<h1>VIII <br/> GREAT ORIGINS IN PAINTING.</h1>
<p class="footnote">
[Footnote 13: Most of this chapter is taken from the work on Italian
painting (La Peinture Italienne depuis les origines jusqu'a la fin
du xv Siecle, par Georges Lafenestre, Paris Ancienne Maison Quantin
Libraries-Imprimeries Reunies, May & Motteroz, Directeurs, rue
Saint-Benoit. Nouvelle Edition), which forms one of the series of
text books for instruction in art at L'Ecole Des Beaux-Arts—the
famous French Government Art School in Paris. It may be said that
this collection of art manuals is recognized as an authority on all
matters treated of, having been crowned by the Academie Des
Beaux-Arts with the prize Bordin. There is no better source of
information with regard to the development of the arts and none
which can be more readily consulted nor with more assurance as to
the facts and opinions exposed.]</p>
<p>At the commencement of the Thirteenth Century the movement of
emancipation in every phase of thought and life in Italy went on apace
with an extraordinary ardor. After a very serious struggle the Italian
republics were on the point of forcing the German Empire to recognize
them. Everywhere in the first enthusiasm of their independence which
had been achieved by valiant deeds and aspirations after liberty as
lofty as any in modern times, the cities, though united in
confederations they were acting as independent rivals, brought to all
enterprises, lay or religious foundations, commercial or educational
institutions, a wonderful youthful activity and enterprise. The papacy
allied with them favored this movement in its political as well as its
educational aspects and strengthened the art movement of the time.
Christianity under their guidance, by the powerful religious
exaltation which it inspired in the hearts of all men, became a potent
factor in all forms of art. From Pope Innocent III to Boniface VIII
probably no other series of Popes have been so misunderstood and so
misrepresented by subsequent generations, as certainly the Popes of no
other century did so much to awaken the enthusiasm of Christians for
all modes of religious development, and be it said though credit for
this is only too often refused them, also for educational,
charitable and social betterment.</p>
<p>The two great church institutions of the time that were destined to
act upon the people more than any others were the Franciscan and
Dominican orders—the preachers and the friars minor, who were within
a short time after their formation to have such deep and widespread
influence on all strata of society. Both of these orders from their
very birth showed themselves not only ready but anxious to employ the
arts as a means of religious education and for the encouragement of
piety. Their position in this matter had an enormous influence on art
and on the painters of the time. The Dominicans, as became their more
ambitious intellectual training and their purpose as preachers of the
word, demanded encyclopedic and learned compositions; the Franciscans
asked for loving familiar scenes such as would touch the hearts of the
common people. Both aided greatly in helping the artist to break away
from the old fashioned formalism which was no longer sufficient to
satisfy the new ardors of men's souls. In this way they prepared the
Italian imagination for the double revolution which was to come.</p>
<p>It was the great body of legends which grew up about St. Francis
particularly, all of them bound up with supreme charity for one's
neighbor, with love for all living creatures even the lowliest, with
the tenderest feelings for every aspect of external nature, which
appealed to the painters as a veritable light in the darkness of the
times. It was especially in the churches founded by the disciples of
"the poor little man of Assisi," that the world saw burst forth before
the end of the century, the first grand flowers of that renewal of art
which was to prove the beginning of modern art history. It is hard to
understand what would have happened to the painters of the time
without the spirit that was brought into the world by St. Francis'
beautifully simple love for all and every phase of nature around him.
This it was above all that encouraged the return to nature that soon
supplanted Oriental formalism. It was but due compensation that the
greatest works of the early modern painters should have been done in
St. Francis' honor. Besides this the most important factor in art was
the revival of the thirst for knowledge, which arose among the more
intellectual portions of the communities and developed an
enthusiasm for antiquity which was only a little later to become a
veritable passion.</p>
<p>The most important phase of Italian art during the Thirteenth Century
is that which developed at Florence. It is with this that the world is
most familiar. It began with Cimabue, who commenced painter, in the
quaint old English phrase, not long before the middle of the century
and whose great work occupies the second half of it. There are not
wanting some interesting traditions of certain other Florentine
painters before his time as Marchisello, of the early part of the
century, Lapo who painted, in 1261, the facade of the Cathedral at
Pistoia, and Fino di Tibaldi who painted a vast picture on the walls
of the Municipal Palace about the middle of the century, but they are
so much in the shadow of the later masters' work as to be scarcely
known. Everywhere Nature began to reassert herself. The workers in
Mosaic even, who were occupied in the famous baptistry at Florence
about the middle of the century, though they followed the Byzantine
rules of their art, introduced certain innovations which brought the
composition and the subjects closer to nature. These are enough to
show that there was a school of painting and decoration at Florence
quite sufficient to account for Cimabue's development, without the
necessity of appealing to the influence over him of wandering Greek
artists as has sometimes been done.</p>
<p>Though he was not the absolute inventor of all the new art modes as he
is sometimes supposed to be, Cimabue was undoubtedly a great original
genius. Like so many others who have been acclaimed as the very first
in a particular line of thought or effort, his was only the
culminating intelligence which grasped all that had been done before,
assimilated it and made it his own. As a distinct exception to the
usual history of such great initiators, this father of Italian
painting was rich, born of a noble family, but of a character that was
eager for work and with ambition to succeed in his chosen art as the
mainspring of life. At his death, as the result of his influence,
artists had acquired a much better social position than had been
theirs before, and one that it was comparatively easy for his
successors to maintain. His famous Madonna which was subsequently
borne in triumph from his studio to the Church of Santa Maria
Novella, placed the seal of popular approval on the new art, and the
enthusiasm it evoked raised the artist for all time from the plane of
a mere worker in colors to that of a member of a liberal profession.
Even before this triumph his great picture had been deemed worthy of a
visit by Charles of Anjou, the French King, who was on a visit to
Florence and according to tradition ever afterwards the portion of the
city in which it had been painted and through which it was carried in
procession, bore by reason of these happy events the name Borgo
Allegri—Ward of Joy.</p>
<p>This picture is still in its place in the Rucellai chapel and is of
course the subject of devoted attention on the part of visitors.
Lafenestre says of it, that this monument of Florentine art quite
justifies the enthusiasm of contemporaries if we compare it with the
expressionless Madonnas that preceded it. There is an air of
beneficent dignity on the features quite unlike the rigidity of
preceding art, and there is besides an attractive suppleness about the
attitude of the body which is far better proportioned than those of
its predecessors. Above all there is a certain roseate freshness about
the colors of the flesh which are pleasant substitutes for the pale
and greenish tints of the Byzantines. It did not require more than
this to exalt the imaginations of the people delivered from their
old-time conventional painting. It was only a ray of the dawn after a
dark night, but it announced a glorious sunrise of art and the
confident anticipations of the wondrous day to come, aroused the
depths of feeling in the peoples' hearts. Life and nature went back
into art once more; no wonder their re-apparition was saluted with so
much delight.</p>
<p>Two other Madonnas painted by him, one at Florence in the Academy, the
other in Paris in the Louvre, besides his great Mosaic in the apse of
the Cathedral at Pisa, serve to show with what prudence Cimabue
introduced naturalistic qualities into art, while always respecting
the tradition of the older art and preserving the solemn graces and
the majestic style of monumental painting. The old frescoes of the
upper church at Assisi which represent episodes in the life of St.
Francis have also been attributed to Cimabue, but evidently were done
by a number of artists probably under his direction. It is easy to
see from them what an important role the Florentine artist
played in directing the gropings of his assistant artists.</p>
<p>After Cimabue the most important name at Florentine in the Thirteenth
Century is that of his friend, Gaddo Gaddi, whose years of life
correspond almost exactly with those of his great contemporary. His
famous Coronation of the Virgin at Santa Maria de Fiore in Florence
shows that he was greatly influenced by the new ideas that had come
into art. Greater than either of these well-known predecessors
however, was Giotto the friend of Dante, whose work is still
considered worthy of study by artists because of certain qualities in
which it never has been surpassed nor quite outgrown. From Giotto,
however, we shall turn aside for a moment to say something of the
development of art in other cities of Italy, for it must not be
thought that Florence was the only one to take up the new art methods
which developed so marvelously during the Thirteenth Century.</p>
<p>Even before the phenomenal rise of modern art in Florence, at Pisa, at
Lucca and especially at Siena, the new wind of the spirit was felt
blowing and some fine inspirations were realized in spite of hampering
difficulties of all kinds. The Madonna of Guido in the Church of St.
Dominic at Siena is the proof of his emancipation. Besides him
Ugolino, Segna and Duccio make up the Siena school and enable this
other Tuscan city to dispute even with Florence the priority of the
new influence in art. At Lucca Bonaventure Berlinghieri flourished and
there is a famous St. Francis by him only recently found, which proves
his right to a place among the great founders of modern art. Giunta of
Pisa was one of those called to Assisi to paint some of the frescoes
in the upper church. He is noted as having striven to make his figures
more exact and his colors more natural. He did much to help his
generation away from the conventional expressions of the preceding
time and he must for this reason be counted among the great original
geniuses in the history of art.</p>
<p>The greatest name in the art of the Thirteenth Century is of course
that of Giotto. What Dante did for poetry and Villani for history,
their compatriot and friend did for painting. Ambrogio de Bondone
familiarly called Ambrogiotto (and with the abbreviating habit that
the Italians have always had for the names of all those of whom they
thought much shortened to Giotto, as indeed Dante's name had
been shortened from Durante) was born just at the beginning of the
last quarter of the Thirteenth Century. According to a well-known
legend he was guarding the sheep of his father one day and passing his
time sketching a lamb upon a smooth stone with a soft pebble when
Cimabue happened to be passing. The painter struck by the signs of
genius in the work took the boy with him to Florence, where he made
rapid progress in art and soon surpassed even his master. The
wonderful precocity of his genius may be best realized from the fact
that at the age of twenty he was given the commission of finishing the
decorations of the upper Church at Assisi, and in fulfilling it broke
so completely with the Byzantine formalism of the preceding
millennium, that he must be considered the liberator of art and its
deliverer from the chains of conventionalism into the freedom of
nature.</p>
<p>It is no wonder that critics and literary men have been so unstinted
in his praise. Here is an example:</p>
<p class="cite">
"In the Decamerone it is said of him 'that he was so great a genius
that there was nothing in nature he had not so reproduced that it
was not only like the thing, but seemed to be the thing itself.'
Eulogies of this tenor on works of art are, it is quite true, common
to all periods alike, to the most accomplished of classical
antiquity as well as to the most primitive of the Middle Age; and
they must only be accepted relatively, according to the notion
entertained by each period of what constitutes truth and
naturalness. And from the point of view of his age, Giotto's advance
towards nature, considered relatively to his predecessors, was in
truth enormous. What he sought was not merely the external truth of
sense, but also the inward truth of the spirit. Instead of solemn
images of devotion, he painted pictures in which the spectator
beheld the likeness of human beings in the exercise of activity and
intelligence. His merit lies, as has been well said, in 'an entirely
new conception of character and facts.'" [Footnote 14]</p>
<p class="footnote">
[Footnote 14: History of Ancient, Early Christian and Medieval
Painting from the German of the late Dr. Alfred Woltmann,
Professor at the Imperial University of Strasburg, and Karl
Woertmann, Professor at the Royal Academy of Arts, Dusselford.
Edited by Sidney Colvin, M. A., Dodd, Mead & Co., N. Y., 1894.]</p>
<p>Lafenestre, in his history of Italian painting for the Beaux-Arts of
Paris already referred to, says that what has survived of Giotto's
work justifies the enthusiasm of his contemporaries. None of his
predecessors accomplished anything like the revolution that he worked.
He fixed the destinies of art in Italy at the moment when Dante fixed
those of literature. The stiff, confused figures of the mosaics and
manuscripts grew supple under his fingers and the confusion
disappeared. He simplified the gestures, varied the expression,
rectified the proportions. Perhaps the best example of his work is
that of the upper Church of Assisi, all accomplished before he was
thirty. What he had to represent were scenes of life almost
contemporary yet already raised to the realm of poetry by popular
admiration. He interpreted the beautiful legend of the life of the
Saint preserved by St. Bonaventure, and like the subject of his
sketches turned to nature at every step of his work. If his figures
are compared with those of the artists of the preceding generations,
their truth to life and natural expressions easily explain the
surprise and the rapture of his contemporaries.</p>
<p>Beautiful as are the pictures of the Upper Church, however, ten years
after their completion Giotto's genius can be seen to have taken a
still higher flight by the study of the pictures on the vast ceilings
of the Lower Church. The four compartments contain the Triumph of
Chastity, the Triumph of Poverty, the Triumph of Obedience, and the
Glorification of St. Francis. The ideal and the real figures in these
compositions are mingled and grouped with admirable clearness and
inventive force. To be appreciated properly they must be seen and
studied <i>in situ</i>. Many an artist has made the pilgrimage to Assisi
and none has come away disappointed. Never before had an artist dared
to introduce so many and such numerous figures, yet all were done with
a variety and an ease of movement that is eminently pleasing and even
now are thoroughly satisfying to the artistic mind. After his work at
Assisi some of the best of Giotto's pictures are to be found in the
Chapel of the Arena at Padua. Here there was a magnificent opportunity
and Giotto took full advantage of it. The whole story of Christ's life
is told in the fourteen episodes of the life of his Mother which were
painted here by Giotto. For their sake Padua as well as Assisi
has been a favorite place of pilgrimage for artists ever since and
never more so than in our own time.</p>
<SPAN name="opp144">{opp144}</SPAN>
<p class="image">
<ANTIMG alt="" src="images/i_opp144.jpg" border=1><br/>
ST. FRANCIS' MARRIAGE WITH POVERTY (GIOTTO, ASSISI)</p>
<p>No greater tribute to the century in which he lived could possibly be
given than to say that his genius was recognized at once, and he was
sought from one end of Italy to another by Popes and Kings, Republics
and Princes, Convents and Municipalities, all of which competed for
the privilege of having this genius work for them with ever increasing
enthusiasm. It is easy to think and to say that it is no wonder that
such a transcendent genius was recognized and appreciated and received
his due reward. Such has not usually been the case in history,
however. On the contrary, the more imposing the genius of an artist,
or a scientist, or any other great innovator in things human, the more
surely has he been the subject of neglect and even of misunderstanding
and persecution. The very fact that Giotto lifted art out of the
routine of formalism in which it was sunk might seem to be enough to
assure failure of appreciation. Men do not suddenly turn round to like
even great innovations, when they have long been satisfied with
something less and when their principles of criticism have been formed
by their experience with the old.</p>
<p>We need not go farther back than our own supposedly illuminated
Nineteenth Century to find some striking examples of this. Turner, the
great English landscapist, failed of appreciation for long years and
had to wait till the end of his life to obtain even a small meed of
reward. The famous Barbizon School of French Painters is a still more
striking example. They went back to nature from the classic formalism
of the early Nineteenth Century painters just as Giotto went back to
nature from Byzantine conventionalism. The immediate rewards in the
two cases were very different and the attitude of contemporaries
strikingly contrasted. Poor Millet did his magnificent work in spite
of the fact that his family nearly starved. Only that Madame Millet
was satisfied to take more than a fair share of hardships for herself
and the family in order that her husband might have the opportunity to
develop his genius after his own way, we might not have had the
magnificent pictures which Millet sold for a few paltry francs that
barely kept the wolf from the door, and for which the next
generation has been paying almost fabulous sums.</p>
<p>All through the Thirteenth Century this characteristic will be found
that genius did not as a rule lack appreciation. The greater the
revolution a genuinely progressive thinker and worker tried to
accomplish in human progress, the more sure was he to obtain not only
a ready audience, but an enthusiastic and encouraging following. This
is the greatest compliment that could be paid to the enlightenment of
the age. Men's minds were open and they were ready and willing to see
things differently from what they had been accustomed to before. This
constitutes after all the best possible guarantee of progress. It is,
however, very probably the last thing that we would think of
attributing to these generations of the Thirteenth Century, who are
usually said very frankly to have been wrapped up in their own
notions, to have been only too ready to accept things on authority
rather than by their own powers of observation and judgment, and to
have been clingers to the past rather than lookers to the present and
the future. Giotto's life shows better than any other how much this
prejudiced view of the Thirteenth Century and perforce of the Middle
Age needs to be corrected.</p>
<p>During forty years Giotto responded to every demand, and made himself
suffice for every call, worked in nearly every important city of
Italy, enkindling everywhere he went the new light of art. Before the
end of the century he completed a cartoon for the famous picture of
the Boat of Peter which was to adorn the Facade of St. Peter's. He was
in Rome in 1300, the first jubilee year, arranging the decorations at
St. John Lateran. The next year he was at Florence, working in the
Palace of the Podesta. And so it went for full two score years. He was
at Pisa, at Lucca, at Arezzo, at Padua, at Milan, then he went South
to Urbino, to Rome and then even to Naples. Unfortunately the strain
of all this work proved too much for him and he was carried away at
the comparatively early age of sixty in the midst of his artistic
vigor and glory.</p>
<SPAN name="opp147">{opp147}</SPAN>
<p class="image">
<ANTIMG alt="" src="images/i_opp147.jpg" border=1><br/>
ESPOUSAL OF ST. CATHERINE<br/>
(GADDI, XIII. CENTURY PUPIL, PERUGIA)</p>
<p>The art of the Middle Ages and especially at the time of the
beginnings of modern art in the Thirteenth Century, is commonly
supposed to be inextricably bound up with certain influences
which place it beyond the pale of imitation for modern life. It has
frequently been said, that this art besides being too deeply mystical
and pietistic, is so remote from ordinary human feelings as to
preclude a proper understanding of it by the men of our time and
certainly prevent any deep sympathy. The pagan element in art which
entered at the time of the Renaissance and which emphasized the joy of
life itself and the pleasure of mere living for its own sake, is
supposed to have modified this sadder aspect of things in the earlier
art, so that now no one would care to go back to the pre-Renaissance
day. There has been so much writing of this kind that has carried
weight, that it is no wonder that the impression has been deeply made.
It is founded almost entirely on a misunderstanding, however. Reinach
whom we have quoted before completely overturns this false notion in
some paragraphs which bring out better than any others that we know
something of the true significance of the Thirteenth Century art in
this particular.</p>
<p>Those who think that Gothic art was mainly gloomy in character, or if
not absolutely sad at heart that it always expressed the sadder
portion of religious feelings, who consider that the ascetic side of
life was always in the ascendant and the brighter side of things
seldom chosen, for pictorial purposes, should recall that the Gothic
Cathedrals themselves are the most cheery and lightsome buildings,
that indeed they owe their character as creations of a new idea in
architecture to the determined purpose of their builders to get
admission for all possible light in the dreary Northern climates. The
contradiction of the idea that Gothic art in its essence was gloomy
will at once be manifest from this. Quite apart from this, however, if
Gothic art be studied for itself and in its subjects, that of the
Thirteenth Century particularly will be found far distant from,
anything that would justify the criticism of over sadness. Reinach (in
his Story of Art Throughout the Middle Ages) has stated this so
clearly that we prefer simply to quote the passage which is at once
authoritative and informing:</p>
<p class="cite">
"It has also been said that Gothic art bears the impress of ardent
piety and emotional mysticism, that it dwells on the suffering of
Jesus, of the Virgin, and of the martyrs with harrowing persistency.
Those who believe this have never studied Gothic art. It is so
far from the truth that, as a fact, the Gothic art of the best
period, the Thirteenth Century, never represented any sufferings
save those of the damned. The Virgins are smiling and gracious,
never grief stricken. There is not a single Gothic rendering of the
Virgin weeping at the foot of the cross. The words and music of the
Stabat Mater, which are sometimes instanced as the highest
expression of the religion of the Middle Ages, date from the end of
the Thirteenth Century at the very earliest, and did not become
popular till the Fifteenth Century. Jesus himself is not represented
as suffering, but with a serene and majestic expression. The famous
statue known as the <SPAN href="#front">Beau Dieu</SPAN> d'Amiens may be instanced as typical."
<p><p class="image">
<ANTIMG alt="" src="images/i148.jpg" border=1><br/>
GROUP FROM VISITATION (RHEIMS)</p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />