Florentine painting between Giotto and Michelangelo contains the names
of such artists as Orcagna, Masaccio, Fra Filippo, Pollaiuolo,
Verrocchio, Leonardo, and Botticelli. Put beside these the greatest
names in Venetian art, the Vivarini, the Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and
Tintoret. The difference is striking. The significance of the Venetian
names is exhausted with their significance as painters. Not so with the
Florentines. Forget that they were painters, they remain great
sculptors; forget that they were sculptors, and still they remain
architects, poets, and even men of science. They left no form of
expression untried, and to none could they say, "This will perfectly
convey my meaning." Painting, therefore, offers but a partial and not
always the most adequate manifestation of their personality, and we feel
the artist as greater than his work, and the man as soaring above the
artist.
[Page heading: MANYSIDEDNESS OF THE PAINTERS]
The immense superiority of the artist even to his greatest achievement
in any one art form, means that his personality was but slightly
determined by the particular art in question, that he tended to mould it
rather than let it shape him. It would be absurd, therefore, to treat
the Florentine painter as a mere link between two points in a necessary
evolution. The history of the art of Florence never can be, as that of
Venice, the study of a placid development. Each man of genius brought to
bear upon his art a great intellect, which, never condescending merely
to please, was tirelessly striving to reincarnate what it comprehended
of life in forms that would fitly convey it to others; and in this
endeavour each man of genius was necessarily compelled to create forms
essentially his own. But because Florentine painting was pre-eminently
an art formed by great personalities, it grappled with problems of the
highest interest, and offered solutions that can never lose their
value. What they aimed at, and what they attained, is the subject of the
following essay.