569. AN ALTAR-PIECE.
Orcagna (Florentine: about 1308-1386).
"From the time of Giotto to the end of the 14th century Orcagna stands quite pre-eminent even among the many excellent artists of that time. In sculpture he was a pupil of Andrea Pisano; in painting, though indirectly, a disciple of Giotto. Few artists have practised with such success so many branches of the arts. Orcagna was not only a painter and a sculptor, but also a worker in mosaic, an architect and a poet. His importance in the history of Italian art rests not merely on his numerous and beautiful productions, but also on his widespread influence, transmitted to his successors through a large and carefully trained school of pupils. In style as a painter Orcagna comes midway between Giotto and Fra Angelico; he combined the dramatic force and realistic vigour of the earlier painting with the pure brilliant colour and refined unearthly beauty of Fra Angelico. His large fresco paintings are works of extreme decorative beauty and splendour, composed with careful reference to their architectural surroundings" (Middleton). His real name was Andrea di Cione, but he was called by his contemporaries Orcagna, a corruption of Arcagnuolo, the Archangel. "An intense solemnity and energy in the sublimest groups of his figures, fading away as he touches inferior subjects, indicates that his home was among the archangels, and his rank among the first of the sons of men" (Modern Painters, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. iii. § 8). Orcagna's father was a goldsmith, and the result of his early training in the use of the precious metals may be traced in the extreme delicacy and refined detail of his principal works in sculpture. He used to note his union of the arts by signing his pictures "the work of ... sculptor," and his sculptures "the work of ... painter." As a sculptor and architect, the principal work of Orcagna is the church of Or San Michele at Florence. The great marble tabernacle is "one of the most important and beautiful works of art which even Italy possesses." Vasari also attributes to his design the Loggia dei Lanzi in the Piazza della Signoria, but this attribution cannot be upheld. As a painter, the chief works of Orcagna are the frescoes in the Strozzi chapel in S. Maria Novella. The "Paradise" is the finest of these compositions—a work full both of grace and of majesty. These frescoes were executed in 1350. In 1357 Orcagna painted the altar-piece in the same chapel, and of about the same date is the altar-piece now before us. The grand frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa ascribed by Vasari to Orcagna are now attributed to other hands.
"In San Piero Maggiore," says Vasari in his life of Orcagna, "he executed a rather large picture, the 'Coronation of the Virgin.'" This is the picture now before us. The principal portion is numbered 569. The other nine pictures (570-578) were originally portions of the same magnificent piece of decoration. A model of the church for which it was painted is held by St. Peter (among the saints adoring on the spectator's left). This altar-piece, though a handsome piece of church furniture, is not so favourable a specimen of the master's power as are the works referred to above. Nevertheless these panels are full of varied interest.
A certain quaint uncouthness should not blind us to Orcagna's wealth of expressive detail. Thus, "in the sensitive cast of the Mother's countenance, and in the refined pose of her figure, there is a rare degree of eloquence, such as silently bespeaks a modesty which would shun, a humility which would disallow, any sort of self-adornment. Her Lord, to whose will she submits herself, is no less monumental in dignity of combined power and tenderness. And in the celestial band below, in the maidens that play and sing at the Mother's feet, despite their quaint little almond eyes, there is a naïveté of expression, a simplicity and animation unequalled at so early a date. In particular she who, singing behind the harpist, generously spends her soul in impassioned songs, while others, agreeable to nature's truth, are singing regardless of their song, interested only in what is around. Again, in that dual company of holy men and women sitting about the throne, reverence stills every feature, and a saintly singleness of purpose keeps each eye as they look in loving adoration on Him whose dying bought their soul's salvation, or as they lean towards Her whose human heart petitioned them to Paradise" (A. H. Macmurdo in Century Guild Hobby Horse, ii. 34). In the Hobby Horse (a different publication, No. 1, 1893), a musical expert calls attention to the instruments shown by Orcagna. Thus "in the central compartment note the portative organ, at that time in familiar use, with its gimlet-shaped keys all of one light colour, and apparently, even in that early date, chromatic in disposition. Five large drone pipes may be recognised, from their being out of scale with the melody pipes. The second instrument in the angelic band is the mediæval harp, the comb holding the wrest, or tuning, pins being held here in an animal's mouth. A third angel is furnished with a cither, also a favourite mediæval instrument. It is ornamented in ebony and ivory, and has a plectrum guard inserted in the belly, as in a modern mandoline. The fourth angel has a viol of a clumsy form; it took another 200 years to arrive at the graceful outline of the violin. The fifth has a psaltery. One angel has a bagpipe; the chaunter or melody pipe has eight holes, the same number the highland bagpipe has now." Variations of these instruments may be noted in the subordinate pictures (A. J. Hipkins). An expert in another art calls attention to the beauty of the patterns on the dresses of the central figures, on the ground upon which the angels kneel and stand, and also on the stuff hung at the back of the throne (Sydney Vacher: Italian Ornaments from brocades and stuffs found in pictures in the National Gallery).