1173. AN UNKNOWN SUBJECT.
School of Giorgione (Venetian: 16th Century). See 269.
Another picture of the golden age (cf. 1123) such as Giorgione, we are told, loved to paint,—"men and women enjoying the golden tranquillity; here is seen the haughty lion, there the humble lamb; in another part we behold the swift flying hart, with many other terrestrial animals." The picture before us precisely agrees with this general description, but the particular subject of it is unknown.[234] A child, it would seem, is being initiated into some order of the golden age—he is being dedicated, perhaps, to a life of song, for the stately personage on the throne wears the poet's crown of wild olive, whilst the young man on the steps below him lightly touches a lute, and has books by his side. The page bears a rich dish of fruits and herbs, for the golden age is vegetarian; whilst fawns and a leopard, with a peacock and other birds, attend the court of the king of song. When in the Bohn Collection, this picture was ascribed to Giorgione. For some interesting remarks on its possible authorship and subject, see the Times, December 22, 1885, where resemblances in this picture to pictures of Carpaccio and Pordenone, as well as of Giorgione, are pointed out. Sir Edward Poynter says that the picture "has considerable affinity with the two pictures attributed to Giorgione in the Uffizzi Gallery at Florence, but is weaker in execution and effect, especially in the landscape" (The National Gallery, i. 26). "True," says Mr. Herbert Cook, "the landscape has been renovated; true, the Giorgionesque depth and richness is gone, the mellow glow of the 'Epiphany' (1160) is sadly wanting; but who can deny the charm of the picturesque scenery, which vividly recalls the landscape background elsewhere in the master's own work? who can fail to admire the natural and unstudied grouping of the figures, the artlessness of the whole, the loving simplicity with which the painter has done his work? Sincerity and naïveté are too apparent for this to be the work of any but a quite young artist, and one whose style is so thoroughly 'Giorgionesque' as to be none other than the young Giorgione himself. In my opinion, this is one of his earliest essays into the region of romance, painted probably before his twenty-first year" (Giorgione, p. 92).
1188. THE BETRAYAL OF CHRIST.
1189. THE PROCESSION TO CALVARY.
Ugolino (Sienese: died 1339).
Ugolino was one of the founders of the Sienese School. So great was his reputation that he was unanimously chosen by the Florentines, in preference to their own artists, to paint the altar-pieces of their two great churches; whilst another picture that he painted for them was credited with miraculous powers. These little pictures are portions of the one painted by him for the high altar of Sta. Croce. "He always adhered," says Vasari (i. 138), "in great part to the Greek manner, as one who, having grown old in that method, was induced by a sort of obstinacy to follow the manner of Cimabue, rather than that of Giotto." The points which have been already noticed as characteristic of his contemporary, Duccio (see 566), may be traced equally in Ugolino.
Notice in 1188 that the disciples are not mere conventional types, but that an attempt is made to give them each an individuality, and to express their characters on their faces. The same expressions may be noticed again in 1189. It is interesting, too, to observe how the first attempts of painting (as of poetry) to express action were epic, rather than dramatic. The painter tries to tell the whole story at once; here is Judas giving the traitor's kiss, there is Peter cutting off the ear of the high priest's servant, and beside them are all the other characters of the story (cf. under 579). As art advances, it becomes on the other hand dramatic; the painter seizes on the essential point and makes his picture out of that. The difference may be seen by contrasting Ugolino's picture with one of the same subject at Florence by Giotto, which Ruskin thus describes: "See what choice Giotto made of his moments. Plenty of choice for him—in pain. The Flagellation—the Mocking—the Bearing the Cross; all habitually given by the Margheritones, and their school, as extremes of pain. 'No,' thinks Giotto. 'There was worse than all that. Many a good man has been mocked, spitefully entreated, spitted on, slain. But who was ever so betrayed?' ... He paints the laying hands on him in the garden, but with only two principal figures—Judas and Peter, of course: Judas and Peter were always principal in the old Byzantine composition,—Judas giving the kiss, Peter cutting off the servant's ear. But the two are here not merely principal, but almost alone in sight, all the other figures thrown back; and Peter is not at all concerned about the servant, or his struggle with him. He has got him down, but looks back suddenly at Judas giving the kiss. 'What!—you are the traitor, then—you!' 'Yes,' says Giotto; 'and you, also, in an hour more'" (Mornings in Florence, ii. 41).