Giotto and his works in Padua
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THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
JOHN RUSKIN
STONES OF VENICE
VOLUME III
GIOTTO
LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
HARBOURS OF ENGLAND
A JOY FOREVER
NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
NEW YORK CHICAGO
THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
JOHN RUSKIN
VOLUME X
GIOTTO AND HIS WORKS
LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
THE HARBORS OF ENGLAND
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART (A JOY FOREVER)
GIOTTO
AND HIS WORKS IN PADUA
BEING
AN EXPLANATORY NOTICE OF THE SERIES OF
WOODCUTS EXECUTED FOR THE ARUNDEL
SOCIETY AFTER THE FRESCOS IN
THE ARENA CHAPEL
ADVERTISEMENT.
The following notice of Giotto has not been drawn up with any idea of
attempting a history of his life. That history could only be written
after a careful search through the libraries of Italy for all
documents relating to the years during which he worked. I have no time
for such search, or even for the examination of well-known and
published materials; and have therefore merely collected, from the
sources nearest at hand, such information as appeared absolutely
necessary to render the series of Plates now published by the Arundel
Society intelligible and interesting to those among its Members who
have not devoted much time to the examination of mediaeval works. I
have prefixed a few remarks on the relation of the art of Giotto to
former and subsequent efforts; which I hope may be useful in
preventing the general reader from either looking for what the painter
never intended to give, or missing the points to which his endeavours
were really directed.
J.R.
GIOTTO
AND HIS WORKS IN PADUA.
Towards the close of the thirteenth century, Enrico Scrovegno, a noble
Paduan, purchased, in his native city, the remains of the Roman
Amphitheatre or Arena from the family of the Delesmanini, to whom
those remains had been granted by the Emperor Henry III. of Germany in
1090. For the power of making this purchase, Scrovegno was in all
probability indebted to his father, Reginald, who, for his avarice, is
placed by Dante in the seventh circle of the _Inferno_, and regarded
apparently as the chief of the usurers there, since he is the only one
who addresses Dante.[1] The son, having possessed himself of the
Roman ruin, or of the site which it had occupied, built himself a
fortified palace upon the ground, and a chapel dedicated to the
Annunciate Virgin.
[Footnote 1:
"Noting the visages of some who lay
Beneath the pelting of that dolorous fire,
One of them all I knew not; but perceived
That pendent from his neck each bore a pouch,
With colours and with emblems various marked,
On which it seemed as if their eye did feed.
And when amongst them looking round I came,
A yellow purse I saw, with azure wrought,
That wore a lion's countenance and port.
Then, still my sight pursuing its career,
Another I beheld, than blood more red,
A goose display of whiter wing than curd.
_And one who bore a fat and azure swine
Pictured on his white scrip, addressed me thus:_
What dost thou in this deep? Go now and know,
Since yet thou livest, that my neighbour here,
Vitaliano, on my left shall sit.
A Paduan with these Florentines am I.
Ofttimes they thunder in mine ears, exclaiming,
Oh! haste that noble knight, he who the pouch
With the three goats will bring. This said, he writhed
The mouth, and lolled the tongue out, like an ox
That licks his nostrils."
_Canto_ xvii.
This passage of Cary's Dante is not quite so clear as that
translator's work usually is. "One of them all I knew not" is an
awkward periphrasis for "I knew none of them." Dante's indignant
expression of the effect of avarice in withering away distinctions of
character, and the prophecy of Scrovegno, that his neighbor Vitaliano,
then living, should soon be with him, to sit on his left hand, is
rendered a little obscure by the transposition of the word "here."
Cary has also been afraid of the excessive homeliness of Dante's
imagery; "whiter wing than curd" being in the original "whiter than
butter." The attachment of the purse to the neck, as a badge of shame,
in the _Inferno_, is found before Dante's time; as, for instance, in
the windows of Bourges cathedral (see Plate iii. of MM. Martin and
Cahier's beautiful work). And the building of the Arena Chapel by the
son, as a kind of atonement for the avarice of the father, is very
characteristic of the period, in which the use of money for the
building of churches was considered just as meritorious as its unjust
accumulation was criminal. I have seen, in a MS. Church-service of the
thirteenth century, an illumination representing Church-Consecration,
illustrating the words, "Fundata est domus Domini supra verticem
montium," surrounded for the purpose of contrast, by a grotesque,
consisting of a picture of a miser's death-bed, a demon drawing his
soul out of his mouth, while his attendants are searching in his
chests for his treasures.]
This chapel, built in or about the year 1303,[2] appears to have been
intended to replace one which had long existed on the spot; and in
which, from the year 1278, an annual festival had been held on
Lady-day, in which the Annunciation was represented in the manner of
our English mysteries (and under the same title: "una sacra
rappresentazione di quel _mistero_"), with dialogue, and music both
vocal and instrumental. Scrovegno's purchase of the ground could not
be allowed to interfere with the national custom; but he is reported
by some writers to have rebuilt the chapel with greater costliness,
in order, as far as possible, to efface the memory of his father's
unhappy life. But Federici, in his history of the Cavalieri Godenti,
supposes that Scrovegno was a member of that body, and was assisted by
them in decorating the new edifice. The order of Cavalieri Godenti was
instituted in the beginning of the thirteenth century, to defend the
"existence," as Selvatico states it, but more accurately the dignity,
of the Virgin, against the various heretics by whom it was beginning
to be assailed. Her knights were first called Cavaliers of St. Mary;
but soon increased in power and riches to such a degree, that, from
their general habits of life, they received the nickname of the "Merry
Brothers." Federici gives forcible reasons for his opinion that the
Arena Chapel was employed in the ceremonies of their order; and Lord
Lindsay observes, that the fulness with which the history of the
Virgin is recounted on its walls, adds to the plausibility of his
supposition.
[Footnote 2: For these historical details I am chiefly indebted to the
very careful treatise of Selvatico, _Sulla Cappellina degli Scrovegni
nell'Arena di Padova_. Padua, 1836.]
Enrico Scrovegno was, however, towards the close of his life, driven
into exile, and died at Venice in 1320. But he was buried in the
chapel he had built; and has one small monument in the sacristy, as
the founder of the building, in which he is represented under a Gothic
niche, standing, with his hands clasped and his eyes raised; while
behind the altar is his tomb, on which, as usual at the period, is a
recumbent statue of him. The chapel itself may not unwarrantably be
considered as one of the first efforts of Popery in resistance of the
Reformation: for the Reformation, though not victorious till the
sixteenth, began in reality in the thirteenth century; and the
remonstrances of such bishops as our own Grossteste, the martyrdoms of
the Albigenses in the Dominican crusades, and the murmurs of those
"heretics" against whose aspersions of the majesty of the Virgin this
chivalrous order of the Cavalieri Godenti was instituted, were as
truly the signs of the approach of a new era in religion, as the
opponent work of Giotto on the walls of the Arena was a sign of the
approach of a new era in art.
The chapel having been founded, as stated above, in 1303, Giotto
appears to have been summoned to decorate its interior walls about
the year 1306,--summoned, as being at that time the acknowledged
master of painting in Italy. By what steps he had risen to this
unquestioned eminence it is difficult to trace; for the records of his
life, strictly examined, and freed from the verbiage and conjecture of
artistical history, nearly reduce themselves to a list of the cities
of Italy where he painted, and to a few anecdotes, of little meaning
in themselves, and doubly pointless in the fact of most of them being
inheritances of the whole race of painters, and related successively
of all in whose biographies the public have deigned to take an
interest. There is even question as to the date of his birth; Vasari
stating him to have been born in 1276, while Baldinucci, on the
internal evidence derived from Vasari's own narrative, throws the date
back ten years.[3] I believe, however, that Vasari is most probably
accurate in his first main statement; and that his errors, always
numerous, are in the subsequent and minor particulars. It is at least
undoubted truth that Giotto was born, and passed the years of
childhood, at Vespignano, about fourteen miles north of Florence, on
the road to Bologna. Few travellers can forget the peculiar landscape
of that district of the Apennine. As they ascend the hill which rises
from Florence to the lowest break in the ridge of Fiesole, they pass
continually beneath the walls of villas bright in perfect luxury, and
beside cypress-hedges, enclosing fair terraced gardens, where the
masses of oleander and magnolia, motionless as leaves in a picture,
inlay alternately upon the blue sky their branching lightness of pale
rose-colour, and deep green breadth of shade, studded with balls of
budding silver, and showing at intervals through their framework of
rich leaf and rubied flower, the far-away bends of the Arno beneath
its slopes of olive, and the purple peaks of the Carrara mountains,
tossing themselves against the western distance, where the streaks of
motionless cloud burn above the Pisan sea. The traveller passes the
Fiesolan ridge, and all is changed. The country is on a sudden
lonely. Here and there indeed are seen the scattered houses of a farm
grouped gracefully upon the hill-sides,--here and there a fragment of
tower upon a distant rock; but neither gardens, nor flowers, nor
glittering palace-walls, only a grey extent of mountain-ground, tufted
irregularly with ilex and olive: a scene not sublime, for its forms
are subdued and low; not desolate, for its valleys are full of sown
fields and tended pastures; not rich nor lovely, but sunburnt and
sorrowful; becoming wilder every instant as the road winds into its
recesses, ascending still, until the higher woods, now partly oak and
partly pine, drooping back from the central crest of the Apennine,
leave a pastoral wilderness of scathed rock and arid grass, withered
away here by frost, and there by strange lambent tongues of earth-fed
fire.[4] Giotto passed the first ten years of his life, a
shepherd-boy, among these hills; was found by Cimabue near his native
village, drawing one of his sheep upon a smooth stone; was yielded up
by his father, "a simple person, a labourer of the earth," to the
guardianship of the painter, who, by his own work, had already made
the streets of Florence ring with joy; attended him to Florence, and
became his disciple.
[Footnote 3: Lord Lindsay, _Christian Art_, vol. ii. p. 166.]
[Footnote 4: At Pietra Mala. The flames rise two or three feet above
the stony ground out of which they spring, white and fierce enough to
be visible in the intense rays even of the morning sun.]
We may fancy the glance of the boy, when he and Cimabue stood side by
side on the ridge of Fiesole, and for the first time he saw the
flowering thickets of the Val d'Arno; and deep beneath, the
innumerable towers of the City of the Lily, the depths of his own
heart yet hiding the fairest of them all. Another ten years passed
over him, and he was chosen from among the painters of Italy to
decorate the Vatican.
The account given us by Vasari of the mode of his competition on this
occasion, is one of the few anecdotes of him which seem to be
authentic (especially as having given rise to an Italian proverb), and
it has also great point and value. I translate Vasari's words
literally.
"This work (his paintings in the Campo Santo of Pisa) acquired for
him, both in the city and externally, so much fame, that the Pope,
Benedict IX., sent a certain one of his courtiers into Tuscany, to see
what sort of a man Giotto was, and what was the quality of his works,
he (the pope) intending to have some paintings executed in St.
Peter's; which courtier, coming to see Giotto, and hearing that there
were other masters in Florence who excelled in painting and in mosaic,
spoke, in Siena, to many masters; then, having received drawings from
them, he came to Florence; and having gone one morning into Giotto's
shop as he was at work, explained the pope's mind to him, and in what
way he wished to avail himself of his powers, and finally requested
from him a little piece of drawing to send to his Holiness. Giotto,
who was most courteous, took a leaf (of vellum?), and upon this, with
a brush dipped in red, fixing his arm to his side, to make it as the
limb of a pair of compasses, and turning his hand, made a circle so
perfect in measure and outline, that it was a wonder to see: which
having done, he said to the courtier, with a smile, 'There is the
drawing.' He, thinking himself mocked, said, 'Shall I have no other
drawing than this?' 'This is enough, and too much,' answered Giotto;
'send it with the others: you will see if it will be understood.' The
ambassador, seeing that he could not get any thing else, took his
leave with small satisfaction, doubting whether he had not been made a
jest of. However, when he sent to the pope the other drawings, and the
names of those who had made them, he sent also that of Giotto,
relating the way in which he had held himself in drawing his circle,
without moving his arm, and without compasses. Whence the pope, and
many intelligent courtiers, knew how much Giotto overpassed in
excellence all the other painters of his time. Afterwards, the thing
becoming known, the proverb arose from it: 'Thou art rounder than the
O of Giotto;' which it is still in custom to say to men of the grosser
clay; for the proverb is pretty, not only on account of the accident
of its origin, but because it has a double meaning, 'round' being
taken in Tuscany to express not only circular form, but slowness and
grossness of wit."
Such is the account of Vasari, which, at the first reading, might be
gravely called into question, seeing that the paintings at Pisa, to
which he ascribes the sudden extent of Giotto's reputation, have been
proved to be the work of Francesco da Volterra;[5] and since,
moreover, Vasari has even mistaken the name of the pope, and written
Boniface IX. for Boniface VIII. But the story itself must, I think, be
true; and, rightly understood, it is singularly interesting. I say,
rightly understood; for Lord Lindsay supposes the circle to have been
mechanically drawn by turning the sheet of vellum under the hand, as
now constantly done for the sake of speed at schools. But neither do
Vasari's words bear this construction, nor would the drawing so made
have borne the slightest testimony to Giotto's power. Vasari says
distinctly, "and turning his hand" (or, as I should rather read it,
"with a sweep of his hand") not "turning the vellum;" neither would a
circle produced in so mechanical a manner have borne distinct witness
to any thing except the draughtsman's mechanical ingenuity; and Giotto
had too much common sense, and too much courtesy, to send the pope a
drawing which did not really contain the evidence he required. Lord
Lindsay has been misled also by his own careless translation of
"pennello tinto di rosso" ("a _brush_ dipped in red,") by the word
"crayon." It is easy to draw the mechanical circle with a crayon, but
by no means easy with a brush. I have not the slightest doubt that
Giotto drew the circle as a painter naturally would draw it; that is
to say, that he set the vellum upright on the wall or panel before
him, and then steadying his arm firmly against his side, drew the
circular line with one sweeping but firm revolution of his hand,
holding the brush long. Such a feat as this is completely possible to
a well-disciplined painter's hand, but utterly impossible to any
other; and the circle so drawn, was the most convincing proof Giotto
could give of his decision of eye and perfectness of practice.
[Footnote 5: At least Lord Lindsay seems to consider the evidence
collected by Foerster on this subject conclusive. _Christian Art_, vol.
ii. p. 168.]
Still, even when thus understood, there is much in the anecdote very
curious. Here is a painter requested by the head of the Church to
execute certain religious paintings, and the only qualification for
the task of which he deigns to demonstrate his possession is executive
skill. Nothing is said, and nothing appears to be thought, of
expression, or invention, or devotional sentiment. Nothing is required
but firmness of hand. And here arises the important question: Did
Giotto know that this was all that was looked for by his religious
patrons? and is there occult satire in the example of his art which he
sends them?--or does the founder of sacred painting mean to tell us
that he holds his own power to consist merely in firmness of hand,
secured by long practice? I cannot satisfy myself on this point: but
yet it seems to me that we may safely gather two conclusions from the
words of the master, "It is enough, and more than enough." The first,
that Giotto had indeed a profound feeling of the value of _precision_
in all art; and that we may use the full force of his authority to
press the truth, of which it is so difficult to persuade the hasty
workmen of modern times, that the difference between right and wrong
lies within the breadth of a line; and that the most perfect power and
genius are shown by the accuracy which disdains error, and the
faithfulness which fears it.
And the second conclusion is, that whatever Giotto's imaginative
powers might be, he was proud to be a good _workman_, and willing to
be considered by others only as such. There might lurk, as has been
suggested, some satire in the message to the pope, and some
consciousness in his own mind of faculties higher than those of
draughtsmanship. I cannot tell how far these hidden feelings existed;
but the more I see of living artists, and learn of departed ones, the
more I am convinced that the highest strength of genius is generally
marked by strange unconsciousness of its own modes of operation, and
often by no small scorn of the best results of its exertion. The
inferior mind intently watches its own processes, and dearly values
its own produce; the master-mind is intent on other things than
itself, and cares little for the fruits of a toil which it is apt to
undertake rather as a law of life than a means of immortality. It will
sing at a feast, or retouch an old play, or paint a dark wall, for its
daily bread, anxious only to be honest in its fulfilment of its
pledges or its duty, and careless that future ages will rank it among
the gods.
I think it unnecessary to repeat here any other of the anecdotes
commonly related of Giotto, as, separately taken, they are quite
valueless. Yet much may be gathered from their general _tone_. It is
remarkable that they are, almost without exception, records of
good-humoured jests, involving or illustrating some point of practical
good sense; and by comparing this general colour of the reputation of
Giotto with the actual character of his designs, there cannot remain
the smallest doubt that his mind was one of the most healthy, kind,
and active, that ever informed a human frame. His love of beauty was
entirely free from weakness; his love of truth untinged by severity;
his industry constant, without impatience; his workmanship accurate,
without formalism; his temper serene, and yet playful; his imagination
exhaustless, without extravagance; and his faith firm, without
superstition. I do not know, in the annals of art, such another
example of happy, practical, unerring, and benevolent power.
I am certain that this is the estimate of his character which must be
arrived at by an attentive study of his works, and of the few data
which remain respecting his life; but I shall not here endeavour to
give proof of its truth, because I believe the subject has been
exhaustively treated by Rumohr and Foerster, whose essays on the works
and character of Giotto will doubtless be translated into English, as
the interest of the English public in mediaeval art increases. I shall
therefore here only endeavour briefly to sketch the relation which
Giotto held to the artists who preceded and followed him, a relation
still imperfectly understood; and then, as briefly, to indicate the
general course of his labours in Italy, as far as may be necessary for
understanding the value of the series in the Arena Chapel.
The art of Europe, between the fifth and thirteenth centuries, divides
itself essentially into great branches, one springing from, the other
grafted on, the old Roman stock. The first is the Roman art itself,
prolonged in a languid and degraded condition, and becoming at last a
mere formal system, centered at the feet of Eastern empire, and thence
generally called Byzantine. The other is the barbarous and incipient
art of the Gothic nations, more or less coloured by Roman or Byzantine
influence, and gradually increasing in life and power.
Generally speaking, the Byzantine art, although manifesting itself
only in perpetual repetitions, becoming every day more cold and
formal, yet preserved reminiscences of design originally noble, and
traditions of execution originally perfect.
Generally speaking, the Gothic art, although becoming every day more
powerful, presented the most ludicrous experiments of infantile
imagination, and the most rude efforts of untaught manipulation.
Hence, if any superior mind arose in Byzantine art, it had before it
models which suggested or recorded a perfection they did not
themselves possess; and the superiority of the individual mind would
probably be shown in a more sincere and living treatment of the
subjects ordained for repetition by the canons of the schools.
In the art of the Goth, the choice of subject was unlimited, and the
style of design so remote from all perfection, as not always even to
point out clearly the direction in which advance could be made. The
strongest minds which appear in that art are therefore generally
manifested by redundance of imagination, and sudden refinement of
touch, whether of pencil or chisel, together with unexpected starts of
effort or flashes of knowledge in accidental directions, gradually
forming various national styles.
Of these comparatively independent branches of art, the greatest is,
as far as I know, the French sculpture of the thirteenth century. No
words can give any idea of the magnificent redundance of its
imaginative power, or of the perpetual beauty of even its smallest
incidental designs. But this very richness of sculptural invention
prevented the French from cultivating their powers of painting, except
in illumination (of which art they were the acknowledged masters), and
in glass-painting. Their exquisite gift of fretting their stone-work
with inexhaustible wealth of sculpture, prevented their feeling the
need of figure-design on coloured surfaces.
The style of architecture prevalent in Italy at the same period,
presented, on the contrary, large blank surfaces, which could only be
rendered interesting by covering them with mosaic or painting.
The Italians were not at the time capable of doing this for
themselves, and mosaicists were brought from Constantinople, who
covered the churches of Italy with a sublime monotony of Byzantine
traditions. But the Gothic blood was burning in the Italian veins; and
the Florentines and Pisans could not rest content in the formalism of
the Eastern splendour. The first innovator was, I believe, Giunta of
Pisa, the second Cimabue, the third Giotto; the last only being a man
of power enough to effect a complete revolution in the artistic
principles of his time.
He, however, began, like his master Cimabue, with a perfect respect
for his Byzantine models; and his paintings for a long time consisted
only of repetitions of the Byzantine subjects, softened in treatment,
enriched in number of figures, and enlivened in gesture. Afterwards he
invented subjects of his own. The manner and degree of the changes
which he at first effected could only be properly understood by actual
comparison of his designs with the Byzantine originals;[6] but in
default of the means of such a comparison, it may be generally stated
that the innovations of Giotto consisted in the introduction, A, of
gayer or lighter colours; B, of broader masses; and, C, of more
careful imitation of nature than existed in the works of his
predecessors.