PAINTING

Rich in paintings as are the Florence collections, and marvellous as is the spectacle of the Uffizi and the Pitti Galleries, it is not in them that the elements for a study of Florentine painting are to be sought. They contain, no doubt, many unique and incomparable examples of the greatest masters, but the true Florentine art is fresco-painting. In this respect Florence, is highly privileged, for there is not one of her churches or public monuments from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century in which some great artist has not left the impress of his talent, and some wealthy citizen a proof at once of his liberality and piety.

It is impossible in the course of a single chapter to take more than a bird's-eye view of Florentine art, and though there is no lack of material for writing at length on these paintings appealing as they do more vividly to the imagination than statuary does I must confine myself to indicating the march of ideas and the successive phases of their development, citing various specimens of the different masters to illustrate my argument.

The Uffizi and the Pitti Palaces contain such vast numbers of specimens of the pictorial art that no adequate idea of them can be gathered from the descriptions of specialist writers. Here were gradually accumulated all the masterpieces purchased by successive members of the Medici family, the liberality of the last bearer of this name converting these galleries into a national museum, which, while not perhaps unrivalled as a general history of art, unquestionably contains specimens unique of their kind, and which no critic of art can ignore.

The great name of Raphael does not belong to Florence, for, born at Urbino, he spent most of his life at the Vatican. Still there are many of his works at Florence, the Pitti Palace alone possessing twelve, while in the Tribune of the Uffizi may be seen the "Fornarina," the "Madonna del Cardellino," the portraits of "Julius II.," and of "Cardinal Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena" who was so fond of Raphael that he wished him to marry his niece, and other masterpieces. The Cardinal was the author of the Calandra, the first comedy written in Italian, and Raphael painted his portrait twice, and also painted several portraits of his niece. In the Pitti Palace hang his portraits of Maddalena Doni, and her husband Angiolo Doni, who was a great friend of Raphael's.

Masterpieces of sculpture, which furnished excellent models, and exercised upon the Renaissance of that art a marked influence, had been bequeathed to the Italians by the ancients, but this was scarcely the case in regard to painting. Not that nothing was left of ancient genius in this branch of art, but neither Pompeii, Herculaneum, the Palace of the Caesars, the tombs of the Volsci and the Etruscans, nor the first efforts of Christian art upon the walls of the catacombs, had been brought to light from out of the entrails of the earth in which they had been entombed for centuries.

The inheritors of Greek art were the Byzantines, and they were the earliest revivers of it with their mosaic compositions at Rome, Ravenna, and Classa. Though the art of painting was shrivelled up, lifeless, and mummified, so to speak, the depositaries of it, such as it was, were these Greek artists.

The persecution of the Iconoclasts had driven some of them into Italy; the Crusades had led to the establishment of more intimate relations between the East and the West; and the Venetians, when desirous of decorating their city and beautifying their temples, sent for artists from Byzantium. A few Italian artists had also studied under the Greek monks, and thus began the resurrection of painting at Rome, Florence, Siena, Perugia, and even at Venice, where the Murano School owes to them its supremacy. There are no specimens of the early painters of the eleventh century at Florence, and with regard to the miniature painters, with whom we have the real transition from ancient art to the Renaissance of painting, their history is very obscure. The only Florentine painters of the eleventh and twelfth centuries of whose works anything is known are Rustico (1066), Girolamo di Morello (1112), Marchisello (1191), Magister Fidanza (1224), Bartolommeo (1236), and Lapo (1259).

In the thirteenth century a Franciscan monk, Jacobus Toriti, decorated the cupola of the Baptistery, his name and the date being still legible. This artist also executed the famous mosaics in St. John Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, his tracery and foliage work above the "Coronation of the Virgin " in the latter church being very celebrated.

These mosaics are Works of great merit, the combination of shape and colors testifying to his artistic sense. The decorations of the Baptistery were begun by him about the year 1226, continued by Taffi in 1294, and completed by Gaddo Gaddi. They bear unmistakable evidence of being the work of an artist who had studied under the Greeks, and, as a matter of fact, Andrea Tafi was one of their pupils, having worked at the mosaics of St. Mark's (Venice), where he and his fellow-workers one of whom, Buffalmaco, has a few works in the Florence collections derived their main inspirations from the Greeks.

CIMABUE was the first of the new school of painters in Florence. Born in 1240, and said by Vasari to have been a pupil of the Greek mosaic workers, with only the works of Turrita and of Coppo di Marco Valdo as models, he was obliged at first to follow in their track, but he soon shook off their trammels, and acquired a freedom of handling and a power of expressing life and movement which they did not possess. The greatest of Cimabue's works is the Madonna in the Ruccellai Chapel at Santa Maria Novella, which, though still Byzantine in character, is intellectualized, and rises far above the work of the Greek mosaicists. The Virgin is represented as dressed in a red tunic, covered with a blue mantle embroidered in gold. Angels stand three deep on each side of the throne. Though there is much to criticize in the painting, both of the Madonna and Child, the effect produced by it was overpowering, and it has been mentioned in a previous chapter how Charles of Anjou, King of Naples, went in state to visit it while passing through Florence, and how the whole city crowded after him. When the picture was taken to Santa Maria Novella there was a solemn procession to the church, and public rejoicings extending over several days.

With the exception of another Madonna in the Academy of Fine Arts, which adheres more closely to the Byzantine style, Florence does not possess the most important works of this pioneer of the Renaissance artists.

The Upper Church of Assisi is said to have afforded specimens of the highest development of Cimabue's talent, but we are obliged to take this to some extent on trust, as the frescoes are so much injured by time that it is difficult to judge what they originally were like. When, however, it is remembered that the art of painting in that day consisted in the representation of a figure, a frieze, and a procession, as in the mosaics of the first centuries, much credit is due to the artist who first, with the assistance of the pupils whom he employed, represented Bible scenes, and attempted compositions such as those which in a perfected form were executed by his successors upon the walls of the Vatican, in the Stanze, and the Sistine Chapel.

Comparing Cimabue and Giotto, various writers have described the former as the last of Byzantine and the latter as the first of modern painters. The second part of this dictum is, beyond doubt, correct, and the distance between Giotto and Cimabue is enormous. The story of how Cimabue saw Giotto, while looking after his flock of sheep, sketching them with a piece of charcoal on a rock, and at once took him as a pupil, is well known. If Giotto's compositions are criticised in detail, or if he were to be judged by a few easel pictures of doubtful authenticity preserved in the museums, it would be difficult to understand how his works came to be so popular, or why he holds so prominent a place in the history of painting. But this is not the way to look at him, and what elicits so much admiration is the spirit by which he is animated, his tendencies, his breadth, and the genius which enabled him to symbolize an idea, and to render it palpable by transferring it from the moral and philosophical domain to the world of reality and fact by some striking imagery. Thus, for instance, when he represents the Catholic Church as a storm-tossed vessel, he displays a power of inventiveness which appeals to the intelligence. In his "Life of St. Francis," in the Upper Church at Assisi, which was one of his earlier works, he illustrated the life of that saint, by representing various scenes, in each of which one or more personages are depicted as taking part. There is more life and delicacy of touch in these frescoes than in those of Cimabue, and Giotto already showed that he was a master of posture and attitude; as, for instance, when seeking to represent a thirsty man coming upon a spring, he depicts him as throwing himself face downwards to the ground. The frescoes in the lower church, executed later, testify to a still more marked improvement in the art of painting, the color being harmonious, and the shade effects transparent and light, though time has dimmed them so much that it is impossible to reproduce them in an engraving.

As it is my object to describe the special characteristics and style of each artist rather than to write his biography or a catalogue of his works, it may be said, with regard to Giotto that he lent animation to the personages whom he painted, and gave expression to the passions which they might be supposed to feel. All his characters carry their nationality on their faces this being a distinct advance upon the impassible and uniform type of countenance painted by the Byzantines as in his "Raising of Lazarus" at Padua, where it is easy to distinguish an Israelite and an Arab. Moreover, he is, so far as we know, the first portrait painter. In a picture at St. John Lateran (1300) he represented Pope Boniface VIII. in a standing posture, wearing his tiara, and attended by two young clerks; and among the portraits by him in the Bargello, so fortunately discovered in 1841, are those of Charles of Valois cousin of the King of Naples, Dante, Corso Donato, and Brunetto Latini the master of Dante.

There are few churches in Florence which do not contain frescoes either by Giotto himself or by one of his school. But Giotto does not show to so much advantage in his own country as at Padua, where the greatest of his works is to be seen in the Scrovegni Chapel at the Madonna dell' Arena, in a series of frescoes illustrating scenes from Holy Scripture. The "Bribery of Judas" and the "Crucifixion" are conceived with great dramatic power, and awaken in the beholder mingled feelings of terror and pity. His friend Dante was at Padua during this period, and his presence doubtless had no little influence upon this work.