276. TWO APOSTLES.
School of Giotto. See under 568.
See also (p. xix)
Here's Giotto with his Saints a-praising God,
That set us praising.
Browning.
These solemn heads seem to breathe the very spirit of the master; but the history of the painting forbids the supposition that we have here the handiwork, or even the direct influence of Giotto. It is a fragment from one of the wall-paintings in the chapel of St. John the Baptist in the church of S. Maria del Carmine at Florence. The frescoes were not executed till 1350, some years after the death of Giotto. The subject of the composition to which our fragment belongs was the burial of the Baptist. The history of these frescoes is typical of that of many a vicissitude, and recalls the idea suggested in one of Browning's Dramatic Lyrics, in which the soul of the painter watches the gradual decay and dispersal of his life's work:—
Wherever a fresco peals and drops,
Wherever an outline weakens and wanes
Till the latest life in the painting stops,
Stands One whom each fainter pulse-tick pains:
One, wishful each scrap should clutch the brick,
Each tinge, not wholly escape the plaster,
—A lion who dies of an ass's kick,
The wronged great soul of an ancient Master.
This and two portions from other paintings of the series, now in the institution at Liverpool, were saved from the fire which destroyed this chapel in 1771, and became the property of Mr. Thomas Patch, the engraver. They were brought to England by Mr. Townley. This fragment was subsequently in the collection of the Right Hon. C. Greville, from whom it passed into the possession of Mr. Rogers, and at the sale of his pictures in 1856 was purchased for the National Gallery. Some other fragments are preserved in the Cappella dell' Ammannati, in the Campo Santo at Pisa, and one is in the town gallery at Pavia.