[Page heading: FOLLOWERS OF GIOTTO]
For a hundred years after Giotto there appeared in Florence no painter
equally endowed with dominion over the significant. His immediate
followers so little understood the essence of his power that some
thought it resided in his massive types, others in the swiftness of his
line, and still others in his light colour, and it never occurred to any
of them that the massive form without its material significance, its
tactile values, is a shapeless sack, that the line which is not
functional is mere calligraphy, and that light colour by itself can at
the best spot a surface prettily. The better of them felt their
inferiority, but knew no remedy, and all worked busily, copying and
distorting Giotto, until they and the public were heartily tired. A
change at all costs became necessary, and it was very simple when it
came. "Why grope about for the significant, when the obvious is at hand?
Let me paint the obvious; the obvious always pleases," said some clever
innovator. So he painted the obvious,--pretty clothes, pretty faces, and
trivial action, with the results foreseen: he pleased then, and he
pleases still. Crowds still flock to the Spanish chapel in S. Maria
Novella to celebrate the triumph of the obvious, and non-significant.
Pretty faces, pretty colour, pretty clothes, and trivial action! Is
there a single figure in the fresco representing the "Triumph of St.
Thomas" which incarnates the idea it symbolises, which, without its
labelling instrument, would convey any meaning whatever? One pretty
woman holds a globe and sword, and I am required to feel the majesty of
empire; another has painted over her pretty clothes a bow and arrow,
which are supposed to rouse me to a sense of the terrors of war; a third
has an organ on what was intended to be her knee, and the sight of this
instrument must suffice to put me into the ecstasies of heavenly music;
still another pretty lady has her arm akimbo, and if you want to know
what edification she can bring, you must read her scroll. Below these
pretty women sit a number of men looking as worthy as clothes and beards
can make them; one highly dignified old gentleman gazes with all his
heart and all his soul at--the point of his quill. The same lack of
significance, the same obviousness characterise the fresco representing
the "Church Militant and Triumphant." What more obvious symbol for _the_
Church than _a_ church? what more significant of St. Dominic than the
refuted Paynim philosopher who (with a movement, by the way, as obvious
as it is clever) tears out a leaf from his own book? And I have touched
only on the value of these frescoes as allegories. Not to speak of the
emptiness of the one and the confusion of the other, as compositions,
there is not a figure in either which has tactile values,--that is to
say, artistic existence.
While I do not mean to imply that painting between Giotto and Masaccio
existed in vain--on the contrary, considerable progress was made in the
direction of landscape, perspective, and facial expression,--it is true
that, excepting the works of two men, no masterpieces of art were
produced. These two, one coming in the middle of the period we have been
dwelling upon, and the other just at its close, were Andrea Orcagna and
Fra Angelico.
[Page heading: ORCAGNA]
Of Orcagna it is difficult to speak, as only a single fairly intact
painting of his remains, the altar-piece in S. Maria Novella. Here he
reveals himself as a man of considerable endowment: as in Giotto, we
have tactile values, material significance; the figures artistically
exist. But while this painting betrays no peculiar feeling for beauty of
face and expression, the frescoes in the same chapel, the one in
particular representing Paradise, have faces full of charm and grace. I
am tempted to believe that we have here a happy improvement made by the
recent restorer. But what these mural paintings must always have had is
real artistic existence, great dignity of slow but rhythmic movement,
and splendid grouping. They still convince us of their high purpose. On
the other hand, we are disappointed in Orcagna's sculptured tabernacle
at Or Sammichele, where the feeling for both material and spiritual
significance is much lower.
[Page heading: FRA ANGELICO]
We are happily far better situated toward Fra Angelico, enough of whose
works have come down to us to reveal not only his quality as an artist,
but his character as a man. Perfect certainty of purpose, utter devotion
to his task, a sacramental earnestness in performing it, are what the
quantity and quality of his work together proclaim. It is true that
Giotto's profound feeling for either the materially or the spiritually
significant was denied him--and there is no possible compensation for
the difference; but although his sense for the real was weaker, it yet
extended to fields which Giotto had not touched. Like all the supreme
artists, Giotto had no inclination to concern himself with his attitude
toward the significant, with his feelings about it; the grasping and
presentation of it sufficed him. In the weaker personality, the
significant, vaguely perceived, is converted into emotion, is merely
felt, and not realised. Over this realm of feeling Fra Angelico was the
first great master. "God's in his heaven--all's right with the world" he
felt with an intensity which prevented him from perceiving evil
anywhere. When he was obliged to portray it, his imagination failed him
and he became a mere child; his hells are bogy-land; his martyrdoms are
enacted by children solemnly playing at martyr and executioner; and he
nearly spoils one of the most impressive scenes ever painted--the great
"Crucifixion" at San Marco--with the childish violence of St. Jerome's
tears. But upon the picturing of blitheness, of ecstatic confidence in
God's loving care, he lavished all the resources of his art. Nor were
they small. To a power of rendering tactile values, to a sense for the
significant in composition, inferior, it is true, to Giotto's, but
superior to the qualifications of any intervening painter, Fra Angelico
added the charm of great facial beauty, the interest of vivid
expression, the attraction of delicate colour. What in the whole world
of art more rejuvenating than Angelico's "Coronation" (in the
Uffizi)--the happiness on all the faces, the flower-like grace of line
and colour, the childlike simplicity yet unqualifiable beauty of the
composition? And all this in tactile values which compel us to grant the
reality of the scene, although in a world where real people are
standing, sitting, and kneeling we know not, and care not, on what. It
is true, the significance of the event represented is scarcely touched
upon, but then how well Angelico communicates the feeling with which it
inspired him! Yet simple though he was as a person, simple and
one-sided as was his message, as a product he was singularly complex. He
was the typical painter of the transition from Mediæval to Renaissance.
The sources of his feeling are in the Middle Ages, but he _enjoys_ his
feelings in a way which is almost modern; and almost modern also are his
means of expression. We are too apt to forget this transitional
character of his, and, ranking him with the moderns, we count against
him every awkwardness of action, and every lack of articulation in his
figures. Yet both in action and in articulation he made great progress
upon his precursors--so great that, but for Masaccio, who completely
surpassed him, we should value him as an innovator. Moreover, he was not
only the first Italian to paint a landscape that can be identified (a
view of Lake Trasimene from Cortona), but the first to communicate a
sense of the pleasantness of nature. How readily we feel the freshness
and spring-time gaiety of his gardens in the frescoes of the
"Annunciation" and the "Noli me tangere" at San Marco!