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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 exhaltation 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.
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.
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.
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 subsects 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 millenium,
that he must be considered the liberator of art and its deliverer from
the chains of conventionalism into the freedom of nature.
It is no wonder that critics and literary men have been so unstinted in
his praise. Here is an example:
"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.'"[13]
Lafenestre, in his history of Italian painting for the BeauxArts 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.
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 in situ. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 completelv 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.
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:
"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 Beau Dien d'Amiens may be instanced
as typical."
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