The first of the great personalities in Florentine painting was Giotto.
Although he affords no exception to the rule that the great Florentines
exploited all the arts in the endeavour to express themselves, he,
Giotto, renowned as architect and sculptor, reputed as wit and
versifier, differed from most of his Tuscan successors in having
peculiar aptitude for the essential in painting _as an art_.
But before we can appreciate his real value, we must come to an
agreement as to what in the art of figure-painting--the craft has its
own altogether diverse laws--_is_ the essential; for figure-painting, we
may say at once, was not only the one pre-occupation of Giotto, but the
dominant interest of the entire Florentine school.
[Page heading: IMAGINATION OF TOUCH]
Psychology has ascertained that sight alone gives us no accurate sense
of the third dimension. In our infancy, long before we are conscious of
the process, the sense of touch, helped on by muscular sensations of
movement, teaches us to appreciate depth, the third dimension, both in
objects and in space.
In the same unconscious years we learn to make of touch, of the third
dimension, the test of reality. The child is still dimly aware of the
intimate connection between touch and the third dimension. He cannot
persuade himself of the unreality of Looking-Glass Land until he has
touched the back of the mirror. Later, we entirely forget the
connection, although it remains true, that every time our eyes recognise
reality, we are, as a matter of fact, giving tactile values to retinal
impressions.
Now, painting is an art which aims at giving an abiding impression of
artistic reality with only two dimensions. The painter must, therefore,
do consciously what we all do unconsciously,--construct his third
dimension. And he can accomplish his task only as we accomplish ours, by
giving tactile values to retinal impressions. His first business,
therefore, is to rouse the tactile sense, for I must have the illusion
of being able to touch a figure, I must have the illusion of varying
muscular sensations inside my palm and fingers corresponding to the
various projections of this figure, before I shall take it for granted
as real, and let it affect me lastingly.
It follows that the essential in the art of painting--as distinguished
from the art of colouring, I beg the reader to observe--is somehow to
stimulate our consciousness of tactile values, so that the picture shall
have at least as much power as the object represented, to appeal to our
tactile imagination.
[Page heading: GIOTTO]
Well, it was of the power to stimulate the tactile consciousness--of the
essential, as I have ventured to call it, in the art of painting--that
Giotto was supreme master. This is his everlasting claim to greatness,
and it is this which will make him a source of highest æsthetic delight
for a period at least as long as decipherable traces of his handiwork
remain on mouldering panel or crumbling wall. For great though he was as
a poet, enthralling as a story-teller, splendid and majestic as a
composer, he was in these qualities superior in degree only, to many of
the masters who painted in various parts of Europe during the thousand
years that intervened between the decline of antique, and the birth, in
his own person, of modern painting. But none of these masters had the
power to stimulate the tactile imagination, and, consequently, they
never painted a figure which has artistic existence. Their works have
value, if at all, as highly elaborate, very intelligible symbols,
capable, indeed, of communicating something, but losing all higher value
the moment the message is delivered.
Giotto's paintings, on the contrary, have not only as much power of
appealing to the tactile imagination as is possessed by the objects
represented--human figures in particular--but actually more, with the
necessary result that to his contemporaries they conveyed a _keener_
sense of reality, of life-likeness than the objects themselves! We whose
current knowledge of anatomy is greater, who expect more articulation
and suppleness in the human figure, who, in short, see much less naïvely
now than Giotto's contemporaries, no longer find his paintings more than
life-like; but we still feel them to be intensely real in the sense
that they still powerfully appeal to our tactile imagination, thereby
compelling us, as do all things that stimulate our sense of touch while
they present themselves to our eyes, to take their existence for
granted. And it is only when we can take for granted the existence of
the object painted that it can begin to give us pleasure that is
genuinely artistic, as separated from the interest we feel in symbols.
[Page heading: ANALYSIS OF ENJOYMENT OF PAINTING]
At the risk of seeming to wander off into the boundless domain of
æsthetics, we must stop at this point for a moment to make sure that we
are of one mind regarding the meaning of the phrase "artistic pleasure,"
in so far at least as it is used in connection with painting.
What is the point at which ordinary pleasures pass over into the
specific pleasures derived from each one of the arts? Our judgment about
the merits of any given work of art depends to a large extent upon our
answer to this question. Those who have not yet differentiated the
specific pleasures of the art of painting from the pleasures they derive
from the art of literature, will be likely to fall into the error of
judging the picture by its dramatic presentation of a situation or its
rendering of character; will, in short, demand of the painting that it
shall be in the first place a good _illustration_. Those others who seek
in painting what is usually sought in music, the communication of a
pleasurable state of emotion, will prefer pictures which suggest
pleasant associations, nice people, refined amusements, agreeable
landscapes. In many cases this lack of clearness is of comparatively
slight importance, the given picture containing all these
pleasure-giving elements in addition to the qualities peculiar to the
art of painting. But in the case of the Florentines, the distinction is
of vital consequence, for they have been the artists in Europe who have
most resolutely set themselves to work upon the specific problems of the
art of figure-painting, and have neglected, more than any other school,
to call to their aid the secondary pleasures of association. With them
the issue is clear. If we wish to appreciate their merit, we are forced
to disregard the desire for pretty or agreeable types, dramatically
interpreted situations, and, in fact, "suggestiveness" of any kind.
Worse still, we must even forego our pleasure in colour, often a
genuinely artistic pleasure, for they never systematically exploited
this element, and in some of their best works the colour is actually
harsh and unpleasant. It was in fact upon form, and form alone, that the
great Florentine masters concentrated their efforts, and we are
consequently forced to the belief that, in their pictures at least, form
is the principal source of our æsthetic enjoyment.
Now in what way, we ask, can form in painting give me a sensation of
pleasure which differs from the ordinary sensations I receive from form?
How is it that an object whose recognition in nature may have given me
no pleasure, becomes, when recognised in a picture, a source of æsthetic
enjoyment, or that recognition pleasurable in nature becomes an enhanced
pleasure the moment it is transferred to art? The answer, I believe,
depends upon the fact that art stimulates to an unwonted activity
psychical processes which are in themselves the source of most (if not
all) of our pleasures, and which here, free from disturbing physical
sensations, never tend to pass over into pain. For instance: I am in
the habit of realising a given object with an intensity that we shall
value as 2. If I suddenly realise this familiar object with an intensity
of 4, I receive the immediate pleasure which accompanies a doubling of
my mental activity. But the pleasure rarely stops here. Those who are
capable of receiving direct pleasure from a work of art, are generally
led on to the further pleasures of self-consciousness. The fact that the
psychical process of recognition goes forward with the unusual intensity
of 4 to 2, overwhelms them with the sense of having twice the capacity
they had credited themselves with: their whole personality is enhanced,
and, being aware that this enhancement is connected with the object in
question, they for some time after take not only an increased interest
in it, but continue to realise it with the new intensity. Precisely this
is what form does in painting: it lends a higher coefficient of reality
to the object represented, with the consequent enjoyment of accelerated
psychical processes, and the exhilarating sense of increased capacity in
the observer. (Hence, by the way, the greater pleasure we take in the
object painted than in itself.)
And it happens thus. We remember that to realise form we must give
tactile values to retinal sensations. Ordinarily we have considerable
difficulty in skimming off these tactile values, and by the time they
have reached our consciousness, they have lost much of their strength.
Obviously, the artist who gives us these values more rapidly than the
object itself gives them, gives us the pleasures consequent upon a more
vivid realisation of the object, and the further pleasures that come
from the sense of greater psychical capacity.
Furthermore, the stimulation of our tactile imagination awakens our
consciousness of the importance of the tactile sense in our physical and
mental functioning, and thus, again, by making us feel better provided
for life than we were aware of being, gives us a heightened sense of
capacity. And this brings us back once more to the statement that the
chief business of the figure painter, as an artist, is to stimulate the
tactile imagination.
The proportions of this small book forbid me to develop further a
theme, the adequate treatment of which would require more than the
entire space at my command. I must be satisfied with the crude and
unillumined exposition given already, allowing myself this further word
only, that I do not mean to imply that we get no pleasure from a picture
except the tactile satisfaction. On the contrary, we get much pleasure
from composition, more from colour, and perhaps more still from
movement, to say nothing of all the possible associative pleasures for
which every work of art is the occasion. What I do wish to say is that
_unless_ it satisfies our tactile imagination, a picture will not exert
the fascination of an ever-heightened reality; first we shall exhaust
its ideas, and then its power of appealing to our emotions, and its
"beauty" will not seem more significant at the thousandth look than at
the first.
My need of dwelling upon this subject at all, I must repeat, arises from
the fact that although this principle is important indeed in other
schools, it is all-important in the Florentine school. Without its due
appreciation it would be impossible to do justice to Florentine
painting. We should lose ourselves in admiration of its "teaching," or
perchance of its historical importance--as if historical importance were
synonymous with artistic significance!--but we should never realise what
artistic idea haunted the minds of its great men, and never understand
why at a date so early it became academic.
[Page heading: GIOTTO AND VALUES OF TOUCH]
Let us now turn back to Giotto and see in what way he fulfils the first
condition of painting as an art, which condition, as we agreed, is
somehow to stimulate our tactile imagination. We shall understand this
without difficulty if we cover with the same glance two pictures of
nearly the same subject that hang side by side in the Florence Academy,
one by "Cimabue," and the other by Giotto. The difference is striking,
but it does not consist so much in a difference of pattern and types, as
of realisation. In the "Cimabue" we patiently decipher the lines and
colours, and we conclude at last that they were intended to represent a
woman seated, men and angels standing by or kneeling. To recognise these
representations we have had to make many times the effort that the
actual objects would have required, and in consequence our feeling of
capacity has not only not been confirmed, but actually put in question.
With what sense of relief, of rapidly rising vitality, we turn to the
Giotto! Our eyes scarcely have had time to light on it before we realise
it completely--the throne occupying a real space, the Virgin
satisfactorily seated upon it, the angels grouped in rows about it. Our
tactile imagination is put to play immediately. Our palms and fingers
accompany our eyes much more quickly than in presence of real objects,
the sensations varying constantly with the various projections
represented, as of face, torso, knees; confirming in every way our
feeling of capacity for coping with things,--for life, in short. I care
little that the picture endowed with the gift of evoking such feelings
has faults, that the types represented do not correspond to my ideal of
beauty, that the figures are too massive, and almost unarticulated; I
forgive them all, because I have much better to do than to dwell upon
faults.
But how does Giotto accomplish this miracle? With the simplest means,
with almost rudimentary light and shade, and functional line, he
contrives to render, out of all the possible outlines, out of all the
possible variations of light and shade that a given figure may have,
only those that we must isolate for special attention when we are
actually realising it. This determines his types, his schemes of colour,
even his compositions. He aims at types which both in face and figure
are simple, large-boned, and massive,--types, that is to say, which in
actual life would furnish the most powerful stimulus to the tactile
imagination. Obliged to get the utmost out of his rudimentary light and
shade, he makes his scheme of colour of the lightest that his contrasts
may be of the strongest. In his compositions, he aims at clearness of
grouping, so that each important figure may have its desired tactile
value. Note in the "Madonna" we have been looking at, how the shadows
compel us to realise every concavity, and the lights every convexity,
and how, with the play of the two, under the guidance of line, we
realise the significant parts of each figure, whether draped or
undraped. Nothing here but has its architectonic reason. Above all,
every line is functional; that is to say, charged with purpose. Its
existence, its direction, is absolutely determined by the need of
rendering the tactile values. Follow any line here, say in the figure of
the angel kneeling to the left, and see how it outlines and models, how
it enables you to realise the head, the torso, the hips, the legs, the
feet, and how its direction, its tension, is always determined by the
action. There is not a genuine fragment of Giotto in existence but has
these qualities, and to such a degree that the worst treatment has not
been able to spoil them. Witness the resurrected frescoes in Santa Croce
at Florence!
[Page heading: SYMBOLISM OF GIOTTO]
The rendering of tactile values once recognised as the most important
specifically artistic quality of Giotto's work, and as his personal
contribution to the art of painting, we are all the better fitted to
appreciate his more obvious though less peculiar merits--merits, I must
add, which would seem far less extraordinary if it were not for the high
plane of reality on which Giotto keeps us. Now what is back of this
power of raising us to a higher plane of reality but a genius for
grasping and communicating real significance? What is it to render the
tactile values of an object but to communicate its material
significance? A painter who, after generations of mere manufacturers of
symbols, illustrations, and allegories had the power to render the
material significance of the objects he painted, must, as a man, have
had a profound sense of the significant. No matter, then, what his
theme, Giotto feels its real significance and communicates as much of it
as the general limitations of his art, and of his own skill permit. When
the theme is sacred story, it is scarcely necessary to point out with
what processional gravity, with what hieratic dignity, with what
sacramental intentness he endows it; the eloquence of the greatest
critics has here found a darling subject. But let us look a moment at
certain of his symbols in the Arena at Padua, at the "Inconstancy," the
"Injustice," the "Avarice," for instance. "What are the significant
traits," he seems to have asked himself, "in the appearance and action
of a person under the exclusive domination of one of these vices? Let me
paint the person with these traits, and I shall have a figure that
perforce must call up the vice in question." So he paints "Inconstancy"
as a woman with a blank face, her arms held out aimlessly, her torso
falling backwards, her feet on the side of a wheel. It makes one giddy
to look at her. "Injustice," is a powerfully built man in the vigour of
his years dressed in the costume of a judge, with his left hand
clenching the hilt of his sword, and his clawed right hand grasping a
double hooked lance. His cruel eye is sternly on the watch, and his
attitude is one of alert readiness to spring in all his giant force upon
his prey. He sits enthroned on a rock, overtowering the tall waving
trees, and below him his underlings are stripping and murdering a
wayfarer. "Avarice" is a horned hag with ears like trumpets. A snake
issuing from her mouth curls back and bites her forehead. Her left hand
clutches her money-bag, as she moves forward stealthily, her right hand
ready to shut down on whatever it can grasp. No need to label them: as
long as these vices exist, for so long has Giotto extracted and
presented their visible significance.
[Page heading: GIOTTO]
Still another exemplification of his sense for the significant is
furnished by his treatment of action and movement. The grouping, the
gestures never fail to be just such as will most rapidly convey the
meaning. So with the significant line, the significant light and shade,
the significant look up or down, and the significant gesture, with means
technically of the simplest, and, be it remembered, with no knowledge of
anatomy, Giotto conveys a complete sense of motion such as we get in his
Paduan frescoes of the "Resurrection of the Blessed," of the "Ascension
of our Lord," of the God the Father in the "Baptism," or the angel in
"Zacharias' Dream."
This, then, is Giotto's claim to everlasting appreciation as an artist:
that his thorough-going sense for the significant in the visible world
enabled him so to represent things that we realise his representations
more quickly and more completely than we should realise the things
themselves, thus giving us that confirmation of our sense of capacity
which is so great a source of pleasure.