by Giotto himself rests not only on the general consensus of tradition,
but upon the technical characteristics and, most of all, upon the
imaginative conception of the subjects. None the less, in so big a work
it is probable that assistants were employed to carry out Giotto’s
designs, and this will account for many slight discrepancies of style.
Certain frescoes, however--notably the last three of the series--show
such marked differences that we must suppose that one of these
assistants rose to the level of an original creative artist.
In the fresco of S. Francis kneeling before the Pope, we have already
noticed Giotto’s close connection with the artists of the Roman school.
Their influence is not confined to the figures and drapery; the
architecture--in which it may be noted, by the way, that Giotto has
already arrived instinctively at the main ideas of linear
perspective--with its minute geometrical inlays, its brackets and
mouldings, derived from classic forms, is entirely in the manner of the
Cosmati. But the composition illustrates, none the less, the differences
which separate him from the master of the Esau fresco. Giotto is at this
stage of his career not only less accomplished, but he has nothing of
that painter’s elegant classical grace. He has, instead, the greatest
and rarest gift of dramatic expressiveness. For though the poses,
especially of the bishop seated on the Pope’s left, lack grace, and the
faces show but little research for positive beauty or regularity of
feature, the actual scene, the dramatic situation, is given in an
entirely new and surprising way. Of what overwhelming importance for
the history of the world this situation was, perhaps Giotto himself
could scarcely realise. For this probably represents, not the
approbation of the order of minor brethren by Honorius III., which was a
foregone conclusion, but the permission to preach given by Innocent
III., a far more critical moment in the history of the movement. For
Innocent III., in whom the Papacy reached the zenith of its power, had
already begun the iniquitous Albigensian crusade, and was likely to be
suspicious of any unofficial religious teaching. It cannot have been
with unmixed pleasure that he saw before him this poverty-stricken group
of Francis and his eleven followers, whose appearance declared in the
plainest terms their belief in that primitive communistic Christianity
which, in the case of Petrus Waldus, had been branded by
excommunication. In fact, the man who now asked for the Papal blessing
on his mission was in most respects a Waldensian. Francis (the name
Francesco is itself significant) was probably by birth, certainly by
predilection[27] and temperament, half a Frenchman; his mother came from
Provence, and his father had business connections at Lyons; so that it
is not impossible that Francis was influenced by what he knew, through
them, of the Waldensian movement. In any case, his teaching was nearly
identical with that of Petrus Waldus; both taught religious
individualism and, by precept at all events, communism. It was,
therefore, not unnatural that Innocent should not respond at once to S.
Francis’ application. According to one legend, the Pope’s first advice
to him was to consort with swine, as befitted one of his miserable
appearance. But, whatever his spontaneous impulses may have been, he had
the good sense to accept the one man through whom the Church could again
become popular and democratic.
Of all that this acceptance involved, no one who lived before the
Reformation could understand the full significance, but Giotto has here
expressed something of the dramatic contrasts involved in this meeting
of the greatest of saints and the most dominating of popes--something
of the importance of the moment when the great heretic was recognised by
the Church.
In the fresco of S. Francis before the Sultan we have a means of
comparing Giotto at this period with the later Giotto of the Bardi
Chapel, in Florence where the same scene is treated with more intimate
psychological imagination; but here already the story is told with a
vividness and simplicity which none but Giotto could command. The weak
and sinuous curves of the discomfited sages, the ponderous and massive
contour of the indignant Sultan, show that Giotto’s command of the
direct symbolism of line is at least as great as Duccio’s in the Three
Maries, while his sense of the roundness and solid relief of the form
is, as Mr. Berenson[28] has ably pointed out, far greater. We find in
the Sultan, indeed, the type for which Giotto showed a constant
predilection--a well-formed, massive body, with high rounded shoulders
and short neck, but with small and shapely hands. As is natural in the
work of an artist who set himself so definitely to externalise the
tension of a critical moment, his hands are always eloquent; it is
impossible to find in his work a case where the gestures of the hands
are not explicit indications of a particular emotion. The architecture
in this fresco is a remarkable evidence of the classical tendencies
which he inherited from the Cosmati school. The Sultan’s throne has, it
is true, a quasi-Gothic gable, but the coffered soffit, and the whole of
the canopy opposite to it, with its winged genii, pilasters, and
garlands are derived from classic sources.
We have already considered the Presepio as an example of Giotto’s power
of giving the actual setting of a scene without losing its heroic
quality. It is also an example of his power of visualising the
psychological situation; here, the sudden thrill which permeates an
assembly at a moment of unwonted exaltation. It depicts the first
representation of the Nativity instituted at Greccio by S. Francis; it
is the moment at which he takes the image of the Infant Christ in his
arms, when, to the ecstatic imaginations of the bystanders, it appeared
for an instant transformed into a living child of transcendent beauty.
The monks at the back are still singing the Lauds (one can almost tell
what note each is singing, so perfect is Giotto’s command of facial
expression), but the immediate bystanders and the priest are lost in
wrapt contemplation of S. Francis and the Child.[29]
One of the most beautiful of the whole series is the fresco which
represents the nuns of S. Clare meeting the Saint’s body as it is borne
to burial. Throughout the series Giotto took Bonaventura’s life as his
text, and it is interesting to see how near akin the two renderings are,
both alike inspired by that new humanity of feeling which S. Francis’
life had aroused. Having described the beauty of the Saint’s dead body,
“of which the limbs were so soft and delicate to the touch that they
seemed to have returned to the tenderness of a child’s, and appeared by
many manifest signs to be innocent as never having done wrong, so like a
child’s were they,” he adds,
Therefore it is not to be marvelled at if seeing a body so white
and seeing therein those black nails and that wound in the side
which seemed to be a fresh red rose of spring, if those that saw it
felt therefor great wonder and joy. And in the morning when it was
day the companies and people of the city and all the country round
came together, and being instructed to translate that most holy
body from that place to the city of Assisi, moved with great
solemnity of hymns and songs and divine offices, and with a
multitude of torches and of candles lighted and with branches of
trees in their hands; and with such solemnity going towards the
city of Assisi and passing by the church of S. Damiano, in which
stayed Clara the noble virgin who is to-day a saint on earth and in
heaven, they rested there a little. She and her holy virgins were
comforted to see and kiss that most holy body of their father the
blessed Francis adorned with those holy stigmata and white and
shining as has been said.
Bonaventura, we see, had already conceived the scene with such
consummate artistic skill that it was, as it were, ready made for
Giotto. He had only to translate that description into line and colour;
and in doing so he has lost nothing of its beauty. Giotto, like
Bonaventura, is apparently perfectly simple, perfectly direct and
literal, and yet the result is in both cases a work of the rarest
imaginative power. Nor is it easy to analyse its mysterious charm.
Giotto was a great painter in the strictest and most technical sense of
the word, but his technical perfection is not easily appreciated in
these damaged works, and one cannot explain the effect this produces by
any actual beauty of the surface quality of the painting; it depends
rather on our perception, through the general disposition and action of
the figures, of Giotto’s attitude to life, of the instinctive rightness
of feeling through which he was enabled to visualise the scene in its
simplest and most inevitable form.
We come now to the three last frescoes of the series which show such
marked differences from the rest, though some of the peculiarities, the
minute hands and elegant features, appear in parts of some of the
preceding frescoes, notably in our last: we may imagine that an
assistant working under Giotto was, as the work progressed, given a
larger and larger share in the execution, and finally carried out the
three last frescoes alone. But this is pure hypothesis; all we can do at
present is to note the difference not only of types, but even to some
extent in the manner of conception, that they evince. One of them
recounts the story of a woman of Benevento devoted to S. Francis, who
died after forgetting one of her sins in her last confession. At the
intercession of the dead Saint she was allowed to come to life again,
finish her confession, and so defeat of his prey the black devil who had
already come for her soul. Here the whole spacing out of the composition
indicates a peculiar feeling, very different from Giotto’s. The artist
crowds his figures into narrow, closely-packed groups, and leaves vast
spaces of bare wall between. In this particular instance the result is
very impressive; it intensifies the supreme importance of the confession
and emphasises the loneliness and isolation of the soul that has already
once passed away. When we look at the individual figures the differences
are even more striking; the long thin figures, the repetition of
perpendicular lines, the want of variety in the poses of the heads, a
certain timidity in the movements, the long masks, too big in proportion
for the heads, the tiny elegant features, elongated necks, and minute
hands--all these characteristics contrast with Giotto’s tendency to
massive proportions and easy expansive movements. Not that these figures
have not great beauty; only it is of a recondite and exquisite kind. The
artist that created these types must have loved what was sought out and
precious; though living so long before Raphael, he must have been
something of a “pre-Raphaelite.”
We have no clue to the identity of this pseudo-Giotto; he is quite
distinct from Giotto’s known pupils, and indeed may rather have been a
contemporary artist who came under Giotto’s influence than one trained
by him. Besides the frescoes at Assisi, we are fortunate enough to
possess one other picture by this interesting artist. It is a small
altar-piece dedicated to S. Cecilia, which hangs in the corridor of the
Uffizi, and has been attributed both to Cimabue and to Giotto. The long
Rosetti-like necks and heads, the poses, in which elegance is preferred
to expressiveness, and the concentration of the figures so as to leave
large empty spaces even in these small compositions, are sufficient
grounds for attributing it to Giotto’s fellow-worker at Assisi.[30]
In the year 1298 Giotto entered into a contract with Cardinal
Stefaneschi to execute for him the mosaic of the “Navicella,” now in the
porch of S. Peter’s. We have in this the first ascertainable date of
Giotto’s life. It is one which, however, fits very well with the
internal evidences of his style, as it would give the greater part of
the last decade of the thirteenth century as the period of Giotto’s
activity in the Upper Church at Assisi. One other work on the evidence
of style we may attribute to the master’s pre-Roman period, and that is
the Madonna of the Academy at Florence. Here Giotto followed the lines
of Cimabue’s enthroned Madonnas, though with his own greatly increased
sense of solidity in the modelling and vivacity in the poses. It cannot,
however, be considered as a prepossessing work. It may be due to
restoration that the picture shows no signs of Giotto’s peculiar feeling
for tonality; but even the design is scarcely satisfactory, the relation
of the Madonna to the throne is such that her massive proportions leave
an impression of ungainliness rather than of grandeur. In the throne
itself he has made an experiment in the new Gothic architecture, but he
has hardly managed to harmonise it with the earlier classic forms of the
Cosmati, which still govern the main design. We shall see that in his
work at Rome he overcame all these difficulties.
In Rome Giotto worked chiefly for Cardinal Stefaneschi. This is
significant of Giotto’s close relations with the Roman school, for it
was Bartolo, another member of the same family, who commissioned the
remarkable mosaics of Sta. Maria in Trastevere, executed in 1290,
mosaics which show how far the Roman school had already advanced towards
the new art, of which Giotto’s work was the consummation.
The mosaic of the “Navicella,” which was the greatest undertaking of
Giotto’s activity in Rome, is unfortunately terribly restored. We can,
however, still recognise the astonishing dramatic force of the
conception and the unique power which Giotto possessed of giving a vivid
presentation of a particular event, accompanied by the most
circumstantial details, and at the same time suggesting to the
imagination a symbolical interpretation of universal and abstract
significance. Even the surprising intrusion of a _genre_ motive in the
fisherman peacefully angling on the shore does not disturb our
recognition of this universal interpretation, which puts so clearly the
relation of the ship of the Church, drifting helplessly with its
distraught crew, to the despairing Peter, who has here the character of
an emissary and intermediary, and the impassive and unapproachable
figure of Christ himself.
The daring originality which Giotto shows in placing the predominant
figure at the extreme edge of the composition, the feeling for
perspective which enabled him to give verisimilitude to the scene by
throwing back the ship into the middle distance, the new freedom and
variety in the movements of the Apostles in the boat, by which the
monotony of the eleven figures crowded into so limited a space is
evaded, are proofs of Giotto’s rare power of invention, a power which
enabled him to treat even the most difficult abstractions with the same
vivid sense of reality as the dramatic incidents of contemporary life.
It is not to be wondered at that this should be the work most frequently
mentioned by the Italian writers of the Renaissance. The storm-gods
blowing their Triton’s horns are a striking instance of how much Giotto
assimilated at this time from Pagan art.
But of far greater beauty are the panels for the high altar of S.
Peter’s, also painted for Cardinal Stefaneschi, and now to be seen in
the sacristy, where the more obvious beauties of Melozzo da Forli’s
music-making angels too often lead to their being overlooked. And yet,
unnoticed in the dark corners of the room, they have escaped the
attentions of restorers and glow with all the rare translucency of
Giotto’s tempera.
These are the first pictures we have examined by Giotto in which we are
able to appreciate at all the beauty and subtlety of his tone contrasts,
for not only have the frescoes of the upper church at Assisi and the
“Madonna” of the Academy suffered severely from restoration, but it is
probable that in his youthful works he had not freed himself altogether
from the harsher tonality of earlier art. Here, however, Giotto shows
that power which is distinctive of the greatest masters of paint, of
developing a form within a strictly limited scale of tone, drawing out
of the slightest contrasts their fullest expressiveness for the
rendering of form; a method which, though adopted from an intuitive
feeling for pure beauty, gives a result which can only be described as
that of an enveloping atmosphere surrounding the forms.[31]
The kneeling figure, presumably Cardinal Stefaneschi himself, in the
“Christ enthroned” is an admirable instance of this quality. With what
tender, scarcely perceptible gradations, with what a limited range from
dark to light is the figure expressed; and yet it is not flat, the form
is perfectly realised between the two sweeping curves whose simplicity
would seem, but for the masterly modelling, to prevent the possibility
of their containing a human figure. The portrait is as remarkable in
sentiment as in execution. The very conception of introducing a donor
into such a composition was new.[32] It was a sign of the new
individualism which marked the whole of the great period of Italian art,
and finally developed into extravagance. The donor having once found his
way into pictures of sacred ceremonial remained, but he not infrequently
found it difficult to comport himself becomingly amid celestial
surroundings; as he became more important, and heaven itself became less
so, he asserted himself with unseemly self-assurance, until at last his
matter-of-fact countenance, rendered with prosaic fidelity, stares out
at the spectator in contemptuous indifference to the main action of the
composition, the illusion of which it effectually destroys.
But here, where the idea is new, it has no such jarring effect; it is
not yet a stereotyped formula, an excuse for self-advertisement or
social display, but the direct outcome of a poetical and pious thought;
and Giotto, with his unique rightness of feeling, has expressed, by the
hand clinging to the throne and the slightly bent head, just the
appropriate attitude of humble adoration, which he contrasts with the
almost nonchalant ease and confidence of the angels. Even in so purely
ceremonial a composition as this Giotto contrives to create a human
situation.
In the planning of this picture Giotto has surpassed not only Duccio’s
and Cimabue’s versions of the Enthronement motive but his own earlier
work at Florence. The throne, similar in construction to that in the
Academy picture, no longer shows the inconsistencies of two conflicting
styles, but is of pure and exquisitely proportioned Gothic; the
difficult perspective of the arches at the side is rendered with
extraordinary skill though without mathematical accuracy. The relation
of the figure of Christ to the throne is here entirely satisfactory,
with the result that the great size of the figure no longer appears
unnatural, but as an easily accepted symbol of divinity. In the drawing
of the face of the Christ he has retained the hieratic solemnity given
by the rigid delineation of Byzantine art.
But if the “Christ enthroned” is a triumph of well-calculated
proportions, the “Crucifixion of S. Peter” which formed one side of the
triptych, is even more remarkable for the beauty of its spacing and the
ingenuity of its arrangement.
In designing such a panel with its narrow cusped arch and gold
background, the artist’s first consideration must be its effect as mere
pattern when seen on the altar at the end of a church. In his frescoes,
Giotto’s first preoccupation was with the drama to be presented; here it
was with the effect of sumptuous pattern.
And the given data out of which the pattern was to be made were by no
means tractable. The subject of the Crucifixion of S. Peter was
naturally not a favourite one with artists, and scarcely any succeeded
in it entirely, even in the small dimensions of a predella piece, to
which it was generally relegated. For it is almost impossible to do away
with the unpleasant effect of a figure seen thus upside down. The
outstretched arms, which in the crucifixion of Christ give a
counterbalancing line to the long horizontal of the spectators, here
only increases the difficulty of the single upright. But Giotto, by a
brilliant inspiration,[33] found his solution in the other fact given by
his subject--namely, that the martyrdom took place between the goals of
the Circus of Nero. By making these huge pyramids adapted from two
well-known Roman monuments (the Septizonium and the pyramid of Cestius),
he has obtained from the gold background just that dignified effect of
spreading out above and contracting below which is so effective in
renderings of the crucifixion of Christ, an effect which he still
further emphasises by the two angels, whose spreading wings and floating
draperies increase the brocade-like richness of the symmetrical pattern.
Nor, the pattern once assured, has Giotto failed of vivid dramatic
presentation. It is surprising to find crowded into so small a space so
many new poses all beautifully expressive of the individual shades of a
common feeling: the woman to the left of the cross leaning her head on
her hand as though sorrow had become a physical pain; the beautiful
figure of the youth, with long waving hair, who throws back both arms
with a despairing gesture; the woman lifting her robe to wipe her tears;
and, most exquisite of all, and most surprising, in its novelty and
truth to life, the figure of the girl to the left, drawn towards the
terrible scene by a motion of sympathy and yet shrinking back with
instinctive shyness and terror. In the child alone Giotto has, as was
usually the case, failed of a rhythmical and expressive pose. And what
an entirely new study of life is seen here in the variety of the types!
In one--the man whose profile cuts the sky to the left--he seems to have
been indebted to some Roman portrait-bust; another, on horseback to the
left, is clearly a Mongolian type, with slant eyes and pigtail, a
curious proof of the intercourse with the extreme East which the
Franciscan missionaries had already established. In the drawing of the
nude figure of S. Peter, in spite of the unfortunate proportion of the
head, the same direct study of nature has enabled Giotto to realise the
structure of the figure more adequately than any artist since Roman
times. One can well understand the astonishment and delight of Giotto’s
contemporaries at this unfolding of the new possibilities of art, which
could now interpret all the variety and richness of human life and could
so intensify its appeal to the emotions. One other peculiarity of this
picture is interesting and characteristic of Giotto’s attitude. In
painting the frame of his panel he did not merely add figures as
decorative and symbolic accessories, he brought them into relation with
the central action, for each of them gazes at S. Peter with a different
expression of pity and grief. Giotto had to be dramatic even in his
frames.[34]
That Giotto remained in Rome till after the great Jubilee of 1300 is
shown by the fragment of his fresco of the Papal Benediction which still
remains on a pillar of S. John Lateran. There is every probability that
at this time he met Dante, who was collecting the materials for the
terrible portrait of Boniface VIII. which he drew in the “Inferno.”