VESTIBULE
“But at any rate I have loved the season
Of Art’s spring birth so dim and dewy;
My sculptor is Nicolo the Pisan;
My painter—who but Cimabue?”
Here we are in the National Gallery. Oh these wonderful pictures! How
beautiful they are, how soothing is their colour; we feel what the
Americans call “good” in this lovely atmosphere. Now I am going to speak
to you about these works of art—not about them all or nearly all—but
about those that I think you would care for most and those that are
important for you to know something about. I must not trouble too much
to keep to the order of the rooms, although I will keep to it as far as
possible; but there are so many changes in the hanging of the pictures
that confusion ensues when we look for them in the rooms. I shall
mention them by their numbers as these never alter. The artist who
founded the Florentine school was Cimabue, and he is now in Room III.
Let us seek for him there, as I am anxious to trace for you the history
of the Florentine school from the beginning.
Cimabue’s picture, “The Madonna and Child” (565), marks the beginning of
the revival of art in Italy and in the world. It is the first picture
that we have of the Florentine school. The Byzantine influence is strong
upon it. It is important that you should understand what I mean by the
Byzantine influence. In the fourth century, the Roman Empire had been
broken up into two great divisions—the Eastern Empire and the Western
Empire. The Western Empire had Rome for its capital, the Eastern had
Constantinople or Byzantium. As trouble continued to overwhelm Italy
from without and from within, the centre of civilisation was gradually
transferred to Constantinople. Then when Italy had been broken up into
separate republics, when peace returned to the country, it was found
that during that time of warfare the buildings had been allowed to fall
into decay, and, what was of greater importance, there were no artists
in Italy fitted to undertake their restoration. Art had taken refuge in
the Byzantine Empire. About the twelfth century wealth and happiness had
come back to Italy. Florence especially was prosperous, and the gaiety
and courtliness of its life had returned.
The heads of the State wished to rebuild and to re-decorate the ruined
buildings, but there was no Florentine who could undertake the task, so
they sent to Constantinople for Greek artists.
Byzantine art was a curious product. It was very conventional. Greek
artists always worked from a preconceived idea, and they never looked at
nature to correct this idea. They largely encrusted their work with
gold; they put gold instead of light on the dresses, gold on the halos,
gold on the crowns, gold in the background. It was garish, even splendid
in effect, but it was not nature. For everything there was a ready-made
model, and from that model the artists never departed. The faces they
painted were always the same faces, with goggling eyes and rigid lips.
The figures were without grace, they were gaunt and archaic, but gold
made up for everything, and gold was lavishly used.
To Florence, therefore, came Greek painters and Greek architects to
rebuild the churches and to decorate the walls and altars. The
inhabitants of the town watched the painters at work; and in the crowd
there was a little lad, the member of an illustrious family. He was born
about 1240, and he was named Giovanni Cimabue. His father wished him to
attend the classes held by a relative in the convent of Santa Maria
Novella, but Cimabue did not care for that kind of learning; his heart
was with the artists in the chapel. When he could not get there he
covered the leaves of his lesson-books with drawings of men and women,
of horses and houses, but whenever he could escape he would run off to
watch the Greek artists at work. Don’t you fancy you can see the lad
watching, with all his soul in his eyes? The father felt that the boy
had a vocation and no longer opposed his bent. Cimabue was apprenticed
to the Greek artists. He was happy now; he could devote all his time to
his beloved art. His masters never looked to nature, but Cimabue was
full of observation. For nigh three hundred years no one in Italy had
drawn from life. Cimabue studied nature; his pictures were very
grotesque, but it was a right impulse he gave to art; instead of
following convention he attempted the representation of things as they
were. He tried to paint what he saw, his Madonnas, his angels are gaunt,
the drawing is almost childish, but there is in it a touch of reality.
It was because of this truth that he brought into the world—to study
from nature direct—that his pictures meant so much to his
contemporaries.
He painted a Madonna, with the shadow of pain in her eyes, carrying the
Babe on her knee; about her and the Child are angels. All the citizens
of Florence turned out and carried Cimabue’s picture in triumph through
the city to the church of Santa Maria Capella. The citizens donned
holiday attire, the children threw flowers, the youths sounded trumpets,
the joy bells rang, all the dignitaries of Church and State accompanied
the picture on its way. Lord Leighton has painted a beautiful
representation of this scene. The way Cimabue’s Madonna went has been
called the suburb of gladness, and still it is called the “Borgo
Allegri.”
The “Madonna and Child” (565), by Cimabue, is a colossal Madonna, very
stiffly drawn, but her eyes are sad, and, with a tender gesture, she
clasps her Child. Time has very much injured the picture’s colour; it
has worn away the flesh tints; it has left uncovered the green
foundation, yet there is truth in it, because Cimabue studied from
nature. He became the founder of the Florentine school, to which
Botticelli and Lippo Lippi belonged, Piero di Cosimo, and Andrea del
Sarto, of incomparable grace, the school that blossomed into the genius
of Michael Angelo, into the divine grace of Leonardo da Vinci.
We shall now return to the vestibule. Giotto, Cimabue’s pupil, carried
further than his master did the study of nature, and shares with him the
glory of being head of the Florentine school. He was the son of a
shepherd who lived in Vespignamo, a hamlet fourteen miles from Florence.
The lad used to take out his father’s flocks to pasture. One day, when
he was about ten years of age, he drew, as was his wont, with a sharp
stone for pencil upon a smooth rock. Cimabue passed that way and stopped
to see the little fellow’s work; he was so pleased with it that he asked
Giotto if he would go to Florence to learn there how to draw and paint.
Giotto was wonderstruck and answered he would willingly go if his father
allowed him. Then Cimabue went to the shepherd’s hut and asked if he
might take the child back with him and teach him art. Permission was
granted, and the boy from that day prepared to become a painter. In
another version of the meeting of Cimabue and his future pupil, it is
said that Giotto’s father had apprenticed the lad to a wool-merchant,
and, one day asking news of his son, he heard that he used to spend all
his time at the studio of Cimabue. It was no use to oppose his bent for
art; the father took him away from the wool-merchant, and placed him
under the care of Cimabue.
The joy of Giotto! He might work all day without pause! Very soon his
ardour made him outstrip his master. He drew straight from life, and he
drew everything. He formed a friendship with the poet Dante, painting
his portrait. Poet and painter, how ennobling was their intercourse!
Giotto’s most notable works are his frescoes at Assisi. Saint Francis,
who looked upon all created things as his brothers and sisters, who
wrote canticles to the sun, to the birds, whom the very wolves obeyed,
was dead. He was buried in the church on the hill. Giotto was entrusted
by the prior of the order of the Dominicans to paint the frescoes
illustrating the miracles and life of St. Francis of Assisi.
We have nothing authentic from Giotto’s hand. But we have pictures that
undoubtedly belong to his school—thus (276), placed in the vestibule,
shows the heads of St. John and St. Paul bowed in adoration. They are
part of a fresco; some say that they are portraits. It is the beauty of
the expression, the fervour of the look, that makes them dear to us. No.
(568) is “The Coronation of the Virgin.” Neither is this picture held to
be by Giotto, but, again, it is by a member of his school. There is a
charming and familiar loveliness in the incidents depicted; the human
element is strong, as it is in all that Giotto painted. Thus it was
that, although Cimabue founded the school of Florence, Giotto went
further than he did in the study of nature, and all the artists of this
period were called Giottesques.
Margaritone (1216–1293) was the last of the Italians who painted
according to the Greek or Byzantine manner. This picture, “The Virgin
and Child” (564), with incidents taken from the “Lives of the Saints,”
is placed in the vestibule. It speaks to us in symbols. The child Christ
is blessing the faithful. He holds in his left hand the roll on which
are inscribed the names of the saved. The Virgin is surrounded by an
aureole, almond-shaped, used for her only when she holds the Child.
Outside are placed the Angel, the Ox, the Lion, and the Eagle—emblems of
the four Evangelists. On either side of the panel are pictured incidents
from the “Lives of the Saints,” eight in number. How quaint and
grotesque is the symbolism; it is almost childish in execution. Here,
for instance, is St. John the Evangelist, apparently in a hip-bath of
seething oil, blessing with uplifted hand his persecutors; a little
further we see him resuscitating Drusiana; there is St. Benedict rushing
into a thicket of briars and nettles to rid himself of the thought of a
beautiful woman that is impeding his prayers, and St. Nicholas of Bari
is also there preaching to the sailors. Further on is St. Catherine
being beheaded, her body buried by angels on Mount Sinai, and strangest
of all these strange little pictures is that of St. Margaret in prison
swallowed and disgorged by the dragon.
Margaritone died when he was aged seventy-seven. He was weary of life;
he had survived the art of his youth and the taste of his time, for
taste had turned from the love of convention to the love of the new
ideals in art. Cimabue and the shepherd’s son, Giotto, had taught their
generation to care only for the truth of nature. Men were beginning to
look to the present rather than to the past, to the teaching of the
actual rather than to the teaching of the symbol, and Margaritone had
been left behind in the march of the human spirit towards progress.
Orcagna (1308–1368), painter, poet, sculptor, and architect, is the next
painter whose works I want you to look at. His name means the
“Archangel,” and although his pictures are stiff and show a want of
knowledge of anatomy, they are imbued with the solemnity of great faith.
His virgins and angels have a certain elegant sweetness of pose and
expression. He drew with force and energy, and he finished every part of
his picture with care and delicacy. In this altarpiece (569), placed in
the vestibule, the “Coronation of the Virgin,” we find these qualities
exemplified. In the centre Christ is crowning His Mother. How dignified
and graceful is the Virgin’s pose, as she bends her head to receive the
crown which her son is placing upon it. Angels are around, some
kneeling, some playing musical instruments, all worshipping the Lord and
His Mother. In the two compartments, one on the right and one on the
left of this central panel, saints are kneeling in adoration. On the
left is Peter carrying the model of the church St. Peter Maggiore, for
which the picture was painted. Saints and apostles are there, and among
them are women—St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Mary Magdalene, and St.
Catherine of Alexandria. It is a picture full of adoration and of a
sense of character. You will find nine small pictures (570 to 578),
portions of this altarpiece, helping to tell the great story of the
redemption of man. All these pictures are more or less rudely drawn, but
they reveal to us why the painter was called “Archangel.” His mind dwelt
on heavenly themes, and he was impatient of others less exalted. We have
not many details of Orcagna’s life.