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THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
JOHN RUSKIN
STONES OF VENICE
VOLUME III
GIOTTO
LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
HARBOURS OF ENGLAND
A JOY FOREVER
NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
NEW YORK CHICAGO
THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
JOHN RUSKIN
VOLUME X
GIOTTO AND HIS WORKS
LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
THE HARBORS OF ENGLAND
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART (A JOY FOREVER)
GIOTTO
AND HIS WORKS IN PADUA
BEING
AN EXPLANATORY NOTICE OF THE SERIES OF
WOODCUTS EXECUTED FOR THE ARUNDEL
SOCIETY AFTER THE FRESCOS IN
THE ARENA CHAPEL
ADVERTISEMENT.
The following notice of Giotto has not been drawn up with any idea of
attempting a history of his life. That history could only be written
after a careful search through the libraries of Italy for all
documents relating to the years during which he worked. I have no time
for such search, or even for the examination of well-known and
published materials; and have therefore merely collected, from the
sources nearest at hand, such information as appeared absolutely
necessary to render the series of Plates now published by the Arundel
Society intelligible and interesting to those among its Members who
have not devoted much time to the examination of mediæval works. I
have prefixed a few remarks on the relation of the art of Giotto to
former and subsequent efforts; which I hope may be useful in
preventing the general reader from either looking for what the painter
never intended to give, or missing the points to which his endeavours
were really directed.
J.R.
GIOTTO
AND HIS WORKS IN PADUA.
Towards the close of the thirteenth century, Enrico Scrovegno, a noble
Paduan, purchased, in his native city, the remains of the Roman
Amphitheatre or Arena from the family of the Delesmanini, to whom
those remains had been granted by the Emperor Henry III. of Germany in
1090. For the power of making this purchase, Scrovegno was in all
probability indebted to his father, Reginald, who, for his avarice, is
placed by Dante in the seventh circle of the _Inferno_, and regarded
apparently as the chief of the usurers there, since he is the only one
who addresses Dante.[1] The son, having possessed himself of the
Roman ruin, or of the site which it had occupied, built himself a
fortified palace upon the ground, and a chapel dedicated to the
Annunciate Virgin.
[Footnote 1:
"Noting the visages of some who lay
Beneath the pelting of that dolorous fire,
One of them all I knew not; but perceived
That pendent from his neck each bore a pouch,
With colours and with emblems various marked,
On which it seemed as if their eye did feed.
And when amongst them looking round I came,
A yellow purse I saw, with azure wrought,
That wore a lion's countenance and port.
Then, still my sight pursuing its career,
Another I beheld, than blood more red,
A goose display of whiter wing than curd.
_And one who bore a fat and azure swine
Pictured on his white scrip, addressed me thus:_
What dost thou in this deep? Go now and know,
Since yet thou livest, that my neighbour here,
Vitaliano, on my left shall sit.
A Paduan with these Florentines am I.
Ofttimes they thunder in mine ears, exclaiming,
Oh! haste that noble knight, he who the pouch
With the three goats will bring. This said, he writhed
The mouth, and lolled the tongue out, like an ox
That licks his nostrils."
_Canto_ xvii.
This passage of Cary's Dante is not quite so clear as that
translator's work usually is. "One of them all I knew not" is an
awkward periphrasis for "I knew none of them." Dante's indignant
expression of the effect of avarice in withering away distinctions of
character, and the prophecy of Scrovegno, that his neighbor Vitaliano,
then living, should soon be with him, to sit on his left hand, is
rendered a little obscure by the transposition of the word "here."
Cary has also been afraid of the excessive homeliness of Dante's
imagery; "whiter wing than curd" being in the original "whiter than
butter." The attachment of the purse to the neck, as a badge of shame,
in the _Inferno_, is found before Dante's time; as, for instance, in
the windows of Bourges cathedral (see Plate iii. of MM. Martin and
Cahier's beautiful work). And the building of the Arena Chapel by the
son, as a kind of atonement for the avarice of the father, is very
characteristic of the period, in which the use of money for the
building of churches was considered just as meritorious as its unjust
accumulation was criminal. I have seen, in a MS. Church-service of the
thirteenth century, an illumination representing Church-Consecration,
illustrating the words, "Fundata est domus Domini supra verticem
montium," surrounded for the purpose of contrast, by a grotesque,
consisting of a picture of a miser's death-bed, a demon drawing his
soul out of his mouth, while his attendants are searching in his
chests for his treasures.]
This chapel, built in or about the year 1303,[2] appears to have been
intended to replace one which had long existed on the spot; and in
which, from the year 1278, an annual festival had been held on
Lady-day, in which the Annunciation was represented in the manner of
our English mysteries (and under the same title: "una sacra
rappresentazione di quel _mistero_"), with dialogue, and music both
vocal and instrumental. Scrovegno's purchase of the ground could not
be allowed to interfere with the national custom; but he is reported
by some writers to have rebuilt the chapel with greater costliness,
in order, as far as possible, to efface the memory of his father's
unhappy life. But Federici, in his history of the Cavalieri Godenti,
supposes that Scrovegno was a member of that body, and was assisted by
them in decorating the new edifice. The order of Cavalieri Godenti was
instituted in the beginning of the thirteenth century, to defend the
"existence," as Selvatico states it, but more accurately the dignity,
of the Virgin, against the various heretics by whom it was beginning
to be assailed. Her knights were first called Cavaliers of St. Mary;
but soon increased in power and riches to such a degree, that, from
their general habits of life, they received the nickname of the "Merry
Brothers." Federici gives forcible reasons for his opinion that the
Arena Chapel was employed in the ceremonies of their order; and Lord
Lindsay observes, that the fulness with which the history of the
Virgin is recounted on its walls, adds to the plausibility of his
supposition.
[Footnote 2: For these historical details I am chiefly indebted to the
very careful treatise of Selvatico, _Sulla Cappellina degli Scrovegni
nell'Arena di Padova_. Padua, 1836.]
Enrico Scrovegno was, however, towards the close of his life, driven
into exile, and died at Venice in 1320. But he was buried in the
chapel he had built; and has one small monument in the sacristy, as
the founder of the building, in which he is represented under a Gothic
niche, standing, with his hands clasped and his eyes raised; while
behind the altar is his tomb, on which, as usual at the period, is a
recumbent statue of him. The chapel itself may not unwarrantably be
considered as one of the first efforts of Popery in resistance of the
Reformation: for the Reformation, though not victorious till the
sixteenth, began in reality in the thirteenth century; and the
remonstrances of such bishops as our own Grossteste, the martyrdoms of
the Albigenses in the Dominican crusades, and the murmurs of those
"heretics" against whose aspersions of the majesty of the Virgin this
chivalrous order of the Cavalieri Godenti was instituted, were as
truly the signs of the approach of a new era in religion, as the
opponent work of Giotto on the walls of the Arena was a sign of the
approach of a new era in art.
The chapel having been founded, as stated above, in 1303, Giotto
appears to have been summoned to decorate its interior walls about
the year 1306,--summoned, as being at that time the acknowledged
master of painting in Italy. By what steps he had risen to this
unquestioned eminence it is difficult to trace; for the records of his
life, strictly examined, and freed from the verbiage and conjecture of
artistical history, nearly reduce themselves to a list of the cities
of Italy where he painted, and to a few anecdotes, of little meaning
in themselves, and doubly pointless in the fact of most of them being
inheritances of the whole race of painters, and related successively
of all in whose biographies the public have deigned to take an
interest. There is even question as to the date of his birth; Vasari
stating him to have been born in 1276, while Baldinucci, on the
internal evidence derived from Vasari's own narrative, throws the date
back ten years.[3] I believe, however, that Vasari is most probably
accurate in his first main statement; and that his errors, always
numerous, are in the subsequent and minor particulars. It is at least
undoubted truth that Giotto was born, and passed the years of
childhood, at Vespignano, about fourteen miles north of Florence, on
the road to Bologna. Few travellers can forget the peculiar landscape
of that district of the Apennine. As they ascend the hill which rises
from Florence to the lowest break in the ridge of Fiesole, they pass
continually beneath the walls of villas bright in perfect luxury, and
beside cypress-hedges, enclosing fair terraced gardens, where the
masses of oleander and magnolia, motionless as leaves in a picture,
inlay alternately upon the blue sky their branching lightness of pale
rose-colour, and deep green breadth of shade, studded with balls of
budding silver, and showing at intervals through their framework of
rich leaf and rubied flower, the far-away bends of the Arno beneath
its slopes of olive, and the purple peaks of the Carrara mountains,
tossing themselves against the western distance, where the streaks of
motionless cloud burn above the Pisan sea. The traveller passes the
Fiesolan ridge, and all is changed. The country is on a sudden
lonely. Here and there indeed are seen the scattered houses of a farm
grouped gracefully upon the hill-sides,--here and there a fragment of
tower upon a distant rock; but neither gardens, nor flowers, nor
glittering palace-walls, only a grey extent of mountain-ground, tufted
irregularly with ilex and olive: a scene not sublime, for its forms
are subdued and low; not desolate, for its valleys are full of sown
fields and tended pastures; not rich nor lovely, but sunburnt and
sorrowful; becoming wilder every instant as the road winds into its
recesses, ascending still, until the higher woods, now partly oak and
partly pine, drooping back from the central crest of the Apennine,
leave a pastoral wilderness of scathed rock and arid grass, withered
away here by frost, and there by strange lambent tongues of earth-fed
fire.[4] Giotto passed the first ten years of his life, a
shepherd-boy, among these hills; was found by Cimabue near his native
village, drawing one of his sheep upon a smooth stone; was yielded up
by his father, "a simple person, a labourer of the earth," to the
guardianship of the painter, who, by his own work, had already made
the streets of Florence ring with joy; attended him to Florence, and
became his disciple.
[Footnote 3: Lord Lindsay, _Christian Art_, vol. ii. p. 166.]
[Footnote 4: At Pietra Mala. The flames rise two or three feet above
the stony ground out of which they spring, white and fierce enough to
be visible in the intense rays even of the morning sun.]
We may fancy the glance of the boy, when he and Cimabue stood side by
side on the ridge of Fiesole, and for the first time he saw the
flowering thickets of the Val d'Arno; and deep beneath, the
innumerable towers of the City of the Lily, the depths of his own
heart yet hiding the fairest of them all. Another ten years passed
over him, and he was chosen from among the painters of Italy to
decorate the Vatican.
The account given us by Vasari of the mode of his competition on this
occasion, is one of the few anecdotes of him which seem to be
authentic (especially as having given rise to an Italian proverb), and
it has also great point and value. I translate Vasari's words
literally.
"This work (his paintings in the Campo Santo of Pisa) acquired for
him, both in the city and externally, so much fame, that the Pope,
Benedict IX., sent a certain one of his courtiers into Tuscany, to see
what sort of a man Giotto was, and what was the quality of his works,
he (the pope) intending to have some paintings executed in St.
Peter's; which courtier, coming to see Giotto, and hearing that there
were other masters in Florence who excelled in painting and in mosaic,
spoke, in Siena, to many masters; then, having received drawings from
them, he came to Florence; and having gone one morning into Giotto's
shop as he was at work, explained the pope's mind to him, and in what
way he wished to avail himself of his powers, and finally requested
from him a little piece of drawing to send to his Holiness. Giotto,
who was most courteous, took a leaf (of vellum?), and upon this, with
a brush dipped in red, fixing his arm to his side, to make it as the
limb of a pair of compasses, and turning his hand, made a circle so
perfect in measure and outline, that it was a wonder to see: which
having done, he said to the courtier, with a smile, 'There is the
drawing.' He, thinking himself mocked, said, 'Shall I have no other
drawing than this?' 'This is enough, and too much,' answered Giotto;
'send it with the others: you will see if it will be understood.' The
ambassador, seeing that he could not get any thing else, took his
leave with small satisfaction, doubting whether he had not been made a
jest of. However, when he sent to the pope the other drawings, and the
names of those who had made them, he sent also that of Giotto,
relating the way in which he had held himself in drawing his circle,
without moving his arm, and without compasses. Whence the pope, and
many intelligent courtiers, knew how much Giotto overpassed in
excellence all the other painters of his time. Afterwards, the thing
becoming known, the proverb arose from it: 'Thou art rounder than the
O of Giotto;' which it is still in custom to say to men of the grosser
clay; for the proverb is pretty, not only on account of the accident
of its origin, but because it has a double meaning, 'round' being
taken in Tuscany to express not only circular form, but slowness and
grossness of wit."
Such is the account of Vasari, which, at the first reading, might be
gravely called into question, seeing that the paintings at Pisa, to
which he ascribes the sudden extent of Giotto's reputation, have been
proved to be the work of Francesco da Volterra;[5] and since,
moreover, Vasari has even mistaken the name of the pope, and written
Boniface IX. for Boniface VIII. But the story itself must, I think, be
true; and, rightly understood, it is singularly interesting. I say,
rightly understood; for Lord Lindsay supposes the circle to have been
mechanically drawn by turning the sheet of vellum under the hand, as
now constantly done for the sake of speed at schools. But neither do
Vasari's words bear this construction, nor would the drawing so made
have borne the slightest testimony to Giotto's power. Vasari says
distinctly, "and turning his hand" (or, as I should rather read it,
"with a sweep of his hand") not "turning the vellum;" neither would a
circle produced in so mechanical a manner have borne distinct witness
to any thing except the draughtsman's mechanical ingenuity; and Giotto
had too much common sense, and too much courtesy, to send the pope a
drawing which did not really contain the evidence he required. Lord
Lindsay has been misled also by his own careless translation of
"pennello tinto di rosso" ("a _brush_ dipped in red,") by the word
"crayon." It is easy to draw the mechanical circle with a crayon, but
by no means easy with a brush. I have not the slightest doubt that
Giotto drew the circle as a painter naturally would draw it; that is
to say, that he set the vellum upright on the wall or panel before
him, and then steadying his arm firmly against his side, drew the
circular line with one sweeping but firm revolution of his hand,
holding the brush long. Such a feat as this is completely possible to
a well-disciplined painter's hand, but utterly impossible to any
other; and the circle so drawn, was the most convincing proof Giotto
could give of his decision of eye and perfectness of practice.
[Footnote 5: At least Lord Lindsay seems to consider the evidence
collected by Förster on this subject conclusive. _Christian Art_, vol.
ii. p. 168.]
Still, even when thus understood, there is much in the anecdote very
curious. Here is a painter requested by the head of the Church to
execute certain religious paintings, and the only qualification for
the task of which he deigns to demonstrate his possession is executive
skill. Nothing is said, and nothing appears to be thought, of
expression, or invention, or devotional sentiment. Nothing is required
but firmness of hand. And here arises the important question: Did
Giotto know that this was all that was looked for by his religious
patrons? and is there occult satire in the example of his art which he
sends them?--or does the founder of sacred painting mean to tell us
that he holds his own power to consist merely in firmness of hand,
secured by long practice? I cannot satisfy myself on this point: but
yet it seems to me that we may safely gather two conclusions from the
words of the master, "It is enough, and more than enough." The first,
that Giotto had indeed a profound feeling of the value of _precision_
in all art; and that we may use the full force of his authority to
press the truth, of which it is so difficult to persuade the hasty
workmen of modern times, that the difference between right and wrong
lies within the breadth of a line; and that the most perfect power and
genius are shown by the accuracy which disdains error, and the
faithfulness which fears it.
And the second conclusion is, that whatever Giotto's imaginative
powers might be, he was proud to be a good _workman_, and willing to
be considered by others only as such. There might lurk, as has been
suggested, some satire in the message to the pope, and some
consciousness in his own mind of faculties higher than those of
draughtsmanship. I cannot tell how far these hidden feelings existed;
but the more I see of living artists, and learn of departed ones, the
more I am convinced that the highest strength of genius is generally
marked by strange unconsciousness of its own modes of operation, and
often by no small scorn of the best results of its exertion. The
inferior mind intently watches its own processes, and dearly values
its own produce; the master-mind is intent on other things than
itself, and cares little for the fruits of a toil which it is apt to
undertake rather as a law of life than a means of immortality. It will
sing at a feast, or retouch an old play, or paint a dark wall, for its
daily bread, anxious only to be honest in its fulfilment of its
pledges or its duty, and careless that future ages will rank it among
the gods.
I think it unnecessary to repeat here any other of the anecdotes
commonly related of Giotto, as, separately taken, they are quite
valueless. Yet much may be gathered from their general _tone_. It is
remarkable that they are, almost without exception, records of
good-humoured jests, involving or illustrating some point of practical
good sense; and by comparing this general colour of the reputation of
Giotto with the actual character of his designs, there cannot remain
the smallest doubt that his mind was one of the most healthy, kind,
and active, that ever informed a human frame. His love of beauty was
entirely free from weakness; his love of truth untinged by severity;
his industry constant, without impatience; his workmanship accurate,
without formalism; his temper serene, and yet playful; his imagination
exhaustless, without extravagance; and his faith firm, without
superstition. I do not know, in the annals of art, such another
example of happy, practical, unerring, and benevolent power.
I am certain that this is the estimate of his character which must be
arrived at by an attentive study of his works, and of the few data
which remain respecting his life; but I shall not here endeavour to
give proof of its truth, because I believe the subject has been
exhaustively treated by Rumohr and Förster, whose essays on the works
and character of Giotto will doubtless be translated into English, as
the interest of the English public in mediæval art increases. I shall
therefore here only endeavour briefly to sketch the relation which
Giotto held to the artists who preceded and followed him, a relation
still imperfectly understood; and then, as briefly, to indicate the
general course of his labours in Italy, as far as may be necessary for
understanding the value of the series in the Arena Chapel.
The art of Europe, between the fifth and thirteenth centuries, divides
itself essentially into great branches, one springing from, the other
grafted on, the old Roman stock. The first is the Roman art itself,
prolonged in a languid and degraded condition, and becoming at last a
mere formal system, centered at the feet of Eastern empire, and thence
generally called Byzantine. The other is the barbarous and incipient
art of the Gothic nations, more or less coloured by Roman or Byzantine
influence, and gradually increasing in life and power.
Generally speaking, the Byzantine art, although manifesting itself
only in perpetual repetitions, becoming every day more cold and
formal, yet preserved reminiscences of design originally noble, and
traditions of execution originally perfect.
Generally speaking, the Gothic art, although becoming every day more
powerful, presented the most ludicrous experiments of infantile
imagination, and the most rude efforts of untaught manipulation.
Hence, if any superior mind arose in Byzantine art, it had before it
models which suggested or recorded a perfection they did not
themselves possess; and the superiority of the individual mind would
probably be shown in a more sincere and living treatment of the
subjects ordained for repetition by the canons of the schools.
In the art of the Goth, the choice of subject was unlimited, and the
style of design so remote from all perfection, as not always even to
point out clearly the direction in which advance could be made. The
strongest minds which appear in that art are therefore generally
manifested by redundance of imagination, and sudden refinement of
touch, whether of pencil or chisel, together with unexpected starts of
effort or flashes of knowledge in accidental directions, gradually
forming various national styles.
Of these comparatively independent branches of art, the greatest is,
as far as I know, the French sculpture of the thirteenth century. No
words can give any idea of the magnificent redundance of its
imaginative power, or of the perpetual beauty of even its smallest
incidental designs. But this very richness of sculptural invention
prevented the French from cultivating their powers of painting, except
in illumination (of which art they were the acknowledged masters), and
in glass-painting. Their exquisite gift of fretting their stone-work
with inexhaustible wealth of sculpture, prevented their feeling the
need of figure-design on coloured surfaces.
The style of architecture prevalent in Italy at the same period,
presented, on the contrary, large blank surfaces, which could only be
rendered interesting by covering them with mosaic or painting.
The Italians were not at the time capable of doing this for
themselves, and mosaicists were brought from Constantinople, who
covered the churches of Italy with a sublime monotony of Byzantine
traditions. But the Gothic blood was burning in the Italian veins; and
the Florentines and Pisans could not rest content in the formalism of
the Eastern splendour. The first innovator was, I believe, Giunta of
Pisa, the second Cimabue, the third Giotto; the last only being a man
of power enough to effect a complete revolution in the artistic
principles of his time.
He, however, began, like his master Cimabue, with a perfect respect
for his Byzantine models; and his paintings for a long time consisted
only of repetitions of the Byzantine subjects, softened in treatment,
enriched in number of figures, and enlivened in gesture. Afterwards he
invented subjects of his own. The manner and degree of the changes
which he at first effected could only be properly understood by actual
comparison of his designs with the Byzantine originals;[6] but in
default of the means of such a comparison, it may be generally stated
that the innovations of Giotto consisted in the introduction, A, of
gayer or lighter colours; B, of broader masses; and, C, of more
careful imitation of nature than existed in the works of his
predecessors.
[Footnote 6: It might not, I think, be a work unworthy of the Arundel
Society, to collect and engrave in outline the complete series of
these Byzantine originals of the subjects of the Arena Chapel, in
order to facilitate this comparison. The Greek MSS. in the British
Museum would, I think, be amply sufficient; the Harleian MS. numbered
1810 alone furnishing a considerable number of subjects, and
especially a Death of the Virgin, with the St. John thrown into the
peculiar and violent gesture of grief afterwards adopted by Giotto in
the Entombment of the Arena Chapel.]
A. _Greater lightness of colour._ This was partly in compliance with a
tendency which was beginning to manifest itself even before Giotto's
time. Over the whole of northern Europe, the colouring of the eleventh
and early twelfth centuries had been pale: in manuscripts, principally
composed of pale red, green, and yellow, blue being sparingly
introduced (earlier still, in the eighth and ninth centuries, the
letters had often been coloured with black and yellow only). Then, in
the close of the twelfth and throughout the thirteenth century, the
great system of perfect colour was in use; solemn and deep; composed
strictly, in all its leading masses, of the colours revealed by God
from Sinai as the noblest;--blue, purple, and scarlet, with gold
(other hues, chiefly green, with white and black, being used in points
or small masses, to relieve the main colours). In the early part of
the fourteenth century the colours begin to grow paler; about 1330 the
style is already completely modified; and at the close of the
fourteenth century the colour is quite pale and delicate.
I have not carefully examined the colouring of early Byzantine work;
but it seems always to have been comparatively dark, and in
manuscripts is remarkably so; Giotto's paler colouring, therefore,
though only part of the great European system, was rendered notable by
its stronger contrast with the Byzantine examples.
B. _Greater breadth of mass._ It had been the habit of the Byzantines
to break up their draperies by a large number of minute folds. Norman
and Romanesque sculpture showed much of the same character. Giotto
melted all these folds into broad masses of colour; so that his
compositions have sometimes almost a Titianesque look in this
particular. This innovation was a healthy one, and led to very noble
results when followed up by succeeding artists: but in many of
Giotto's compositions the figures become ludicrously cumbrous, from
the exceeding simplicity of the terminal lines, and massiveness of
unbroken form. The manner was copied in illuminated manuscripts with
great disadvantage, as it was unfavourable to minute ornamentation.
The French never adopted it in either branch of art, nor did any other
Northern school; minute and sharp folds of the robes remaining
characteristic of Northern (more especially of Flemish and German)
design down to the latest times, giving a great superiority to the
French and Flemish illuminated work, and causing a proportionate
inferiority in their large pictorial efforts. Even Rubens and Vandyke
cannot free themselves from a certain meanness and minuteness in
disposition of drapery.
C. _Close imitation of nature._ In this one principle lay Giotto's
great strength, and the entire secret of the revolution he effected.
It was not by greater learning, not 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. Giotto was to his contemporaries
precisely what Millais is to _his_ contemporaries,--a daring
naturalist, in defiance of tradition, idealism, and formalism. The
Giottesque movement in the fourteenth, and Pre-Raphaelite movement in
the nineteenth centuries, are precisely similar in bearing and
meaning: both being the protests of vitality against mortality, of
spirit against letter, and of truth against tradition: and both, which
is the more singular, literally links in one unbroken chain of
feeling; for exactly as Niccola Pisano and Giotto were helped by the
classical sculptures discovered in their time, the Pre-Raphaelites
have been helped by the works of Niccola and Giotto at Pisa and
Florence: and thus the fiery cross of truth has been delivered from
spirit to spirit, over the dust of intervening generations.
But what, it may be said by the reader, is the use of the works of
Giotto to _us_? They may indeed have been wonderful for their time,
and of infinite use in that time; but since, after Giotto, came
Leonardo and Correggio, what is the use of going back to the ruder
art, and republishing it in the year 1854? Why should we fret
ourselves to dig down to the root of the tree, when we may at once
enjoy its fruit and foliage? I answer, first, that in all matters
relating to human intellect, it is a great thing to have hold of the
root: that at least we ought to see it, and taste it, and handle it;
for it often happens that the root is wholesome when the leaves,
however fair, are useless or poisonous. In nine cases out of ten, the
first expression of an idea is the most valuable: the idea may
afterward be polished and softened, and made more attractive to the
general eye; but the first expression of it has a freshness and
brightness, like the flash of a native crystal compared to the lustre
of glass that has been melted and cut. And in the second place, we
ought to measure the value of art less by its executive than by its
moral power. Giotto was not indeed one of the most accomplished
painters, but he was one of the greatest men, who ever lived. He was
the first master of his time, in architecture as well as in painting;
he was the friend of Dante, and the undisputed interpreter of
religious truth, by means of painting, over the whole of Italy. The
works of such a man may not be the best to set before children in
order to teach them drawing; but they assuredly should be studied with
the greatest care by all who are interested in the history of the
human mind.
One point more remains to be noticed respecting him. As far as I am
aware, he never painted profane subjects. All his important existing
works are exclusively devoted to the illustration of Christianity.
This was not a result of his own peculiar feeling or determination; it
was a necessity of the period. Giotto appears to have considered
himself simply as a workman, at the command of any employer, for any
kind of work, however humble. "In the sixty-third novel of Franco
Sacchetti we read that a stranger, suddenly entering Giotto's study,
threw down a shield, and departed, saying, 'Paint me my arms on that
shield.' Giotto looking after him, exclaimed, 'Who is he? What is he?
He says, "Paint me my arms," as if he was one of the BARDI. What arms
does he bear?'"[7] But at the time of Giotto's eminence, art was never
employed on a great scale except in the service of religion; nor has
it ever been otherwise employed, except in declining periods. I do not
mean to draw any severe conclusion from this fact; but it is a fact
nevertheless, which ought to be very distinctly stated, and very
carefully considered. All _progressive_ art hitherto has been
religious art; and commencements of the periods of decline are
accurately marked, in illumination, by its employment on romances
instead of psalters; and in painting, by its employment on mythology
or profane history instead of sacred history. Yet perhaps I should
rather have said, on _heathen mythology_ instead of _Christian
mythology_; for this latter term--first used, I believe, by Lord
Lindsay--is more applicable to the subjects of the early painters than
that of "sacred _history_." Of all the virtues commonly found in the
higher orders of human mind, that of a stern and just respect for
truth seems to be the rarest; so that while self-denial, and courage,
and charity, and religious zeal, are displayed in their utmost degrees
by myriads of saints and heroes, it is only once in a century that a
man appears whose word may be implicitly trusted, and who, in the
relation of a plain fact, will not allow his prejudices or his
pleasure to tempt him to some colouring or distortion of it. Hence the
portions of sacred history which have been the constant subjects of
fond popular contemplation have, in the lapse of ages, been encumbered
with fictitious detail; and their various historians seem to have
considered the exercise of their imagination innocent, and even
meritorious, if they could increase either the vividness of conception
or the sincerity of belief in their readers. A due consideration of
that well-known weakness of the popular mind, which renders a
statement credible in proportion to the multitude of local and
circumstantial details which accompany it, may lead us to look with
some indulgence on the errors, however fatal in their issue to the
cause they were intended to advance, of those weak teachers, who
thought the acceptance of their general statements of Christian
doctrine cheaply won by the help of some simple (and generally absurd)
inventions of detail respecting the life of the Virgin or the
Apostles.
[Footnote 7: Notes to Rogers' _Italy_.]
Indeed, I can hardly imagine the Bible to be ever read with true
interest, unless, in our reading, we feel some longing for further
knowledge of the minute incidents of the life of Christ,--for some
records of those things, which "if they had been written every one,"
the world could not have contained the books that should be written:
and they who have once felt this thirst for further truth, may surely
both conceive and pardon the earnest questioning of simple disciples
(who knew not, as we do, how much had been indeed revealed), and
measure with some justice the strength of the temptation which
betrayed these teachers into adding to the word of Revelation.
Together with this specious and subtle influence, we must allow for
the instinct of imagination exerting itself in the acknowledged
embellishment of beloved truths. If we reflect how much, even in this
age of accurate knowledge, the visions of Milton have become confused
in the minds of many persons with scriptural facts, we shall rather be
surprised, that in an age of legends so little should be added to the
Bible, than that occasionally we should be informed of important
circumstances in sacred history with the collateral warning, "This
Moses spake not of."[8]
[Footnote 8: These words are gravely added to some singular
particulars respecting the life of Adam, related in a MS. of the
sixteenth century preserved in the Herald's College.]
More especially in the domain of painting, it is surprising to see how
strictly the early workmen confined themselves to representations of
the same series of scenes; how little of pictorial embellishment they
usually added; and how, even in the positions and gestures of figures,
they strove to give the idea rather of their having seen the _fact_,
than imagined a picturesque treatment of it. Often, in examining early
art, we mistake conscientiousness for servility, and attribute to the
absence of invention what was indeed the result of the earnestness of
faith.
Nor, in a merely artistical point of view, is it less important to
note, that the greatest advance in power was made when painters had
few subjects to treat. The day has perhaps come when genius should be
shown in the discovery of perpetually various interest amidst the
incidents of actual life; and the absence of inventive capacity is
very assuredly proved by the narrow selection of subjects which
commonly appear on the walls of our exhibitions. But yet it is to be
always remembered, that more originality may be shown in giving
interest to a well-known subject than in discovering a new one; that
the greatest poets whom the world has seen have been contented to
retouch and exalt the creations of their predecessors; and that the
painters of the middle ages reached their utmost power by unweariedly
treading a narrow circle of sacred subjects.
Nothing is indeed more notable in the history of art than the exact
balance of its point of excellence, in all things, midway between
servitude and license. Thus, in choice and treatment of subject it
became paralysed among the Byzantines, by being mercilessly confined
to a given series of scenes, and to a given mode of representing them.
Giotto gave it partial liberty and incipient life; by the artists who
succeeded him the range of its scenery was continually extended, and
the severity of its style slowly softened to perfection. But the range
was still, in some degree, limited by the necessity of its continual
subordination to religious purposes; and the style, though softened,
was still chaste, and though tender, self-restrained. At last came the
period of license: the artist chose his subjects from the lowest
scenes of human life, and let loose his passions in their portraiture.
And the kingdom of art passed away.
As if to direct us to the observation of this great law, there is a
curious visible type of it in the progress of ornamentation in
manuscripts, corresponding with the various changes in the higher
branch of art. In the course of the 12th and early 13th centuries, the
ornamentation, though often full of high feeling and fantasy, is
sternly enclosed within limiting border-lines;--at first, severe
squares, oblongs, or triangles. As the grace of the ornamentation
advances, these border-lines are softened and broken into various
curves, and the inner design begins here and there to overpass them.
Gradually this emergence becomes more constant, and the lines which
thus escape throw themselves into curvatures expressive of the most
exquisite concurrence of freedom with self-restraint. At length the
restraint vanishes, the freedom changes consequently into license, and
the page is covered with exuberant, irregular, and foolish
extravagances of leafage and line.
It only remains to be noticed, that the circumstances of the time at
which Giotto appeared were peculiarly favourable to the development of
genius; owing partly to the simplicity of the methods of practice, and
partly to the naïveté with which art was commonly regarded. Giotto,
like all the great painters of the period, was merely a travelling
decorator of walls, at so much a day; having at Florence a _bottega_,
or workshop, for the production and sale of small tempera pictures.
There were no such things as "studios" in those days. An artist's
"studies" were over by the time he was eighteen; after that he was a
_lavoratore_, "labourer," a man who knew his business, and produced
certain works of known value for a known price; being troubled with no
philosophical abstractions, shutting himself up in no wise for the
reception of inspirations; receiving, indeed, a good many, as a matter
of course,--just as he received the sunbeams which came in at his
window, the light which he worked by;--in either case, without
mouthing about it, or much concerning himself as to the nature of it.
Not troubled by critics either; satisfied that his work was well done,
and that people would find it out to be well done; but not vain of it,
nor more profoundly vexed at its being found fault with, than a good
saddler would be by some one's saying his last saddle was uneasy in
the seat. Not, on the whole, much molested by critics, but generally
understood by the men of sense, his neighbours and friends, and
permitted to have his own way with the walls he had to paint, as
being, on the whole, an authority about walls; receiving at the same
time a good deal of daily encouragement and comfort in the simple
admiration of the populace, and in the general sense of having done
good, and painted what no man could look upon without being the better
for it.
Thus he went, a serene labourer, throughout the length and breadth of
Italy. For the first ten years of his life, a shepherd; then a
student, perhaps for five or six; then already in Florence, setting
himself to his life's task; and called as a master to Rome when he was
only twenty. There he painted the principal chapel of St. Peter's, and
worked in mosaic also; no handicrafts, that had colour or form for
their objects, seeming unknown to him. Then returning to Florence, he
painted Dante, about the year 1300,[9] the 35th year of Dante's life,
the 24th of his own; and designed the façade of the Duomo, on the
death of its former architect, Arnolfo. Some six years afterwards he
went to Padua, there painting the chapel which is the subject of our
present study, and many other churches. Thence south again to Assisi,
where he painted half the walls and vaults of the great convent that
stretches itself along the slopes of the Perugian hills, and various
other minor works on his way there and back to Florence. Staying in
his native city but a little while, he engaged himself in other tasks
at Ferrara, Verona, and Ravenna, and at last at Avignon, where he
became acquainted with Petrarch--working there for some three years,
from 1324 to 1327;[10] and then passed rapidly through Florence and
Orvieto on his way to Naples, where "he received the kindest welcome
from the good king Robert. The king, ever partial to men of mind and
genius, took especial delight in Giotto's society, and used frequently
to visit him while working in the Castello dell'Uovo, taking pleasure
in watching his pencil and listening to his discourse; 'and Giotto,'
says Vasari, 'who had ever his repartee and bon-mot ready, held him
there, fascinated at once with the magic of his pencil and pleasantry
of his tongue.' We are not told the length of his sojourn at Naples,
but it must have been for a considerable period, judging from the
quantity of works he executed there. He had certainly returned to
Florence in 1332." There he was immediately appointed "chief master"
of the works of the Duomo, then in progress, "with a yearly salary of
one hundred gold florins, and the privilege of citizenship." He
designed the Campanile, in a more perfect form than that which now
exists; for his intended spire, 150 feet in height, never was erected.
He, however, modelled the bas-reliefs for the base of the building,
and sculptured two of them with his own hand. It was afterwards
completed, with the exception of the spire, according to his design;
but he only saw its foundations laid, and its first marble story rise.
He died at Florence, on the 8th of January, 1337, full of honour;
happy, perhaps, in departing at the zenith of his strength, when his
eye had not become dim, nor his natural force abated. He was buried in
the cathedral, at the angle nearest his campanile; and thus the tower,
which is the chief grace of his native city, may be regarded as his
own sepulchral monument.
[Footnote 9: Lord Lindsay's evidence on this point (_Christian Art_,
vol. ii. p. 174) seems quite conclusive. It is impossible to overrate
the value of the work of Giotto in the Bargello, both for its own
intrinsic beauty, and as being executed in this year, which is not
only that in which the Divina Commedia opens, but, as I think, the
culminating period in the history of the art of the middle ages.]
[Footnote 10: _Christian Art_, vol. ii. p. 242.]
I may refer the reader to the close of Lord Lindsay's letter on
Giotto,[11] from which I have drawn most of the particulars above
stated, for a very beautiful sketch of his character and his art. Of
the real rank of that art, in the abstract, I do not feel myself
capable of judging accurately, having not seen his finest works (at
Assisi and Naples), nor carefully studied even those at Florence. But
I may be permitted to point out one or two peculiar characteristics in
it which have always struck me forcibly.
[Footnote 11: _Christian Art_, p. 260.]
In the first place, Giotto never finished highly. He was not, indeed,
a loose or sketchy painter, but he was by no means a delicate one. His
lines, as the story of the circle would lead us to expect, are always
firm, but they are never fine. Even in his smallest tempera pictures
the touch is bold and somewhat heavy: in his fresco work the handling
is much broader than that of contemporary painters, corresponding
somewhat to the character of many of the figures, representing plain,
masculine kind of people, and never reaching any thing like the ideal
refinement of the conceptions even of Benozzo Gozzoli, far less of
Angelico or Francia. For this reason, the character of his painting is
better expressed by bold wood-engravings than in general it is likely
to be by any other means.
Again, he was a very noble colourist; and in his peculiar feeling for
breadth of hue resembled Titian more than any other of the Florentine
school. That is to say, had he been born two centuries later, when the
art of painting was fully known, I believe he would have treated his
subjects much more like Titian than like Raphael; in fact, the
frescoes of Titian in the chapel beside the church of St. Antonio at
Padua, are, in all technical qualities, and in many of their
conceptions, almost exactly what I believe Giotto would have done, had
he lived in Titian's time. As it was, he of course never attained
either richness or truth of colour; but in serene brilliancy he is not
easily rivalled; invariably massing his hues in large fields, limiting
them firmly, and then filling them with subtle gradation. He had the
Venetian fondness for bars and stripes, not unfrequently casting
barred colours obliquely across the draperies of an upright figure,
from side to side (as very notably in the dress of one of the
musicians who are playing to the dancing of Herodias' daughter, in one
of his frescoes at Santa Croce); and this predilection was mingled
with the truly mediæval love of _quartering_.[12] The figure of the
Madonna in the small tempera pictures in the Academy at Florence is
always completely divided into two narrow segments by her dark-blue
robe.
[Footnote 12: I use this heraldic word in an inaccurate sense, knowing
no other that will express what I mean,--the division of the picture
into quaint segments of alternating colour, more marked than any of
the figure outlines.]