some of which are at Rome, in S. Giovanni and in S. Pietro, and some at
Pisa, in S. Caterina, where, in the tramezzo[10] of the church, there is
set up over an altar a panel with S. Catherine on it, and many scenes
from her life with little figures, and a S. Francis with many scenes on
a panel, on a ground of gold. And in the upper Church of S. Francesco
d'Assisi there is a Crucifix by his hand, painted in the Greek manner,
on a beam that crosses the church. All which works were in great esteem
among the people of that age, although to-day by us they are not
esteemed save as old things, good when art was not, as it is to-day, at
its height. And seeing that Margaritone applied himself also to
architecture, although I have not made mention of any buildings made
with his design, because they are not of importance, I will yet not
forbear to say that he, according to what I find, made the design and
model of the Palazzo de' Governatori in the city of Ancona, after the
Greek manner, in the year 1270; and what is more, he made in sculpture,
on the principal front, eight windows, whereof each one has, in the
space in the middle, two columns that support in the middle two arches,
over which each window has a scene in half-relief that reaches from the
said small arches up to the top of the window; a scene, I say, from the
Old Testament, carved in a kind of stone that is found in that district.
Under the said windows, on the facade, there are certain words that are
understood rather at discretion than because they are either in good
form or rightly written, wherein there is read the date and in whose
time this work was made. By the hand of the same man, also, was the
design of the Church of S. Ciriaco in Ancona. Margaritone died at the
age of seventy-seven, disgusted, so it is said, to have lived so long,
seeing the age changed and the honours with the new craftsmen. He was
buried in the Duomo Vecchio without Arezzo, in a tomb of travertine, now
gone to ruin in the destruction of that church; and there was made for
him this epitaph:
HIC JACET ILLE BONUS PICTURA MARGARITONUS,
CUI REQUIEM DOMINUS TRADAT UBIQUE PIUS.
The portrait of Margaritone, by the hand of Spinello, is in the Story of
the Magi, in the said Duomo, and was copied by me before that church was
pulled down.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 9: See note on p. 57.]
[Footnote 10: See note on p. 57.]
GIOTTO
[Illustration: _Anderson_
THE DEATH OF S. FRANCIS
(_After the fresco by_ Giotto. _Florence: S. Croce_)]
LIFE OF GIOTTO,
PAINTER, SCULPTOR, AND ARCHITECT, OF FLORENCE
That very obligation which the craftsmen of painting owe to nature, who
serves continually as model to those who are ever wresting the good from
her best and most beautiful features and striving to counterfeit and to
imitate her, should be owed, in my belief, to Giotto, painter of
Florence, for the reason that, after the methods of good paintings and
their outlines had lain buried for so many years under the ruins of the
wars, he alone, although born among inept craftsmen, by the gift of God
revived that art, which had come to a grievous pass, and brought it to
such a form as could be called good. And truly it was a very great
miracle that that age, gross and inept, should have had strength to work
in Giotto in a fashion so masterly, that design, whereof the men of
those times had little or no knowledge, was restored completely to life
by means of him. And yet this great man was born at the village of
Vespignano, in the district of Florence, fourteen miles distant from
that city, in the year 1276, from a father named Bondone, a tiller of
the soil and a simple fellow. He, having had this son, to whom he gave
the name Giotto, reared him conformably to his condition; and when he
had come to the age of ten, he showed in all his actions, although
childish still, a vivacity and readiness of intelligence much out of the
ordinary, which rendered him dear not only to his father but to all
those also who knew him, both in the village and beyond. Now Bondone
gave some sheep into his charge, and he, going about the holding, now in
one part and now in another, to graze them, and impelled by a natural
inclination to the art of design, was for ever drawing, on stones, on
the ground, or on sand, something from nature, or in truth anything
that came into his fancy. Wherefore Cimabue, going one day on some
business of his own from Florence to Vespignano, found Giotto, while his
sheep were browsing, portraying a sheep from nature on a flat and
polished slab, with a stone slightly pointed, without having learnt any
method of doing this from others, but only from nature; whence Cimabue,
standing fast all in a marvel, asked him if he wished to go to live with
him. The child answered that, his father consenting, he would go
willingly. Cimabue then asking this from Bondone, the latter lovingly
granted it to him, and was content that he should take the boy with him
to Florence; whither having come, in a short time, assisted by nature
and taught by Cimabue, the child not only equalled the manner of his
master, but became so good an imitator of nature that he banished
completely that rude Greek manner and revived the modern and good art of
painting, introducing the portraying well from nature of living people,
which had not been used for more than two hundred years. If, indeed,
anyone had tried it, as has been said above, he had not succeeded very
happily, nor as well by a great measure as Giotto, who portrayed among
others, as is still seen to-day in the Chapel of the Palace of the
Podesta at Florence, Dante Alighieri, a contemporary and his very great
friend, and no less famous as poet than was in the same times Giotto as
painter, so much praised by Messer Giovanni Boccaccio in the preface to
the story of Messer Forese da Rabatta and of Giotto the painter himself.
In the same chapel are the portraits, likewise by the same man's hand,
of Ser Brunetto Latini, master of Dante, and of Messer Corso Donati, a
great citizen of those times.
[Illustration: _Anderson_
S. FRANCIS PREACHING BEFORE POPE HONORIUS III
(_After the fresco of the_ Roman School. _Assisi: Upper Church of S.
Francesco_)]
The first pictures of Giotto were in the chapel of the high-altar in the
Badia of Florence, wherein he made many works held beautiful, but in
particular a Madonna receiving the Annunciation, for the reason that in
her he expressed vividly the fear and the terror that the salutation of
Gabriel inspired in Mary the Virgin, who appears, all full of the
greatest alarm, to be wishing almost to turn to flight. By the hand of
Giotto, likewise, is the panel on the high-altar of the said chapel,
which has been preserved there to our own day, and is still preserved
there, more because of a certain reverence that is felt for the work of
so great a man than for any other reason. And in S. Croce there are
four chapels by the same man's hand: three between the sacristy and the
great chapel, and one on the other side. In the first of the three,
which is that of Messer Ridolfo de' Bardi, and is that wherein are the
bell-ropes, is the life of S. Francis, in the death of whom a good
number of friars show very naturally the expression of weeping. In the
next, which is that of the family of Peruzzi, are two stories of the
life of S. John the Baptist, to whom the chapel is dedicated; wherein
great vivacity is seen in the dancing and leaping of Herodias, and in
the promptness of some servants bustling at the service of the table. In
the same are two marvellous stories of S. John the Evangelist--namely,
when he brings Drusiana back to life, and when he is carried off into
Heaven. In the third, which is that of the Giugni, dedicated to the
Apostles, there are painted by the hand of Giotto the stories of the
martyrdom of many of them. In the fourth, which is on the other side of
the church, towards the north, and belongs to the Tosinghi and to the
Spinelli, and is dedicated to the Assumption of Our Lady, Giotto painted
her Birth, her Marriage, her Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi,
and when she presents Christ as a little Child to Simeon, which is
something very beautiful, seeing that, besides a great affection that is
seen in that old man as he receives Christ, the action of the child,
stretching out its arms in fear of him and turning in terror towards its
mother, could not be more touching or more beautiful. Next, in the death
of the Madonna herself, there are the Apostles, and a good number of
angels with torches in their hands, all very beautiful. In the Chapel of
the Baroncelli, in the said church, is a panel in distemper by the hand
of Giotto, wherein is executed with much diligence the Coronation of Our
Lady, with a very great number of little figures and a choir of angels
and saints, very diligently wrought. And because in that work there are
written his name and the date in letters of gold, craftsmen who will
consider at what time Giotto, with no glimmer of the good manner, gave a
beginning to the good method of drawing and of colouring, will be forced
to hold him in the highest veneration. In the same Church of S. Croce,
over the marble tomb of Carlo Marsuppini of Arezzo, there is a Crucifix,
with the Madonna, S. John, and Magdalene at the foot of the Cross; and
on the other side of the church, exactly opposite this, over the
burial-place of Lionardo Aretino, facing the high-altar, there is an
Annunciation, which has been recoloured by modern painters, with small
judgment on the part of him who has had this done. In the refectory, on
a Tree of the Cross, are stories of S. Louis and a Last Supper by the
same man's hand; and on the wardrobes in the sacristy are scenes with
little figures from the life of Christ and of S. Francis. He wrought,
also, in the Church of the Carmine, in the Chapel of S. Giovanni
Battista, all the life of that Saint, divided into a number of pictures;
and in the Palace of the Guelph party, in Florence, there is a story of
the Christian Faith, painted perfectly in fresco by his hand; and
therein is the portrait of Pope Clement IV, who created that magisterial
body, giving it his arms, which it has always held and holds still.
[Illustration: _Anderson_
THE BODY OF S. FRANCIS BEFORE THE CHURCH OF S. DAMIANO
(_After the fresco of the_ Roman School. _Assisi: Upper Church of S.
Francesco_)]
After these works, departing from Florence in order to go to finish in
Assisi the works begun by Cimabue, in passing through Arezzo he painted
in the Pieve the Chapel of S. Francesco, which is above the place of
baptism; and on a round column, near a Corinthian capital that is both
ancient and very beautiful, he portrayed from nature a S. Francis and a
S. Dominic; and in the Duomo without Arezzo he painted the Stoning of S.
Stephen in a little chapel, with a beautiful composition of figures.
These works finished, he betook himself to Assisi, a city of Umbria,
being called thither by Fra Giovanni di Muro della Marca, then General
of the Friars of S. Francis; where, in the upper church, he painted in
fresco, under the gallery that crosses the windows, on both sides of the
church, thirty-two scenes of the life and acts of S. Francis--that is,
sixteen on each wall--so perfectly that he acquired thereby very great
fame. And in truth there is seen great variety in that work, not only in
the gestures and attitudes of each figure but also in the composition of
all the scenes; not to mention that it enables us very beautifully to
see the diversity of the costumes of those times, and certain imitations
and observations of the things of nature. Among others, there is one
very beautiful scene, wherein a thirsty man, in whom the desire for
water is vividly seen, is drinking, bending down on the ground by a
fountain with very great and truly marvellous expression, in a manner
that it seems almost a living person that is drinking. There are also
many other things there most worthy of consideration, about which, in
order not to be tedious, I do not enlarge further. Let it suffice that
this whole work acquired for Giotto very great fame, by reason of the
excellence of the figures and of the order, proportion, liveliness, and
facility which he had from nature, and which he had made much greater by
means of study, and was able to demonstrate clearly in all his works.
And because, besides that which Giotto had from nature, he was most
diligent and went on ever thinking out new ideas and wresting them from
nature, he well deserved to be called the disciple of nature and not of
others. The aforesaid scenes being finished, he painted in the same
place, but in the lower church, the upper part of the walls at the sides
of the high-altar, and all the four angles of the vaulting above in the
place where lies the body of S. Francis; and all with inventions both
fanciful and beautiful. In the first is S. Francis glorified in Heaven,
surrounded by those virtues which are essential for him who wishes to be
perfectly in the grace of God. On one side Obedience is placing a yoke
on the neck of a friar who is before her on his knees, and the bands of
the yoke are drawn by certain hands towards Heaven; and, enjoining
silence with one finger to her lips, she has her eyes on Jesus Christ,
who is shedding blood from His side. And in company with this virtue are
Prudence and Humility, in order to show that where there is true
obedience there are ever humility and prudence, which enable us to carry
out every action well. In the second angle is Chastity, who, standing in
a very strong fastness, is refusing to be conquered either by kingdoms
or crowns or palms that some are presenting to her. At her feet is
Purity, who is washing naked figures; and Force is busy leading people
to wash and purify themselves. Near to Chastity, on one side, is
Penitence, who is chasing Love away with a Discipline, and putting to
flight Impurity. In the third space is Poverty, who is walking with bare
feet on thorns, and has a dog that is barking at her from behind, and
about her a boy who is throwing stones at her, and another who is busy
pushing some thorns with a stick against her legs. And this Poverty is
seen here being espoused by S. Francis, while Jesus Christ is holding
her hand, there being present, not without mystic meaning, Hope and
Compassion. In the fourth and last of the said spaces is a S. Francis,
also glorified, in the white tunic of a deacon, and shown triumphant in
Heaven in the midst of a multitude of angels who are forming a choir
round him, with a standard whereon is a Cross with seven stars; and on
high is the Holy Spirit. Within each of these angles are some Latin
words that explain the scenes. In like manner, besides the said four
angles, there are pictures on the side walls which are very beautiful
and truly to be held in great price, both by reason of the perfection
that is seen in them and because they were wrought with so great
diligence that up to our own day they have remained fresh. In these
pictures is the portrait of Giotto himself, very well made, and over the
door of the sacristy, by the same man's hand and also in fresco, there
is a S. Francis who is receiving the Stigmata, so loving and devout that
to me it appears the most excellent picture that Giotto made in these
works, which are all truly beautiful and worthy of praise.
Having finished, then, for the last, the said S. Francis, he returned to
Florence, where, on arriving there, he painted, on a panel that was to
be sent to Pisa, a S. Francis on the tremendous rock of La Vernia, with
extraordinary diligence, seeing that, besides certain landscapes full of
trees and cliffs, which was something new in those times, there are seen
in the attitude of a S. Francis, who is kneeling and receiving the
Stigmata with much readiness, a most ardent desire to receive them and
infinite love towards Jesus Christ, who, being surrounded in the sky by
seraphim, is granting them to him with an expression so vivid that
anything better cannot be imagined. In the lower part of the same panel
there are three very beautiful scenes of the life of the same Saint.
This panel, which to-day is seen in S. Francesco in Pisa on a pillar
beside the high-altar, and is held in great veneration as a memorial of
so great a man, was the reason that the Pisans, having just finished the
building of the Campo Santo after the design of Giovanni, son of Niccola
Pisano, as has been said above, gave to Giotto the painting of part of
the inner walls, to the end that, since this so great fabric was all
incrusted on the outer side with marbles and with carvings made at very
great cost, and roofed over with lead, and also full of sarcophagi and
ancient tombs once belonging to the heathens and brought to Pisa from
various parts of the world, even so it might be adorned within, on the
walls, with the noblest painting. Having gone to Pisa, then, for this
purpose, Giotto made in fresco, on the first part of a wall in that
Campo Santo, six large stories of the most patient Job. And because he
judiciously reflected that the marbles of that part of the building
where he had to work were turned towards the sea, and that, all being
saline marbles, they are ever damp by reason of the south-east winds and
throw out a certain salt moisture, even as the bricks of Pisa do for the
most part, and that therefore the colours and the paintings fade and
corrode, he caused to be made over the whole surface where he wished to
work in fresco, to the end that his work might be preserved as long as
possible, a coating, or in truth an intonaco or incrustation--that is to
say, with lime, gypsum, and powdered brick all mixed together; so
suitably that the pictures which he afterwards made thereon have been
preserved up to the present day. And they would be still better if the
negligence of those who should have taken care of them had not allowed
them to be much injured by the damp, because the fact that this was not
provided for, as was easily possible, has been the reason that these
pictures, having suffered from damp, have been spoilt in certain places,
and the flesh-colours have been blackened, and the intonaco has peeled
off; not to mention that the nature of gypsum, when it has been mixed
with lime, is to corrode in time and to grow rotten, whence it arises
that afterwards, perforce, it spoils the colours, although it appears at
the beginning to take a good and firm hold. In these scenes, besides the
portrait of Messer Farinata degli Uberti, there are many beautiful
figures, and above all certain villagers, who, in carrying the grievous
news to Job, could not be more full of feeling nor show better than they
do the grief that they felt over the lost cattle and over the other
misadventures. Likewise there is amazing grace in the figure of a
man-servant who is standing with a fan beside Job, who is covered with
ulcers and almost abandoned by all; and although he is well done in
every part, he is marvellous in the attitude that he strikes in chasing
the flies from his leprous and stinking master with one hand, while with
the other he is holding his nose in disgust, in order not to notice the
stench. In like manner, the other figures in these scenes and the heads
both of the males and of the women are very beautiful; and the draperies
are wrought to such a degree of softness that it is no marvel if this
work acquired for him so great fame, both in that city and abroad, that
Pope Benedict IX of Treviso sent one of his courtiers into Tuscany to
see what sort of man was Giotto, and of what kind his works, having
designed to have some pictures made in S. Pietro. This courtier, coming
in order to see Giotto and to hear what other masters there were in
Florence excellent in painting and in mosaic, talked to many masters in
Siena. Then, having received drawings from them, he came to Florence,
and having gone into the shop of Giotto, who was working, declared to
him the mind of the Pope and in what way it was proposed to make use of
his labour, and at last asked him for some little drawing, to the end
that he might send it to His Holiness. Giotto, who was most courteous,
took a paper, and on that, with a brush dipped in red, holding his arm
fast against his side in order to make a compass, with a turn of the
hand he made a circle, so true in proportion and circumference that to
behold it was a marvel. This done, he smiled and said to the courtier:
"Here is your drawing." He, thinking he was being derided, said: "Am I
to have no other drawing but this?" "'Tis enough and to spare," answered
Giotto. "Send it, together with the others, and you will see if it will
be recognized." The envoy, seeing that he could get nothing else, left
him, very ill-satisfied and doubting that he had been fooled. All the
same, sending to the Pope the other drawings and the names of those who
had made them, he also sent that of Giotto, relating the method that he
had followed in making his circle without moving his arm and without
compasses. Wherefore the Pope and many courtiers that were versed in the
arts recognized by this how much Giotto surpassed in excellence all the
other painters of his time. This matter having afterwards spread abroad,
there was born from it the proverb that is still wont to be said to men
of gross wits: "Tu sei piu tondo che l' O di Giotto!" ("Thou art
rounder than Giotto's circle"). This proverb can be called beautiful not
only from the occasion that gave it birth, but also for its
significance, which consists in the double meaning; tondo being used, in
Tuscany, both for the perfect shape of a circle and for slowness and
grossness of understanding.
[Illustration: _Anderson_
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS
(_After the fresco by_ Giotto and his Pupils. _Assisi: Lower Church of
S. Francesco_)]
The aforesaid Pope then made him come to Rome, where, honouring him much
and appreciating his talents, he made him paint five scenes from the
life of Christ in the apse of S. Pietro, and the chief panel in the
sacristy, which were all executed by him with so great diligence that
there never issued from his hands any more finished work in distemper.
Wherefore he well deserved that the Pope, holding himself to have been
well served, should cause to be given to him six hundred ducats of gold,
besides granting him so many favours that they were talked of throughout
all Italy.
About this time--in order to withhold nothing worthy of remembrance in
connection with art--there was in Rome one Oderigi d'Agobbio, who was
much the friend of Giotto and an excellent illuminator for those days.
This man, being summoned for this purpose by the Pope, illuminated many
books for the library of the palace, which are now in great part eaten
away by time. And in my book of ancient drawings are some remains from
the very hand of this man, who in truth was an able man; although a much
better master than Oderigi was Franco Bolognese, who wrought a number of
works excellently in that manner for the same Pope and for the same
library, about the same time, as can be seen in the said book, wherein I
have designs by his hand both in painting and in illumination, and among
them an eagle very well done, and a very beautiful lion that is tearing
a tree. Of these two excellent illuminators Dante makes mention in the
eleventh canto of the _Purgatorio_, where he is talking of the
vainglorious, in these verses:
O, dissi a lui, non se' tu Oderigi,
L'onor d'Agobbio, e l'onor di quell'arte
Che alluminare e chiamata in Parigi?
Frate, diss'egli, piu ridon le carte
Che pennelleggia Franco Bolognese;
L'onor e tutto suo, e mio in parte.
The Pope, having seen these works, and the manner of Giotto pleasing him
infinitely, ordered him to make scenes from the Old Testament and the
New right round S. Pietro; wherefore, for a beginning, Giotto made in
fresco the Angel that is over the organ, seven braccia high, and many
other paintings, whereof part have been restored by others in our own
days, and part, in founding the new walls, have been either destroyed or
removed from the old edifice of S. Pietro, up to the space below the
organ; such as a Madonna on a wall, which, to the end that it might not
be thrown to the ground, was cut right out of the wall and made fast
with beams and iron bars and thus removed, and afterwards built in, by
reason of its beauty, in the place that pleased the pious love that is
borne towards everything excellent in art by Messer Niccolo Acciaiuoli,
doctor of Florence, who richly adorned this work of Giotto with
stucco-work and also with modern paintings. By his hand, also, was the
Navicella in mosaic that is over the three doors of the portico in the
court of S. Pietro, which is truly marvellous and deservedly praised by
all beautiful minds, because in it, besides the design, there is the
grouping of the Apostles, who are travailing in diverse manners through
the sea-tempest, while the winds are blowing into a sail, which has so
high a relief that a real one would not have more; and moreover it is
difficult to have to make with those pieces of glass a unity such as
that which is seen in the lights and shadows of so great a sail, which
could only be equalled by the brush with great difficulty and by making
every possible effort; not to mention that in a fisherman, who is
fishing from a rock with a line, there is seen an attitude of extreme
patience proper to that art, and in his face the hope and the wish to
make a catch. Under this work are three little arches in fresco, of
which, since they are for the greater part spoilt, I will say no more.
The praises universally given by craftsmen to this work are well
deserved.