GIOTTO'S STYLE.
"There is in truth a holy purity, an innocent _naïveté_, a
child-like grace and simplicity, a freshness, a fearlessness, a
yearning after all things truthful, lovely, and of good report,
in the productions of this early time which invest them with a
charm peculiar in its kind, and which few even of the most
perfect works of the maturer era can boast of; and hence the
risk and danger (which I warn you of at the outset) of becoming
too passionately attached to them, of losing the power of
discrimination, of admiring and imitating their defects as well
as their beauties, of running into affectation in seeking after
simplicity, and into exaggeration in our efforts to be in
earnest; in a word of forgetting that in art, as in human
nature, it is the balance, harmony and co-equal development, of
sense, intellect, and spirit, which constitutes
perfection."--LORD LINDSAY'S _Christian Art_.
I feel my inability to convey to my readers any adequate idea of the
general style of Giotto's painting, and this not so much because it is
a complicated one or difficult to understand, as because of its very
simplicity. A few points may be mentioned in which it differed from
that of his predecessors in Italy, from the pictures of the
Renaissance period, and lastly from those of our own time; but when
all is said, the peculiar beauty of the colouring, the simplicity and
purity of the feeling, the strength and directness of the painter's
aim, and the unstudied grace of his compositions will remain to baffle
any description that can be given.
First let me note that previous to the time of Giotto (since the
decay at least of Greek art) colour in painting meant almost
exclusively the arrangement of gorgeous hues on a golden background.
The tints used being little, if at all, gradated, but laid on more in
the manner of a mosaic than a modern picture. Derived, as were the
traditions of painting, from manuscripts of Mount Athos and mosaics of
Byzantium, they were almost wholly confined to the composition of pure
colours in pleasing juxtaposition, and these colours were almost
invariably full and deep. It may, perhaps, make my meaning clearer if
I take an antithetical example from the art of the present day.
Everybody knows the characteristics of French landscape painting, a
beautiful tone of grey and black, and perhaps a few other tertiary
tints, and no form or colour whatever, depending entirely on the
gradation for its beauty. Well, before Giotto there was no such thing
as tone, save in pure colours; and gradation of colour was practically
unknown. The colours used were dark and rich, purples and crimsons and
deep blues, and here and there orange and green and heavy blue-blacks.
These, laid upon a gold ground, more or less ornamented with chased
designs, formed the chief portion of the pictorial art of the
centuries preceding Giotto. Looking into one of these pictures was
like looking into a decaying fire, where amidst masses of dark shade
there still burnt gloomily here and there, patches of glowing cinders
and bright flame. Hung in the dim recess of a chapel or an oratory,
lighted by the faint glimmer of the silver lamps, these works of
Christian art may well have harmonised with the dark ages of
superstition which gave them life, but they were essentially
unsuitable for having any real effect upon men's minds, apart from
their religious uses. They had no connection with the real life of the
world, full of varying emotions and conflicting passions; they had no
affinity with the times when the hardbound earth cracked at the close
of winter, and the sun shone once more in a blue sky, and all men's
"pulses throbbed together with the fulness of the spring."
This was the first change that Giotto made in artistic method. "Away
with the gold background," he said; "let us have the blue sky," and,
as in the days of creation, "it was so." This we may fancy was the
first step, but with it came many others. With the introduction of the
sky came a corresponding lightening of the tones used throughout the
picture, a corresponding increase in the amount of light depicted in
the composition.
And, as over the whole of Byzantine art, there had brooded a gorgeous
gloom, through which the tints only revealed themselves dimly and
slowly, as we may see at the present day, the hues of tropic sea-weed
glow faint beneath the waves of the China Sea, so over Giotto's
frescoes there shone a calm, full light, not bathed in sunshine or
enhanced by contrasted shade, but a plain clear breadth of day,
sufficient to reveal clearly each object in the picture.
Just think what a change this one alteration in tone must have brought
about! what an instrument it was for the correcting of the absurd
traditions which then governed the practice of painting. It must have
been like that produced by a _Times_ leader upon the iniquities of
local boards of guardians; namely, delight and amazement to the world
at large, horror and consternation to the idiots who had done ill by
stealth (though strictly in accordance with rule), and blushed to find
it fame.
So keep this fact well in view, that the great change effected by
Giotto was the change from rush-light to daylight, and it was only
after this that further advance became possible. Do not run away with
the idea that he gained thereby the whole truth; far from it. There
were two centuries and a half of painters to come after him before
the whole truth of light and shade was mastered, for Giotto may be
said to have practically ignored shade altogether.
Nor did he advance much further in the _gradation_ of colour than his
predecessors had done; his paint is generally put on in broad flat
washes, with little attempt at gradation; its beauty depends chiefly
upon the exquisite manner in which these washes are combined with one
another. Thus he never reaches to the utmost beauty of colour, which
is only obtainable with the utmost gradation of light and shade; but
his work presents itself like a landscape, ere the sun rises, on a
fine summer's morning, when each object lies clearly and a little
coldly defined, in the shadowless air.
It must be remembered that with the attempt to master the intricacies
and gradation of light and shade, came also the use of secondary and
tertiary tints, to an extent unknown in the time of Giotto, who may
almost be described as the last of the pure colourists, taking pure in
the sense of primary. Chiaroscuro went on gradually advancing in
importance, relatively to colour and subject, till in the times of
Rembrandt we find it absolutely thrusting colour and subject out of
the field altogether, and making the flash upon a tin pannikin, or the
obscurity of a cottage kitchen, of equal importance with the grandest
traditions of our race.
What is perhaps best known as the special quality of Giotto's art is
his study of nature; and it is right that I should say a few words
upon this somewhat indefinite phrase, and try to show in what Giotto's
study of nature consisted, and wherein it differed from that of
preceding painters.
If we were able to return in reality to the old times when our painter
lived, I do not fancy we should find--as many good people
suppose--that the folk of that day were ignorant that there were such
things as domesticated animals and birds, trees and flowers, clouds
and sunsets. You may be very sure that mediæval Florentines on the
ridge of Fiesole, have often paused to watch the sun gilding the
spires of Florence, much as the English traveller does; and young
lovers wandering idly amongst the almond-trees by the Arno, plucked
the blossoms, and admired their loveliness, as we do to-day. It was
only that somehow the idea had never occurred to any one that these
things were suitable for pictures; there was a notion that it would be
a sort of irreverence to put such vulgar details into religious
scenes--arising perhaps from a similar feeling to that which makes
many well-trained Christians dislike to pray for any specially desired
object. Perhaps it was owing to Giotto's early training, or rather no
training, in the midst of a wild mountain country, perhaps only to his
rough humorous, anti-reverential character, but probably to the
combination of circumstance and individuality, that made him introduce
into his compositions all sorts of extraneous matter. That to the last
he entertained a strong sympathy with his early shepherd life, it is
impossible to doubt, and in the designs for the decoration of the base
of the Campanile, only two of which he lived to execute with his own
hand, there is a singularly beautiful bas-relief, illustrating the
pastoral life, in which the sheep, and the puppy watching them, are as
fine as anything we have from his hand.
The great difficulty of accounting for Giotto's introduction of
hitherto unused matter into his pictures, lies in the fact that it
does not seem to have been due especially to any partiality on his
part for this or that branch of nature, as to a principle of getting
to the bottom of his subject, whatever it was. He appears to have had
a power of grasping the spirit of whatever scene he was engaged upon,
and illustrating that appropriately, which is, as far as I know,
unequalled in the records of painting. And it is noteworthy that this
spirit is with him always the reverse of eclectic: no painter can be
more entirely free from all principles of aristocracy; his sympathies
are always with the people; the view he takes of any subject is the
plain, common-sense view, such as plain, common-sense people can
understand.
Connected with this is the third great characteristic of Giotto,
perhaps the strongest in his whole nature, and certainly the one which
was least in accordance with the spirit of his time. This is his
strong dramatic power.
This power shows itself in almost every work of the master's we have
left us, and even survives his death, and lives in the work of his
pupils. His pictures are not alone scenes, they are SITUATIONS, on
each the curtain might fall without any sense of incongruity. 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. In most of Giotto's pictures there will be
found a diversity of action and expression, all of which lead up to
the main action, and help to enforce and illustrate it. 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. This is especially plain in such pictures as the
_Betrayal_ and the _Entombment_, in the Arena Chapel. But where this
dramatic quality is most strongly marked is in the bas-reliefs on the
base of the Campanile; in all these 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.
To sum up these three main characteristics of Giotto's style, they
are--First, a lighter, purer tone of colour 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, especially in the more distant
portions of the picture. 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, comes the power
of illustrating the real meaning of his subject, and not merely
suggesting it, as had formerly been the case, allied to which is the
dramatic quality of which I have just spoken.
I feel how barren is all this description to explain the progress in
art made by this artist--the progress from stagnation to movement,
from death to life, from symbolical types, to the things themselves.
It would appear unnecessary to dwell upon the few points in which his
work was technically deficient, or those in which he but repeated the
errors of his predecessors, but the following may just be mentioned.
The comparative dulness of the reds in use at that time, the lack of
depth of hue, and variation of colour in differing aspects of light
and shade; the comparative poorness of the drapery, as compared with
that of the later Venetian and Florentine masters; the deficiency in
the rendering of form, and the elementary amount of knowledge of
perspective and anatomy--on all these points might exception be taken
to his work with perfect justice, and yet when each had been given its
due amount of criticism, the wonder would still be that he
accomplished so much, and not so little. For two hundred years after
the death of Giotto the advance in the drawing of landscape was so
slight as to be almost imperceptible, and yet, compared with his
landscape, that of those that preceded him was as "moonlight unto
sunlight, and as water unto wine."
I have omitted in this description the main characteristic of Giotto's
style, and I have done so because it is so intangible that it can only
be felt, not described. This characteristic, hinted at by Lord
Lindsay in the quotation which is placed at the head of this chapter,
is the simple faith in which each of these compositions abounds; the
feeling conveyed to the spectator that thus, and no otherwise, did the
occurrence take place, and that the painter has not altered it a jot
or tittle for his own purposes. This must be felt to be believed, and
I only call attention to it here lest it should be supposed that it
has failed to impress me.