The first piece of the closing series on the north side of the
Campanile, of which some general points must be first noted, before any
special examination.
The two initial ones, Sculpture and Painting, are by tradition the only
ones attributed to Giotto's own hand. The fifth, Song, is known, and
recognizable in its magnificence, to be by Luca della Robbia. The
remaining four are all of Luca's school,--later work therefore, all
these five, than any we have been hitherto examining, entirely different
in manner, and with late flower-work beneath them instead of our
hitherto severe Gothic arches. And it becomes of course instantly a
vital question--Did Giotto die leaving the series incomplete, only its
subjects chosen, and are these two bas-reliefs of Sculpture and Painting
among his last works? or was the series ever completed, and these later
bas-reliefs substituted for the earlier ones, under Luca's influence, by
way of conducting the whole to a grander close, and making their order
more representative of Florentine art in its fulness of power?
I must repeat, once more, and with greater insistence respecting
Sculpture than Painting, that I do not in the least set myself up for a
critic of authenticity,--but only of absolute goodness. My readers may
trust me to tell them what is well done or ill; but by whom, is quite
a separate question, needing for any certainty, in this school of
much-associated masters and pupils, extremest attention to minute
particulars not at all bearing on my objects in teaching.
Of this closing group of sculptures, then, all I can tell you is that
the fifth is a quite magnificent piece of work, and recognizably, to
my extreme conviction, Luca della Robbia's; that the last, Harmonia, is
also fine work; that those attributed to Giotto are fine in a different
way,--and the other three in reality the poorest pieces in the series,
though done with much more advanced sculptural dexterity.
But I am chiefly puzzled by the two attributed to Giotto, because they
are much coarser than those which seem to me so plainly his on the west
side, and slightly different in workmanship--with much that is common
to both, however, in the casting of drapery and mode of introduction of
details. The difference may be accounted for partly by haste or failing
power, partly by the artist's less deep feeling of the importance of
these merely symbolic figures, as compared with those of the Fathers
of the Arts; but it is very notable and embarrassing notwithstanding,
complicated as it is with extreme resemblance in other particulars.
You cannot compare the subjects on the tower itself; but of my series of
photographs take 6 and 21, and put them side by side.
I need not dwell on the conditions of resemblance, which are instantly
visible; but the _difference_ in the treatment of the heads is
incomprehensible. That of the Tubal Cain is exquisitely finished, and
with a painter's touch; every lock of the hair laid with studied flow,
as in the most beautiful drawing. In the 'Sculpture,' it is struck out
with ordinary tricks of rapid sculptor trade, entirely unfinished,
and with offensively frank use of the drill hole to give picturesque
rustication to the beard.
Next, put 22 and 5 back to back. You see again the resemblance in the
earnestness of both figures, in the unbroken arcs of their backs, in the
breaking of the octagon moulding by the pointed angles; and here, even
also in the general conception of the heads. But again, in the one of
Painting, the hair is struck with more vulgar indenting and drilling,
and the Gothic of the picture frame is less precise in touch and later
in style. Observe, however,--and this may perhaps give us some definite
hint for clearing the question,--a picture-frame _would be_ less precise
in making, and later in style, properly, than cusped arches to be put
under the feet of the inventor of all musical sound by breath of man.
And if you will now compare finally the eager tilting of the workman's
seat in 22 and 6, and the working of the wood in the painter's low table
for his pots of colour, and his three-legged stool, with that of Tubal
Cain's anvil block; and the way in which the lines of the forge and
upper triptych are in each composition used to set off the rounding of
the head, I believe you will have little hesitation in accepting my own
view of the matter--namely, that the three pieces of the Fathers of the
Arts were wrought with Giotto's extremest care for the most precious
stones of his tower; that also, being a sculptor and painter, he did the
other two, but with quite definite and wilful resolve that they _should
be_, as mere symbols of his own two trades, wholly inferior to the other
subjects of the patriarchs; that he made the Sculpture picturesque and
bold as you see it is, and showed all a sculptor's tricks in the work of
it; and a sculptor's Greek subject, Bacchus, for the model of it;
that he wrought the Painting, as the higher art, with more care, still
keeping it subordinate to the primal subjects, but showed, for a lesson
to all the generations of painters for evermore,--this one lesson, like
his circle of pure line containing all others,--'Your soul and body must
be all in every touch.'
I can't resist the expression of a little piece of personal exultation,
in noticing that he holds his pencil as I do myself: no writing master,
and no effort (at one time very steady for many months), having ever
cured me of that way of holding both pen and pencil between my fore
and second finger; the third and fourth resting the backs of them on my
paper.
As I finally arrange these notes for press, I am further confirmed in my
opinion by discovering little finishings in the two later pieces which
I was not before aware of. I beg the masters of High Art, and sublime
generalization, to take a good magnifying glass to the 'Sculpture' and
look at the way Giotto has cut the compasses, the edges of the chisels,
and the keyhole of the lock of the toolbox. For the rest, nothing
could be more probable, in the confused and perpetually false mass of
Florentine tradition, than the preservation of the memory of Giotto's
carving his own two trades, and the forgetfulness, or quite as likely
ignorance, of the part he took with Andrea Pisano in the initial
sculptures. I now take up the series of subjects at the point where we
broke off, to trace their chain of philosophy to its close. To Geometry,
which gives to every man his possession of house and land, succeed 21,
Sculpture, and 22, Painting, the adornments of permanent habitation. And
then, the great arts of education in a Christian home. First--
23. _Grammar_, or more properly Literature altogether, of which we have
already seen the ancient power in the Spanish Chapel series; then,
24. _Arithmetic_, central here as also in the Spanish Chapel, for the
same reasons; here, more impatiently asserting, with both hands, that
two, on the right, you observe-and two on the left-do indeed and for
ever make Four. Keep your accounts, you, with your book of double entry,
on that principle; and you will be safe in this world and the next, in
your steward's office. But by no means so, if you ever admit the usurers
Gospel of Arithmetic, that two and two make Five. You see by the rich
hem of his robe that the asserter of this economical first principle is
a man well to do in the world.
25. _Logic_. The art of Demonstration. Vulgarest of the whole series,
far too expressive of the mode in which argument is conducted by those
who are not masters of its reins.