Madonna with St. Francis (fresco), after 1290, Assisi, Lower Church of San Francesco.
St. John in mosaic in the Apse of the Cathedral at Pisa, 1301.
Venturi’s endeavor to attach to Cimabue some of the later New Testament mosaics in the vault of the Florentine Baptistry, see Storia, Vol. V., p. 229—is plausible but not convincing. His attribution of lost frescoes in the portico of old St. Peter’s, known from sketch copies, Storia, Vol. V, p. 195—has no solid basis. Two fresco fragments, heads of Peter and Paul, remain, and are published by Wilpert, Die Mosaiken &, bd. I, fig. 144, and by him correctly assigned to Cavallini or some Roman follower.
R. van Marle, in La Peinture Romaine, Strasbourg, 1921, has made a most careful study of all the earliest frescoes in the Upper Church. Generally I concur in his conclusions, but cannot see Cavallini in the far abler work of the Isaac Master. The date, 1296, which Van Marle found in the Choir at Assisi, makes it pretty certain that all the frescoes in the Upper Church were executed between 1293–5 and 1300.
In Toskanische Maler im XIII Jahrhundert, Berlin, 1922, Dr. O. Sirén makes a comprehensive survey of the earliest painters of Lucca, Pisa, and Florence. He endeavors to reconstruct the works of Coppo di Marcovaldo whom he regards as a formative influence on Cimabue. To the usual list of Cimabue’s works Dr. Sirén adds, with Aubert, a great Madonna in the Servi, Bologna; and also a Madonna in the Verzocchi Collection, Milan; and an extraordinarily fine crucifixion in the d’Hendecourt Collection, London. Dr. Sirén also accepts for Cimabue the triptych of Christ, St. Peter and St James, which Berenson first published in Art in America, for 1920. Of these accretions none but the d’Hendecourt Crucifixion is at all persuasive to me.
[5]. The latest and fullest discussion of Pietro Cavallini is by Stanley Lothrop in Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Vol. II, 1918. I think he is in error in seeing Cavallini at Assisi and Perugia. Van Marle, note above, has thrown additional light on the continuity of a Roman school.
[6]. C. &. C. (Ed. Hutton) Vol. I, pp. 194–5. Zimmermann (Giotto &c., Leipzig, 1899), H. Thode (Franz von Assisi, Berlin, 1904), and Fr. Hermanin (Gallerie nazionali Italiane, Vol. V (1902), p. 113) ascribe the Stories of Isaac and some other superior frescoes of the upper row to youthful Giotto. They seem too accomplished and mature for that and are all allied to Gaddo Gaddi’s mosaics at Rome.
[7]. Giotto. Osvald Sirén, Giotto and Some of his Followers, Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press, 1917, in 2 Vols., gives a reasonable chronology and is valuable for illustrations.
Roger E. Fry, Monthly Review, Vol. I, pp. 126–151; Vol. II, pp. 139–157; Vol. III, pp, 96–121 is an admirable critical analysis of Giotto’s style, but the ascriptions and chronology are often doubtful. Excellent on the frescoes at Sta. Croce. The essay is reprinted in Vision and Design, London, 1921.
J. B. Supino’s startling views in the chronology of Giotto, expressed in Giotto, Florence, 1920, in 3 Vols., seem to me fantastic.