It was different when under the leading of St. Dominic and St. Francis,[[3]] the Church eagerly wished to persuade men. Men may well have been frightened or even instructed by a Byzantine picture; nobody was ever persuaded by one. It took a century to work away from the Byzantine style, so deeply was it rooted. In fact, from the year 1226, that of St. Francis’s death, to about the end of the century, such artists as Guido of Siena, Coppo di Marcovaldo, Giunta of Pisa, Jacopo Torriti, Giovanni Cosma, Duccio, and Cimabue chiefly restudied the old Byzantine manner. They wished to learn how to build creditably before they began to tear down. Such reverent experiment extending over two generations only proved that the breach with Byzantine formalism was inevitable.
Fig. 3. Tuscan Master about 1285.—Otto Kahn, N.Y.
Fig. 4. Cimabue. Madonna in Majesty.—Uffizi.
With the deepening and broadening of personal, civic, and religious emotions, the painter found new exactions laid upon him which the bloodless art of Byzantium could not satisfy. New life called for new forms to express it. We find in sculpture from about the year 1260, that of Giovanni Pisano’s first pulpit—wholly classical in its dignity—a kindred endeavor in advance of the art of painting. The renewal took three forms: the more conservative spirits accepted the Byzantine formulas but endeavored to refine on them in a realistic sense, to add grace to austerity. Such moderate development of the old style fixed the character of the school of Siena and was magnificently initiated by its greatest artist, Duccio, active about 1300. A very beautiful Madonna of this general tendency is in the collection of Mr. Otto Kahn at New York, Figure [3]. It has been quite variously attributed.[[4]] It seems to me, however, a pure Tuscan work by Coppo or a painter akin to him. For the greater spirits such a reform was inadequate. Refine the Byzantine formulas to the utmost—there was no gain, rather loss in strength. Accordingly a vehement spirit like Cimabue,[1–5] acknowledgedly father of the Florentine school, accepts the Byzantine tradition loyally, but seeks to make its rigid mannerisms express the new religious passions. At times he is successful at this unlikely task of putting new wine into old bottles. His great enthroned Madonna at Florence, Figure [4], with solemn angels in attendance and grim patriarchs below her throne, may have been painted as early as 1285. It is faithful to the old monumental tradition—akin to the Christs and Marys of the mosaics—in its impressive richness is one of the most majestic things the century produced. It reveals the docility of its creator but only partially his power. We have hardly his hand but surely an echo of his influence in the tragic crucifix in the museum of Santa Croce. It is the moment of agony, and the powerful body writhes against the nails, while the head sinks in death. It may represent hundreds of similar crosses that stood high in air on the rood beam before the chancel, in sight both of the preacher and his public.
Somewhere about 1294, Cimabue was called to Assisi to decorate the church in which St. Francis was buried. His part was the choir and transepts of the upper church. In the cross vault he painted the four evangelists, on the walls he spread the stories of St. Peter and St. Paul, the legends of the Virgin scenes from the Apocalypse, the gigantic forms of the archangels and a Calvary, Figure [5], that is one of the most moving expressions of Christian art. Chipped and blackened, their lights become dark through chemical change, these wall paintings retain an immense power and veracity. The Byzantine forms gain a paradoxical solidity, like that of bronze. The convulsion of the figure of Christ is given back in the wild gestures of the mourning women and the terrified Jews. It is the moment of the earthquake and the opening of tombs; a cosmic terror and despair pervade the place. The work is hampered and rude but completely expressive. The sensitive Japanese critic and man of the world, Okakura Kakuzo, used to regard these sooty frescoes in the transepts of the Franciscan basilica as the high point of all European art, which should at least induce the tourist and the student to give a second look at these battered and fading masterpieces. Recently an inscribed date, 1296, has been discovered on the choir wall which settles a long vexed question of chronology. The upper part of the work in the transepts and choir must have been going on for some years earlier, and the entire decoration of the Upper Church should roughly be comprised between 1294 and 1300. Cimabue died about 1302 while working on the apsidal mosaic at Pisa, where the St. John is by his hand, Figure [2]. He had brought life and passion into Italian painting, as his younger contemporary Giovanni Pisano had into Italian sculpture. Cimabue’s defect—that of a noble spirit—was the faith that the old pictorial form could contain the new surging emotions.
Fig. 5. Cimabue. Calvary. Fresco.—Upper Church, Assisi.
