Christianity at its origin exercised no new stimulating influence upon
its development, but if it were claimed for the Franciscan movement that
it brought about the great outburst of Italian art the position would be
harder to refute: and indeed what S. Francis accomplished, the literal
acceptance by official Christendom of Christ’s teaching, was tantamount
to the foundation of a new religion, and the heresy of some of his
followers, who regarded his as a final dispensation superseding that of
the New Testament, can scarcely have seemed unreasonable to those who
witnessed the change in the temper of society which his example brought
about. S. Francis was the great orthodox heretic. What he effected
within the bounds of the Church, for a time at all events, was only
accomplished for later times by a rupture with the Papal power. He
established the idea of the equality of all men before God and the
immediate relationship of the individual soul to the Deity. He enabled
every man to be his own priest. To the fervour with which these ideas
were grasped by his countrymen we may ascribe to some extent the extreme
individualism of the Italian Renaissance, the absence of the barriers of
social caste to the aspirations of the individual and the passionate
assertion on his part of the right to the free use of all his
activities. No doubt the individualism of, say, a Sigismondo Malatesta
in the fifteenth century was very different to anything which S. Francis
would have approved; none the less such a view of life was rendered
possible by the solvent action of his teaching on the fixed forms of
society.
But of more immediate importance to our purpose is the æsthetic element
in S. Francis’ teaching. To say that in his actions S. Francis aimed at
artistic effect would perhaps give a wrong impression of his character,
but it is true that his conception of holiness was almost as much an
æsthetic as a moral one. To those who know S. Bonaventura’s life a
number of stories will suggest themselves, which indicate a perfectly
harmonious attitude to life rather than a purely moral one: stories such
as that of the sheep which was given to him, and which he received
joyfully because of its simplicity and innocence, “and holding it in his
hands he admonished it to be intent to praise God and to keep itself
from offending the brethren; and the sheep observed fully the
commandment of the Blessed Francis, and when it heard the brethren
singing in the choir ran thither quickly, and without any teaching bent
before the altar of the Blessed Virgin and bleated, as though it had
human reason.”
S. Francis, the “Jongleur de Dieu,” was actually a poet before his
conversion, and his whole life had the pervading unity and rhythm of a
perfect work of art. Not that he was a conscious artist. The whole
keynote of the Franciscan teaching was its spontaneity, but his feelings
for moral and æsthetic beauty were intimately united. Indeed, his life,
like the Italian art which in a sense arose from it, like the Gothic
French art which was a simultaneous expression of the same spirit,
implies an attitude, as rare in life as in art, in which spiritual and
sensuous beauty are so inextricably interwoven that instead of
conflicting they mutually intensify their effects.
Not only was the legend of S. Francis’ life full of suggestions of
poetical and artistic material, but his followers rewrote the New
Testament from the Franciscan point of view, emphasising the poetical
and dramatic elements of the story. In particular they shifted the focus
of interest by making the relationship of the Virgin to her son the
central motive of the whole. It will be seen that Italian artists down
to Raphael turned rather to the Franciscan than the Vulgate version.[22]
In fact, S. Bonaventura and the great poet of the movement, the
cultivated and ecstatic Jacopone di Todi, did for the Christian legend
very much what Pindar did for classical mythology; without altering the
doctrine they brought into full relief its human and poetical
significance.
It is not surprising, then, to find that the great church at Assisi,
built with all the magnificence that the whole of Italy could contribute
to honour the spouse of Divine Poverty, should be the cradle of the new
art of Italy--the neo-Christian or Franciscan art, as we might almost
call it.
The lower church of S. Francesco was probably decorated almost
immediately after the building was finished, between 1240 and 1250, but
these early works are almost obliterated by a second decoration
undertaken after 1300. We must therefore turn to the upper church, the
paintings of which were probably completed before 1300, as the chief
source of our knowledge of the emergence of the new Italian style. It
was there that the Italian genius first attained to self-expression in
the language of monumental painting--a language which no other nation of
modern Europe has ever been able to command except in rare and isolated
instances.
And here we plunge at once into a very difficult, perhaps an insoluble
problem: who were the painters who carried out this immense scheme of
decoration? The archives of the church have been searched in vain, and
we are left with a sentence of Ghiberti’s commentary, and Vasari, who
here proves an uncertain guide, so that we are thrown chiefly on the
resources of internal evidence.
The paintings of the upper church may be briefly enumerated thus: In the
choir are faint remains of frescoes of the life of the Virgin; in the
right transept a Crucifixion and other subjects almost obliterated; in
the left transept another Crucifixion, better preserved, and archangels
in the triforium. The nave is divided into an upper and lower series;
the upper series contains scenes of the Old and New Testaments, the
lower is devoted to the legend of S. Francis, and in alternate vaults of
the roof are paintings of single figures.
It would be out of place to discuss all these frescoes in detail, but
it may be worth while to select certain typical ones, around which the
rest may be grouped, and see how far they bear out what little
documentary and traditional authority we have.
We will begin with the Crucifixion of the left transept, which is
clearly by an artist of decided and marked personality. It is certainly
less pleasing and less accomplished than the works of the later
Byzantine school, and in spite of certain motives, such as the floating
drapery of the Christ, which show Byzantine reminiscences, it is derived
in the main from the native Italian tradition. This is shown in the
stumpy proportions of the figures and the crude, not to say hideous,
realism of the faces of the crowd. The classical origin of the tradition
is still traceable in the sandalled feet and the reminiscence of the
toga in some of the draperies. But the chief interest lies in the
serious attempt made by the artist to give dramatic reality to the scene
in a way never attempted by the less human Byzantines. The action of the
Magdalen throwing up both arms in despair is really impressive, and this
is a more vivacious rendering of a gesture traditional in Western early
Christian art; an instance occurs in the fifth century MS. of Genesis at
Vienna. But the artist shows his originality more in the expressive and
sometimes beautiful poses of the weeping angels and the natural
movements of the Virgin and S. John.
Very nearly allied to this are the archangels of the triforium, and some
of the frescoes of the upper scenes in the nave, such as the Nativity
and the Betrayal. These belong to the same group, though they are not
necessarily by the master of the Crucifixion himself.
As we proceed along the nave, still keeping to the upper series, we come
upon another distinct personality, whose work is typified in the
Deception of Isaac. In certain qualities this master is not altogether
unlike the master of the Crucifixion. Like him, he replaces the purely
schematic linear rendering of drapery by long streaks of light and dark
paint, so arranged as to give the idea of actual modelling in relief.
But he does this not only with greater naturalism, but with a greatly
increased sense of pure beauty. The painting is not hieratic and formal,
as the Byzantine would have made it, nor has it that overstrained
attempt at dramatic vehemence which we saw in the Crucifixion. The faces
have remarkable beauty, and throughout there is a sense of placid and
dignified repose which is rare in mediæval work. It is, in fact,
decidedly classical, and classical, too, in a sense different from the
vague reminiscences of classic origin which permeate early Christian
art, and were faintly echoed in the Crucifixion. Rachel especially, with
her full, well-rounded eyes, wide apart and set deep in their sockets,
her straight nose and small mouth, might almost have come straight from
a Pompeian picture.
The hair, too, instead of being in tangled masses, as in the
Crucifixion, or rendered by parallel lines, as in the Sacrifice of
Isaac, is drawn into elegantly disposed curls, which yet have something
of the quality of hair, and which remind us of the treatment in classic
bronzes.
The last vault of the nave, with the Doctors of the Church, is by an
artist who is extremely similar to the last, and clearly belongs to the
same group. The level brows nearly meeting over the bridge of the nose,
the straight profile and the curled hair show the similarity, as does
also the drapery. The classic tendencies of this artist may be seen in
the amorini caryatides in the extreme corners of the spandril, while the
decoration of one of the arches of the church by the same hand has,
arising from an urn of pure classic design, a foliated scrollwork, in
which centaurs disport themselves.
In the lower series representing the Life of S. Francis we are at once
struck by the resemblances to the last two paintings. The Pope, who is
approving the rule of S. Francis, is almost a repetition of one of the
Doctors of the Church. We have the same peculiar drapery with shiny,
slippery, high lights, broadly washed on in well-disposed folds. The
faces, too, though they are more individual and far more expressive,
are, nevertheless, built on the same lines. They have similar straight
profiles, the same deeply-cut level brows, which tend to meet in a line
across the nose. The general impression it makes is that it is by a
younger artist than the master of the Esau fresco, but one who has a
keener feeling for reality and a far deeper sense of the dramatic
situation.
We will now turn to the historical evidence. The earliest and best is
that of Ghiberti (early fifteenth century), who tells us simply that
Giotto painted the S. Francis legend. Vasari says that Cimabue worked
first in the lower church with Greek artists, and then did the whole of
the upper church, except the S. Francis legend, which he ascribes to
Giotto. In addition to these we have a sixteenth-century MS. and an
account of the church by Petrus Rudolphus of the same period, which
agree that both Giotto and Cimabue painted in the upper church.
We may take it, then, that we have fairly good evidence for ascribing
the S. Francis series in the main to Giotto, and a consensus of
traditional opinion that somewhere in the other frescoes we ought to
discover Cimabue.
The name of Cimabue is fraught with tender associations. To the last
generation, happy in its innocence, it was familiar as a household word.
Browning could sing without a qualm: “My painter--who, but Cimabue?” The
cult of Cimabue became fashionable; it offended Philistine nostrils and
received its due castigation from Mr. Punch. And now, alas, he would be
a bold man who dared to say that he admired Cimabue, who dared to do
more than profess a pious belief in his existence. Only recently a
distinguished critic[23] has endeavoured to hand over to Duccio di
Buoninsegna the very stronghold of the Cimabue faith, the altar-piece of
the Rucellai Chapel in Sta. Maria Novella. But the myth dies hard, and
Florentine guides will still point out the portraits of all Cimabue’s
relations in the little figures round the frame. Ever since the time of
Rumohr, however, who considered him to be little more than an emanation
of Vasari’s brain heated by patriotic fervour, it has been established
that we have no documentary evidence for any single picture by him. We
do know, however, that at the very end of his life he executed the
mosaic of the apse in the cathedral at Pisa. But this is a much restored
work, and originally can have been little but an adaptation of a
Byzantine design, and it throws no light on his work as a painter. In
any case, all criticisms of his reputation in his own day, whether
deserved or not, must fall to the ground before Dante’s celebrated
lines, “Credette Cimabue nella pittura Tener lo campo, ed ora ha Giotto
il grido,” for on this point Dante is first-rate evidence. And that
being the case, there is a probability, almost amounting to certainty,
that the man who “held the field” in painting would be requisitioned for
the greatest national undertaking of his day, the decoration of S.
Francesco at Assisi, even though, as we have seen, it would be
impossible to accept Vasari’s statement that he did the whole.
In looking for Cimabue among the groups of the upper church which we
have selected, it will be worth while to take as an experimental guide
other works ascribed traditionally to our artist. If these should agree
in their artistic qualities with one another and with any one group at
Assisi, we shall have some probability in favour of our view. And the
result of such a process is to find in the master of the Crucifixion our
elusive and celebrated painter.
It would be wearisome to go in detail through all these works; it will
suffice to say that in certain marked peculiarities they all agree with
one another and with the Crucifixion. The most striking likeness will be
found between the heads which appear under the Virgin’s throne in the
picture in the Academy at Florence, which Vasari attributes to Cimabue,
and the grotesque heads to the right of the Crucifixion. There is the
same crude attempt at realism, the same peculiar matted hair, the same
curious drawing of the eye-socket which gives the appearance of
spectacles. The characteristics of this picture will again be found in
the Cimabue of the Louvre which comes from Pisa, where he is known to
have worked. Very similar, too, in innumerable details of architectural
setting, of movement of hands and heads, and of drapery is the fresco of
the Madonna Enthroned and S. Francis, in the lower church at Assisi.
Finally, the Rucellai Madonna, in spite of its very superior qualities,
which must be due to its being a later work, answers in many detailed
tests to the characteristics of this group of paintings.[24]
And now, having found our Cimabue in the master of the Crucifixion, what
must our verdict be on his character as an artist? Frankly we must admit
that he is not to be thought of in the same category with the master of
the Esau fresco, much less with Duccio or Giotto.[25] There is, however,
in his work that spark of vitality which the Italians rightly prized
above Byzantine accomplishment. He gave to his historical compositions a
rude dramatic vigour, and to his Madonnas and Angels a suggestion of
sentimental charm which borders on affectation; he was, in fact, a
sentimental realist whose relation to the Byzantine masters must have
been something like that of Caravaggio to the academic school of the
Caracci.
We come next to the master of the Deception of Isaac, and the closely
allied, if not identical, painter who did the Four Doctors of the vault.
We have already noticed the likeness of these works to the legend of S.
Francis, which we may take provisionally to be Giotto’s; but, in spite
of the similarity of technique, they are inspired by a very diverse
sentiment. They are not dramatic and intense as Giotto’s; they show a
more conscious aspiration after style; the artist will not allow the
requirements of formal beauty to be disturbed by the desire for
expressive and life-like gestures. Where, then, could an artist of this
period acquire such a sense of pure classic beauty in painting? In
sculpture it might be possible to find classic models throughout Italy
as Niccolo did at Pisa, but Rome was the only place which could fulfil
the requirements for a painter. There must at this time have been many
more remains of classical painting among the ruins of the Palatine than
are now to be seen, and it is a natural conclusion that the artist who
painted the figure of Rachel was directly inspired by them. Nor is
there anything difficult in the assumption that this unknown precursor
of Giotto was a Roman artist, for the Roman school of painting was by
far the most precocious of any in Italy. At Subiaco there are frescoes,
some of which must date from the lifetime of S. Francis, which already,
as in the portrait of S. Francis himself, show a certain freedom from
Byzantine formalism. But it is in the works of the Cosmati, Jacopo
Torriti, Rusutti, and Cavallini in the latter half of the thirteenth
century that we see how vigorous and progressive an art was springing up
in Rome.[26] Had not the removal of the Popes to Avignon in the
fourteenth century left the city a prey to internal discord, we can
hardly doubt that the Roman would have been one of the greatest and
earliest developed schools of Italian painting. As it is, we find in the
mosaics under the apse of Sta. Maria in Trastevere, executed about the
year 1290, compositions in every way comparable to Giotto’s frescoes.
These mosaics, too, have architectural accessories which are very
similar to the architecture of the “Doctors of the Church” at Assisi.
The architecture based on a study of classic forms is of the kind always
associated with the Cosmati family. It will be seen that it is quite
distinct from the architecture of Cimabue’s and Duccio’s Madonnas, but
that it becomes the normal treatment in Giotto’s frescoes.
There is, then, a curiously close analogy between the origins of
neo-Christian painting and neo-Christian sculpture in Italy; just as
Giovanni Pisano’s work was preceded by the purely classic revival which
culminated in Niccolo’s Baptistery pulpit, so in painting Giotto’s work
emerges from a similar classic revival based on the study of Roman
wall-paintings. The perfect similarity between Niccolo Pisano’s
sentiment and that of the master of the Esau fresco may be realised by
comparing the action of Rachel’s hand in the fresco with that of the
Virgin in the Annunciation of the Baptistery pulpit. In both we have the
same autarchic conception of character conveyed by the same measured
ease of gesture, which contrasts vividly with the more expansive ideals
of neo-Christian art, of which Giotto appears from the first as the most
perfect representative.
In examining the series of frescoes describing the life of S. Francis
we find varieties in the proportions of the figures and in the types of
features which suggest the co-operation of more than one artist, but the
spirit that inspires the compositions throughout is one. And this
afflatus which suddenly quickens so much that was either tentative or
narrowly accomplished into a new fulness of life, a new richness of
expression, is, we may feel certain, due to the genius of Giotto.
If we look at one of these frescoes, such, for example, as the Presepio
at Greccio, and at the same time endeavour to transport ourselves into
the position of a contemporary spectator, what will strike us most
immediately and make the most startling general impression is its
actuality. Here at last, after so many centuries of copying the
traditional forms handed down from a moribund Pagan art--centuries
during which these abstractions had become entirely divorced from the
life of the time--here at last was an artist who gave a scene as it must
have happened, with every circumstance evidently and literally rendered.
The scene of the institution of the Presepio takes place in a little
chapel divided from the body of the church by a marble wall. The pulpit
and crucifix are therefore seen from behind, the latter leaning forward
into the church and showing from the chapel only the wooden battens and
fastenings of the back. The singing-desk in the centre is drawn with
every detail of screws and adjustments, while the costume of the
bystanders is merely the ordinary fashionable dress of the day. The
research for actuality could not be carried farther than this. When some
years ago a French painter painted the scene of Christ at the house of
the Pharisee with the figures in evening dress it aroused the most
vehement protests, and produced for a time a shock of bewilderment and
surprise. This is not to suggest any real analogy between the works of
the two artists, but merely that the innovation made by Giotto must have
been in every way as surprising to his contemporaries. Nor was Giotto’s,
like M. Béraud’s, a _succès de scandale_; on the contrary, it was
immediately recognised as satisfying a want which had been felt ever
since the legend of S. Francis, the setting of which belonged to their
own time and country, had been incorporated by the Italians in their
mythology. The earliest artists had tried to treat the subject according
to the formulas of Byzantine biblical scenes, but with such
unsatisfactory results as may be seen in the altar-piece of the Bardi
Chapel of Sta. Croce at Florence. In Giotto’s frescoes at Assisi it
acquired for the first time a treatment in which the desire for
actuality was fully recognised. But actuality alone would not have
satisfied Giotto’s patrons; it was necessary that the events should be
presented as scenes of everyday life, but it was also necessary that
they should possess that quality of universal and eternal significance
which distinguishes a myth from a mere historical event. It was even
more necessary that they should be heroic than that they should be
actual. And it was in his power to satisfy such apparently
self-contradictory conditions that Giotto’s unique genius manifested
itself. It was this that made him the greatest story-teller in line, the
supreme epic-painter of the world. The reconciliation of these two aims,
actuality and universality, is indeed the severest strain on the power
of expression. To what a temperature must the imagination be raised
before it can fuse in its crucible those refractory squalid trivialities
unconsecrated by time and untinged by romance with which the artist must
deal if he is to be at once “topical” and heroic, to be at one and the
same time in “Ercles’ vein” and Mrs. Gamp’s. Even in literature it is a
rare feat. Homer could accomplish it, and Dante, but most poets must
find a way round. In Dante the power is constantly felt. He could not
only introduce the politics and personalities of his own time, but he
could use such similes as that of old tailors peering for their needles’
eyes, a half-burnt piece of paper, dogs nozzling for fleas, and still
more unsavoury trivialities, without for a moment lowering the high key
in which his comedy was pitched. The poet deals, however, with the vague
and blurred mental images which words call up, but the painter must
actually present the semblance of the thing in all its drab familiarity.
And yet Giotto succeeded. He could make the local and particular stand
for a universal idea.
But, without detracting in any way from what was due to Giotto’s
superlative genius, it may be admitted that something was given by the
propitious moment of his advent. For the optics of the imagination are
variable: in an age like the present, men and events grow larger as they
recede into the mist of the past; it is rarely that we think of a man as
truly great till he has for long received the consecration of death. But
there must be periods when men have a surer confidence in their own
judgments--periods of such creative activity that men can dare to
measure the reputations of their contemporaries, which are of their own
creation, against the reputations of antiquity--and in such periods the
magnifying, mythopoetical effect, which for us comes only with time,
takes place at once, and swells their contemporaries to heroic
proportions. It was thus that Dante saw those of his own time--could
even see himself--in the proportions they must always bear. The fact
that S. Francis was canonised two years after death, and within twenty
years was commemorated by the grandest monument in Italy, is a striking
proof of that superb self-confidence.