This great painter is universally considered the restorer of modern
painting. The Italians call him "the Father of modern Painting;" and
other nations, "the Creator of the Italian or Epic style of Painting."
He was born at Florence in 1240, of a noble family, and was skilled both
in architecture and sculpture. The legends of his own land make him the
pupil of Giunta; for the men of Florence are reluctant to believe that
he was instructed in painting by those Greek artists who were called in
to embellish their city with miracles and Madonnas. He soon conquered an
education which consisted in reproducing, in exact shape and color, the
works of other men: he desired to advance: he went to nature for his
forms; he grouped them with a new skill; he bestowed ease on his
draperies, and a higher expression on his heads. His talent did not
reside in the neat, the graceful, and the lovely; his Madonnas have
little beauty, and his angels are all of one make: he succeeded best in
the heads of the old and the holy, and impressed on them, in spite of
the barbarism of his times, a bold sublimity, which few have since
surpassed. Critics object to the fierceness of his eyes, the want of
delicacy in the noses of his figures, and the absence of perspective in
his compositions; but they admit that his coloring is bright and
vigorous, his conceptions grand and vast, and that he loved the daring
and the splendid. Nevertheless, a touch of the mechanical Greek School,
and a rudeness all his own, have been observed in the works of this
great painter. His compositions were all of a scriptural or religious
kind, such as the church required: kings were his visitors, and the
people of Florence paid him honors almost divine.