upon the couch, in order herself to assist in laying the Child down.
Giotto is in this exactly faithful to the scriptural words: "_She_
wrapped the Child in swaddling-clothes, and _laid_ Him in a manger."
Joseph sits beneath in meditation; above, the angels, all exulting,
and, as it were, confused with joy, flutter and circle in the air like
birds,--three looking up to the Father's throne with praise and
thankfulness, one stooping to adore the Prince of Peace, one flying to
tell the shepherds. There is something to me peculiarly affecting in
this disorder of theirs; even angels, as it were, breaking their ranks
with wonder, and not knowing how to utter their gladness and passion
of praise. There is noticeable here, as in all works of this early
time, a certain confidence in the way in which the angels trust to
their wings, very characteristic of a period of bold and simple
conception. Modern science has taught us that a wing cannot be
anatomically joined to a shoulder; and in proportion as painters
approach more and more to the scientific, as distinguished from the
contemplative state of mind, they put the wings of their angels on
more timidly, and dwell with greater emphasis upon the human form, and
with less upon the wings, until these last become a species of
decorative appendage,--a mere _sign_ of an angel. But in Giotto's time
an angel was a complete creature, as much believed in as a bird; and
the way in which it would or might cast itself into the air, and lean
hither and thither upon its plumes, was as naturally apprehended as
the manner of flight of a chough or a starling. Hence Dante's simple
and most exquisite synonym for angel, "Bird of God;" and hence also a
variety and picturesqueness in the expression of the movements of the
heavenly hierarchies by the earlier painters, ill replaced by the
powers of foreshortening, and throwing naked limbs into fantastic
positions, which appear in the cherubic groups of later times.
It is needless to point out the frank association of the two
events,--the Nativity, and appearance of the Angel to the Shepherds.
They are constantly thus joined; but I do not remember any other
example in which they are joined so boldly. Usually the shepherds are
seen in the distance, or are introduced in some ornamental border, or
other inferior place. The view of painting as a mode of suggesting
relative or consecutive thoughts, rather than a realisation of any one
scene, is seldom so fearlessly asserted, even by Giotto, as here, in
placing the flocks of the shepherds at the foot of the Virgin's bed.
This bed, it will be noticed, is on a shelf of rock. This is in
compliance with the idea founded on the Protevangelion and the
apocryphal book known as the Gospel of Infancy, that our Saviour was
born in a cave, associated with the scriptural statement that He was
laid in a manger, of which the apocryphal gospels do not speak.
The vain endeavour to exalt the awe of the moment of the Saviour's
birth has turned, in these gospels, the outhouse of the inn into a
species of subterranean chapel, full of incense and candles. "It was
after sunset, when the old woman (the midwife), and Joseph with her,
reached the cave; and they both went into it. And behold, it was all
filled with light, greater than the light of lamps and candles, and
greater than the light of the sun itself." (Infancy, i. 9.) "Then a
bright cloud overshadowed the cave, and the midwife said: This day my
soul is magnified." (Protevangelion, xiv. 10.) The thirteenth chapter
of the Protevangelion is, however, a little more skilful in this
attempt at exaltation. "And leaving her and his sons in the cave,
Joseph went forth to seek a Hebrew midwife in the village of
Bethlehem. But as I was going, said Joseph, I looked up into the air,
and I saw the clouds astonished, and the fowls of the air stopping in
the midst of their flight. And I looked down towards the earth and saw
a table spread, and working-people sitting around it; but their hands
were on the table, and they did not move to eat. But all their faces
were fixed upwards." (Protevangelion, xiii. 1-7.)
It would, of course, be absurd to endeavour to institute any
comparison between the various pictures of this subject, innumerable
as they are; but I must at least deprecate Lord Lindsay's
characterising this design of Giotto's merely as the "Byzantine
composition." It contains, indeed, nothing more than the materials of
the Byzantine composition; but I know no Byzantine Nativity which at
all resembles it in the grace and life of its action. And, for full a
century after Giotto's time, in northern Europe, the Nativity was
represented in a far more conventional manner than this; usually only
the heads of the ox and ass are seen, and they are arranging, or
holding with their mouths, the drapery of the couch of the Child; who
is not being laid in it by the Virgin, but raised upon a kind of
tablet high above her in the centre of the group. All these early
designs, without exception, however, agree in expressing a certain
degree of languor in the figure of the Virgin, and in making her
recumbent on the bed. It is not till the fifteenth century that she is
represented as exempt from suffering, and immediately kneeling in
adoration before the Child.
* * * * *
XVII.
THE WISE MEN'S OFFERING.
This is a subject which has been so great a favourite with the
painters of later periods, and on which so much rich incidental
invention has been lavished, that Giotto's rendering of it cannot but
be felt to be barren. It is, in fact, perhaps the least powerful of
all the series; and its effect is further marred by what Lord Lindsay
has partly noted, the appearance--perhaps accidental, but if so,
exceedingly unskilful--of matronly corpulence in the figure of the
Madonna. The unfortunate failure in the representation of the legs and
chests of the camels, and the awkwardness of the attempt to render the
action of kneeling in the foremost king, put the whole composition
into the class--not in itself an uninteresting one--of the slips or
shortcomings of great masters. One incident in it only is worth
observing. In other compositions of this time, and in many later ones,
the kings are generally presenting their offerings themselves, and the
Child takes them in His hand, or smiles at them. The painters who
thought this an undignified conception left the presents in the hands
of the attendants of the Magi. But Giotto considers how presents
would be received by an actual king; and as what has been offered to a
monarch is delivered to the care of his attendants, Giotto puts a
waiting angel to receive the gifts, as not worthy to be placed in the
hands of the Infant.
* * * * *
XVIII.
THE PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE.
This design is one of those which are peculiarly characteristic of
Giotto as the head of the Naturalisti.[21] No painter before his time
would have dared to represent the Child Jesus as desiring to quit the
arms of Simeon, or the Virgin as in some sort interfering with the
prophet's earnest contemplation of the Child by stretching her arms to
receive Him. The idea is evidently a false one, quite unworthy of the
higher painters of the religious school; and it is a matter of
peculiar interest to see what must have been the strength of Giotto's
love of plain facts, which could force him to stoop so low in the
conception of this most touching scene. The Child does not, it will be
observed, merely stretch its arm to the Madonna, but is even
struggling to escape, violently raising the left foot. But there is
another incident in the composition, witnessing as notably to Giotto's
powerful grasp of all the facts of his subject as this does to his
somewhat hard and plain manner of grasping them;--I mean the angel
approaching Simeon, as if with a message. The peculiar interest of the
Presentation is for the most part inadequately represented in
painting, because it is impossible to imply the fact of Simeon's
having waited so long in the hope of beholding his Lord, or to inform
the spectator of the feeling in which he utters the song of hope
fulfilled. Giotto has, it seems to me, done all that he could to make
us remember this peculiar meaning of the scene; for I think I cannot
be deceived in interpreting the flying angel, with its branch of palm
or lily, to be the Angel of Death, sent in visible fulfilment of the
thankful words of Simeon: "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart
in peace." The figure of Anna is poor and uninteresting; that of the
attendant, on the extreme left, very beautiful, both in its drapery
and in the severe and elevated character of the features and
head-dress.
[Footnote 21: See account of his principles above, p. 13, head C.]
* * * * *
XIX.
THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT.
Giotto again shows, in his treatment of this subject, a juster
understanding of the probable facts than most other painters. It
becomes the almost universal habit of later artists to regard the
flight as both sudden and secret, undertaken by Joseph and Mary,
unattended, in the dawn of the morning, or "by night," so soon as
Joseph had awaked from sleep. (Matt. ii. 14.) Without a continuous
miracle, which it is unnecessary in this case to suppose, such a
lonely journey would have been nearly impracticable. Nor was instant
flight necessary; for Herod's order for the massacre could not be
issued until he had been convinced, by the protracted absence of the
Wise Men, that he was "mocked of them." In all probability the exact
nature and extent of the danger was revealed to Joseph; and he would
make the necessary preparations for his journey with such speed as he
could, and depart "by night" indeed, but not in the instant of
awakening from his dream. The ordinary impression seems to have been
received from the words of the Gospel of Infancy: "Go into Egypt _as
soon as the cock crows_." And the interest of the flight is rendered
more thrilling, in late compositions, by the introduction of armed
pursuers. Giotto has given a far more quiet, deliberate, and probable
character to the whole scene, while he has fully marked the fact of
divine protection and command in the figure of the guiding angel. Nor
is the picture less interesting in its marked expression of the night.
The figures are all distinctly seen, and there is no broad
distribution of the gloom; but the vigorous blackness of the dress of
the attendant who holds the bridle, and the scattered glitter of the
lights on the Madonna's robe, are enough to produce the required
effect on the mind.
The figure of the Virgin is singularly dignified: the broad and severe
curves traced by the hem and deepest folds of her dress materially
conducing to the nobleness of the group. The Child is partly sustained
by a band fastened round the Madonna's neck. The quaint and delicate
pattern on this band, together with that of the embroidered edges of
the dress, is of great value in opposing and making more manifest the
severe and grave outlines of the whole figure, whose impressiveness is
also partly increased by the rise of the mountain just above it, like
a tent. A vulgar composer would have moved this peak to the right or
left, and lost its power.
This mountain background is also of great use in deepening the sense
of gloom and danger on the desert road. The trees represented as
growing on the heights have probably been rendered indistinct by time.
In early manuscripts such portions are invariably those which suffer
most; the green (on which the leaves were once drawn with dark
colours) mouldering away, and the lines of drawing with it. But even
in what is here left there is noticeable more careful study of the
distinction between the trees with thick spreading foliage, the group
of two with light branches and few leaves, and the tree stripped and
dead at the bottom of the ravine, than an historical painter would now
think it consistent with his dignity to bestow.
* * * * *
XX.
MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS.
Of all the series, this composition is the one which exhibits most of
Giotto's weaknesses. All early work is apt to fail in the rendering of
violent action: but Giotto is, in this instance, inferior not only to
his successors, but to the feeblest of the miniature-painters of the
thirteenth century; while his imperfect drawing is seen at its worst
in the nude figures of the children. It is, in fact, almost impossible
to understand how any Italian, familiar with the eager gesticulations
of the lower orders of his countrywomen on the smallest points of
dispute with each other, should have been incapable of giving more
adequate expression of true action and passion to the group of
mothers; and, if I were not afraid of being accused of special
pleading, I might insist at some length on a dim faith of my own, that
Giotto thought the actual agony and strivings of the probable scene
unfit for pictorial treatment, or for common contemplation; and that
he chose rather to give motionless types and personifications of the
soldiers and women, than to use his strength and realistic faculty in
bringing before the vulgar eye the unseemly struggle or unspeakable
pain. The formal arrangement of the heap of corpses in the centre of
the group; the crowded standing of the mothers, as in a choir of
sorrow; the actual presence of Herod, to whom some of them appear to
be appealing,--all seem to me to mark this intention; and to make the
composition only a symbol or shadow of the great deed of massacre, not
a realisation of its visible continuance at any moment. I will not
press this conjecture; but will only add, that if it be so, I think
Giotto was perfectly right; and that a picture thus conceived might
have been deeply impressive, had it been more successfully executed;
and a calmer, more continuous, comfortless grief expressed in the
countenances of the women. Far better thus, than with the horrible
analysis of agony, and detail of despair, with which this same scene,
one which ought never to have been made the subject of painting at
all, has been gloated over by artists of more degraded times.
* * * * *
XXI.
THE YOUNG CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE.
This composition has suffered so grievously by time, that even the
portions of it which remain are seen to the greatest disadvantage.
Little more than various conditions of scar and stain can be now
traced, where were once the draperies of the figures in the shade, and
the suspended garland and arches on the right hand of the spectator;
and in endeavouring not to represent more than there is authority for,
the draughtsman and engraver have necessarily produced a less
satisfactory plate than most others of the series. But Giotto has also
himself fallen considerably below his usual standard. The faces appear
to be cold and hard; and the attitudes are as little graceful as
expressive either of attention or surprise. The Madonna's action,
stretching her arms to embrace her Son, is pretty; but, on the whole,
the picture has no value; and this is the more remarkable, as there
were fewer precedents of treatment in this case than in any of the
others; and it might have been anticipated that Giotto would have put
himself to some pains when the field of thought was comparatively new.
The subject of Christ teaching in the Temple rarely occurs in
manuscripts; but all the others were perpetually repeated in the
service-books of the period.
* * * * *
[Illustration]
XXII.
THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST.
This is a more interesting work than the last; but it is also gravely
and strangely deficient in power of entering into the subject; and
this, I think, is common with nearly all efforts that have hitherto
been made at its representation. I have never seen a picture of the
Baptism, by any painter whatever, which was not below the average
power of the painter; and in this conception of Giotto's, the humility
of St. John is entirely unexpressed, and the gesture of Christ has
hardly any meaning: it neither is in harmony with the words, "Suffer
it to be so now," which must have been uttered before the moment of
actual baptism, nor does it in the slightest degree indicate the sense
in the Redeemer of now entering upon the great work of His ministry.
In the earlier representations of the subject, the humility of St.
John is never lost sight of; there will be seen, for instance, an
effort at expressing it by the slightly stooping attitude and bent
knee, even in the very rude design given in outline on the opposite
page. I have thought it worth while to set before the reader in this
outline one example of the sort of traditional representations which
were current throughout Christendom before Giotto arose. This instance
is taken from a large choir-book, probably of French, certainly of
Northern execution, towards the close of the thirteenth century;[22]
and it is a very fair average example of the manner of design in the
illuminated work of the period. The introduction of the scroll, with
the legend, "This is My beloved Son," is both more true to the
scriptural words, "Lo, a voice from heaven," and more reverent, than
Giotto's introduction of the visible figure, as a type of the First
Person of the Trinity. The boldness with which this type is introduced
increases precisely as the religious sentiment of art decreases; in
the fifteenth century it becomes utterly revolting.
[Footnote 22: The exact date, 1290, is given in the title-page of the
volume.]
I have given this woodcut for another reason also: to explain more
clearly the mode in which Giotto deduced the strange form which he has
given to the stream of the Jordan. In the earlier Northern works it is
merely a green wave, rising to the Saviour's waist, as seen in the
woodcut. Giotto, for the sake of getting standing-ground for his
figures, gives _shores_ to this wave, retaining its swelling form in
the centre,--a very painful and unsuccessful attempt at reconciling
typical drawing with laws of perspective. Or perhaps it is less to be
regarded as an effort at progress, than as an awkward combination of
the Eastern and Western types of the Jordan. In the difference between
these types there is matter of some interest. Lord Lindsay, who merely
characterises this work of Giotto's as "the Byzantine composition,"
thus describes the usual Byzantine manner of representing the Baptism:
"The Saviour stands immersed to the middle in Jordan (_flowing between
two deep and rocky banks_), on one of which stands St. John, pouring
the water on His head, and on the other two angels hold His robes.
The Holy Spirit descends upon Him as a dove, in a stream of light,
from God the Father, usually represented by a hand from Heaven. Two of
John's disciples stand behind him as spectators. Frequently _the
river-god of Jordan_ reclines with his oars in the corner.... In the
Baptistery at Ravenna, the rope is supported, not by an angel, but by
the river-deity _Jordann_ (Iordanes?), who holds in his left hand a
reed as his sceptre."
Now in this mode of representing rivers there is something more than
the mere Pagan tradition lingering through the wrecks of the Eastern
Empire. A river, in the East and South, is necessarily recognised more
distinctly as a beneficent power than in the West and North. The
narrowest and feeblest stream is felt to have an influence on the life
of mankind; and is counted among the possessions, or honoured among
the deities, of the people who dwell beside it. Hence the importance
given, in the Byzantine compositions, to the name and specialty of the
Jordan stream. In the North such peculiar definiteness and importance
can never be attached to the name of any single fountain. Water, in
its various forms of streamlet, rain, or river, is felt as an
universal gift of heaven, not as an inheritance of a particular spot
of earth. Hence, with the Gothic artists generally, the personality of
the Jordan is lost in the green and nameless wave; and the simple rite
of the Baptism is dwelt upon, without endeavouring, as Giotto has
done, to draw the attention to the rocky shores of Bethabara and Ænon,
or to the fact that "there was much water there."
* * * * *
XXIII.
THE MARRIAGE IN CANA.
It is strange that the sweet significance of this first of the
miracles should have been lost sight of by nearly all artists after
Giotto; and that no effort was made by them to conceive the
circumstances of it in simplicity. The poverty of the family in which
the marriage took place,--proved sufficiently by the fact that a
carpenter's wife not only was asked as a chief guest, but even had
authority over the servants,--is shown further to have been
distressful, or at least embarrassed, poverty by their want of wine on
such an occasion. It was not certainly to remedy an accident of
careless provision, but to supply a need sorrowfully betraying the
narrow circumstances of His hosts, that our Lord wrought the beginning
of miracles. Many mystic meanings have been sought in the act, which,
though there is no need to deny, there is little evidence to certify:
but we may joyfully accept, as its first indisputable meaning, that of
simple kindness; the wine being provided here, when needed, as the
bread and fish were afterwards for the hungry multitudes. The whole
value of the miracle, in its serviceable tenderness, is at once
effaced when the marriage is supposed, as by Veronese and other
artists of later times, to have taken place at the house of a rich
man. For the rest, Giotto sufficiently implies, by the lifted hand of
the Madonna, and the action of the fingers of the bridegroom, as if
they held sacramental bread, that there lay a deeper meaning under the
miracle for those who could accept it. How all miracle _is_ accepted
by common humanity, he has also shown in the figure of the ruler of
the feast, drinking. This unregarding forgetfulness of present
spiritual power is similarly marked by Veronese, by placing the figure
of a fool with his bauble immediately underneath that of Christ, and
by making a cat play with her shadow in one of the wine-vases.
It is to be remembered, however, in examining all pictures of this
subject, that the miracle was not made manifest to all the guests;--to
none indeed, seemingly, except Christ's own disciples: the ruler of
the feast, and probably most of those present (except the servants who
drew the water), knew or observed nothing of what was passing, and
merely thought the good wine had been "kept until now."
* * * * *
XXIV.
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS.
In consequence of the intermediate position which Giotto occupies
between the Byzantine and Naturalist schools, two relations of
treatment are to be generally noted in his work. As compared with the
Byzantines, he is a realist, whose power consists in the introduction
of living character and various incidents, modifying the formerly
received Byzantine symbols. So far as he has to do this, he is a
realist of the purest kind, endeavoring always to conceive events
precisely as they were likely to have happened; not to idealise them
into forms artfully impressive to the spectator. But in so far as he
was compelled to retain, or did not wish to reject, the figurative
character of the Byzantine symbols, he stands opposed to succeeding
realists, in the quantity of meaning which probably lies hidden in any
composition, as well as in the simplicity with which he will probably
treat it, in order to enforce or guide to this meaning: the figures
being often letters of a hieroglyphic, which he will not multiply,
lest he should lose in force of suggestion what he gained in dramatic
interest.
None of the compositions display more clearly this typical and
reflective character than that of the Raising of Lazarus. Later
designers dwell on vulgar conditions of wonder or horror, such as they
could conceive likely to attend the resuscitation of a corpse; but
with Giotto the physical reanimation is the type of a spiritual one,
and, though shown to be miraculous, is yet in all its deeper aspects
unperturbed, and calm in awfulness. It is also visibly gradual. "His
face was bound about with a napkin." The nearest Apostle has withdrawn
the covering from the face, and looks for the command which shall
restore it from wasted corruption, and sealed blindness, to living
power and light.
Nor is it, I believe, without meaning, that the two Apostles, if
indeed they are intended for Apostles, who stand at Lazarus' side,
wear a different dress from those who follow Christ. I suppose them
to be intended for images of the Christian and Jewish Churches in
their ministration to the dead soul: the one removing its bonds, but
looking to Christ for the word and power of life; the other inactive
and helpless--the veil upon its face--in dread; while the principal
figure fulfils the order it receives in fearless simplicity.
* * * * *
XXV.
THE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM.