
naturalism of Giotto than we can trace elsewhere. Pisano's gift in
design was a far lower one than Giotto's, though he was much greater
in sculptural skill, for in his works the new element is not so much
the rejection of tradition for the sake of nature, as the partial
rejection of ascetic religion for the sake of imitating the antique.
It is true that by this adherence to the form of Grecian sculpture he
far exceeds the works of his contemporaries and predecessors of the
Middle Ages, but that is only because the schools he imitated had
studied nature so devotedly; there is in his work much of the spirit
of the antique, but little of the spirit of nature on which the
antique was founded. According to Crowe,[16] in the later work of
Niccola Pisano there is a reference to natural models observable, but
I have not seen the pulpit at Siena of which he is speaking; and it is
notable that there were several pupils of Pisano engaged upon this
work, and that Crowe admits that where the references to nature occur,
precisely there "is the master's ability least visible," so it is at
least possible that they may not have been the work of his own hand.
Many other architects and sculptors of the thirteenth century there
are; but we cannot spare space to do more than mention their names.
Arnolfo, Giovanni Pisano, Fra Guglielmo, and the three Florentines,
Lapo, Donato, and Goro are the chief; their doings are described by
Crowe in his chapter on the progress of sculpture in the first volume
of the _History of Painting in Italy_, in which there is a full
description of the manner of each, and an examination of the
questionable statements of Vasari concerning them.
What is interesting with regard to the subject of our biography in
respect of these sculptors is, that they were the forerunners of that
revival of the study of nature, in which he subsequently played the
most important part. It does not appear to me that they actually
attempted, as is asserted by Crowe, "to graft on the imitation of the
antique a study of nature," but rather that their imperfect naturalism
arose from a misrepresentation of the antique work, and an almost
total rejection of the Byzantine formalism. It is a curious example of
Ruskin's dictum that the energy of growth in any people may be almost
directly measured by their passion for sculpture or the drama, that
just at the time when Italy was beginning that splendid forward
movement which crowned, with a blaze of light, the dark mountain of
the Middle Ages; just then sculpture should have as it were leapt into
full life after a sleep of nearly a thousand years.
According to Lanzi[17] the improvement of mosaic followed that of
sculpture, and a Franciscan friar named Fra Jacopo Torriti, surpassed
all the contemporary Greek and Roman workers in mosaics. "On examining
what remains of his works at Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, one can
hardly believe that it is the production of so rude an age, did not
history compel us to believe it. It appears probable that he took the
ancients for his models, and deduced his rules from the more chaste
specimens of mosaic still remaining in several of the Roman churches,
the design of which is less crude, the attitudes less forced, and the
composition more skilful, than were exhibited by the Greeks who
ornamented the church of San Marco at Venice. Mino surpassed them in
everything. From 1225 when he executed, however feebly, the mosaic of
the tribune of the church of San Giovanni at Florence, he was
considered at the head of living artists in mosaic. He merited this
praise much more by his works at Rome; and it appears that he long
maintained his reputation."
There is no doubt that the art of mosaic was in full practice in Italy
at this period, and was not, as has been supposed, confined to the
Greeks. There is a curious passage in the work of the Abbé
Montfaucon[18] who made an extensive tour through Italy in 1695, to
the effect that in the cathedral of Spoleto above the front entrance,
he saw a piece of mosaic work made in the year 1207, with the
following inscription:--
"Hic est pictura quam fecit sat placitura,
Doctor Solfernus hac summo in arte modernus.
Annis inventis cum septem mille ducentis
Operarij Palmenus," &c., &c.
Translation of the above inscription--
"This picture, which will please well, was made by Doctor
Solfernus, the ablest of the moderns in this art, in the year
1207. The workmen were Palmenies," &c., &c.
I can find no other record of this Doctor Solfernus, but there can be
little doubt that the art was at this time generally known throughout
Italy.
We need not pause here to examine the question of whether Kugler is
right in asserting that towards the close of the ninth century the art
of mosaic had almost ceased in Italy; that it had done so at Rome
appears certain; but at Venice, and also in southern Italy and Sicily,
the art, if discontinued, was soon revived by the importation of Greek
artists, and continued in full practice from the eleventh to the end
of the fifteenth century, when it may be considered to have received
its death-blow from the hand of oil painting.[19] It may, I think, be
assumed that the arts of mosaic and painting were carried on at Rome
during the tenth century, but were probably in a very declining state,
and were quite superseded by the superior skill of the Greek artists.
There was a school of painting at Pisa as early, according to Lanzi,
as the beginning of the twelfth century, and he gives an account of "a
parchment containing the _exultet_, as usually sung upon Sabbato Santo
(which) is in the cathedral, and we may here and there observe painted
on it figures in miniature with plants and animals: it is a relique of
the early part of the twelfth century, yet a specimen of art not
altogether barbarous. There are likewise some other paintings of that
century in the same cathedral, containing figures of our Lady, with
the Holy Infant on her right arm: they are rude, but the progress of
the same school may be traced from them to the time of Giunta." We may
notice that Crowe and Cavalcaselle give the eleventh century as the
date of the earliest pictures (crucifixes) at Pisa, but their only
authority for this is the negative one of the Saviour's upright
position, which, as we have mentioned above, was always observed up to
the eleventh century. There is, however, no sufficient ground for
believing that after this date the erect position was invariably
departed from. Giunta of Pisa painted in the first half of the
thirteenth century, and was the best of the Pisan school as far as is
at present known. It is, however, supposed by some who are most
conversant with early Italian painting, that this school subsequently
developed some great artists whose works are still to be seen, though
their names have unfortunately perished; this would, however, be
denied by Cavalcaselle.
I have spoken as shortly as I could of the sort of art in painting,
mosaic, and sculpture which preceded Giotto; but before I close this
very imperfect, and I fear confused and tedious, historical sketch,
there is one other source of artistic influence which I must briefly
mention, that is the influence of the Lombardic architecture of the
twelfth century, which is seen to the greatest perfection in the
cities of northern Italy, and which Mr. Ruskin once asserted to be the
"root of all the mediæval art of Italy--without which no Giottos, no
Angelicos, and no Raphaels would have been possible." The influence of
this architecture upon Giotto, and his intense liking for it, is
evident from the frequency with which he introduced it into the
frescoes.
The Lombardic is the development in the West of the Romanesque
architecture, whose leading feature was the round arch; it is the
Byzantine style, without some of its Eastern characteristics, but with
other peculiarities derived from Western sources.
Perhaps its most special feature, the one in which it has been without
a rival in any bygone age, and is without a rival still, is in the
decorative use of brick and terra-cotta. The very name has reference
to this, for in the great plains of Lombardy where there is little
stone, clay was naturally used as far as it possibly could be, to
supply its place; and mouldings and statues which would have been
carved from the solid stone or marble under more favourable
circumstances, were here moulded out of brick. Hence arose a style
which, as it could not depend upon the richness of its material, or
the difficulty of its workmanship, could gain its only reward from
its delicacy of invention and grace of design, and in which the actual
building of its sculptured tiles formed no inconsiderable part. This
elevation of an ignoble material into value and dignity was, as Grüner
says, actually effected in the Lombardic churches, and to them belongs
that subtle charm which we involuntarily experience on discovering the
perfect adaptation of simple things to great uses. Though nowhere
carried to such perfection as by the Lombards of the twelfth century,
this decorative use of brick was by no means a discovery of the more
modern times, as we see from the following extract from Thomas Hope's
_Historical Essay on Architecture_:--"The ancient Romans wherever they
found clay more abundant or easier to work than stone, used it
plentifully, both in regular layers throughout the body of the walls
as we do, and in an external reticulated coating, which has proved to
be as durable as stone itself, from the fineness of its texture and
the firmness of its joints. Indeed far from considering brick as a
material fit only for the coarsest and most indispensable groundwork
of architecture, they regarded it as equally adapted for all the
elegances of ornamental form--all the details of rich architraves,
capitals, friezes, cornices, and other embellishments. Sometimes it
owed to the mould its various forms, and at others, as in the
_Amphitheatrum Castrense_, and the temple of the god Ridiculus, to the
chisel."[20]
I almost despair of conveying an idea of the peculiarities of this
architecture to those who have never seen any examples of it, its
chief elements being those of simplicity and intricacy, solidity and
lightness; it appearing, in fact, to be a mass of contradictions. Its
Byzantine origin, or rather the influence on it at some time of
Byzantine art, is clearly perceptible in the variety of colour which
is employed; yellow, and white, and red, and green, and black tiles
and bricks being used alternately, with the utmost skill and the
greatest variety of effect. But it is to the varieties of tower and
cupola and dome that Lombardic architecture shows its most distinctive
character; every combination of round arch vaulting with square,
hexagonal, or circular towers, was used by them with a boldness, and a
disregard of convention for which I know no parallel. And the result
justified their daring.
Constructed first simply on the model of the old Roman basilica, then
modified and extended by the influence of the art which Greek workmen
brought from Constantinople, combining the fancy of the Arab, the
roughness of the Goth, and the formalism of the Greek, this
architecture grew from the seventh to the twelfth centuries, like a
flower or tree, rejecting none of the influences with which it was
surrounded. It may be possible, I have no doubt it is, for those who
are skilled in the science of architecture, to discover the elements
of a correct uniform style in these Lombardic buildings; but I confess
that to me it seems but as the result of people who were prepared to
make use of anything that came in their way, and had never formulated
a method of building at all. The Roman arch, the Byzantine dome, the
Arabian minaret, the square tower, the mosque, the basilica, and the
temple, were all mingled here in a confusion of detail, which was yet
executed with the utmost simplicity, we had almost said poverty, of
material, and of which it is difficult to say whether the first
impression produced, is wonder at the variety, indignation at the
eccentricity, or delight at the effect of the whole building.[21]
I have now touched on the chief sources of artistic influence in Italy
towards the middle of the thirteenth century, which, briefly summed
up, are these--an art of painting which had become little more than a
handicraft, carried on in Rome after the recipes of long perished
masters, and in other parts of Italy either dormant, or kept alive
only by such men as Giunta of Pisa, and the pupils of the Greek
artists; an art of mosaic work which also owed its chief, if not its
only, importance, to Byzantine workmen, and which was even then
engaged in decorating the shrine of St. Mark at Venice, with Grecian
designs. In sculpture, the Pisani, father and son, and their pupils
and fellow workers, trying to revive classicalism as a barrier against
the false state of religious art, but failing to see that, after all,
the strength of the ancients lay not in their ideal, but in their real
perfection of nature--and so losing itself in the wilds of imitative
and traditional art; and lastly, there were flourishing in Italy, two
great schools of architecture closely allied, the Byzantine and the
Lombard, and gradually spreading was a third school destined to
destroy them both, which we have nicknamed Gothic. Try to realise the
artistic state of the country amongst this medley of dead and dying
styles, with the whole influence of the classic past in favour of the
traditional mode of painting and sculpture, and the whole strength of
the priesthood arrayed against any attempt to make fresh inroads upon
the sacred realm of Church symbolism and scriptural formalism; the
Church still holding fast to the ascetic theory as the one saving
grace, perhaps even the more strongly, because the ascetic practice
had become a thing of the past.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] See Kugler's _Handbook of Painting_, edited by Lady Eastlake,
1874, pp. 17 and 18, for a description of the origin of mosaic art.
[6] For origin of mosaic work see Pliny xxv., xxxiii., xxxv. See also
the _Iconographic Encyclopædia_, by Heck, translated from the German
by Spencer F. Baird, New York, 1851, vol. ii. p. 77, &c., and
Fosbroke's _Cyclopædia of Antiquities_, 1840.
[7] See _Art of Illumination_, 1844, and _Illuminated Books of the
Middle Ages_, 1849. By Henry Noel Humphreys.
[8] For more on this subject see the _Nouveau Traité de Diplomatie_ of
the Benedictines.
[9] Brown's _Sacred Architecture_, 1845, pp. 24, 25.
[10] Brown's _Sacred Architecture_, 1845.
[11] Cadell's _Italy_, vol. ii. p. 339.
[12] For a very interesting description of this feature in Byzantine
work see _The Stones of Venice_, by John Ruskin, vol. ii.
[13] Ruskin's _Crown of Wild Olive_, Introduction.
[14] For an account of Christian Symbolism, see Mrs. Jameson's _Sacred
and Legendary Art_.
[15] See _A New History of Painting in Italy_. By J. A. Crowe and G.
B. Cavalcaselle, 1864; vol. i. chap. 4.
[16] Lord Lindsay, in his _History of Christian Art_, asserts that in
painting, the schools of Giotto, Siena, and Bologna spring immediately
from the work of Niccola Pisano. Vol. ii., p. 113. See, for an account
of his pupils, pages 115 _et seq._ of vol. ii.
[17] _History of Painting in Italy_, vol. i. p. 9; Roscoe's
translation, 1828.
[18] See _The Antiquities of Italy_, translated from the original
Latin of Bernard de Montfaucon. London, 1725.
[19] For a full discussion of this question see Kugler's _Handbook of
Painting, Italian Schools_, vol. i. pp. 43 _et seq._
[20] For an interesting account of building in terra-cotta, and the
various operations of drying, baking the tiles, &c., see Grüner's
_Terra-Cotta Architecture of Italy_. Introductory Essay. 1867.
[21] See also chapter xxii. of Hope's _Historical Essay on
Architecture_.