It must be noticed that from the time of Cennini to that of Raphael, the practice of completing the fresco in secco grew gradually to be considered as a mark of an inferior artist, though it was never wholly discontinued (according to Mrs. Merrifield's treatise), except by a few "very expert artists, formed chiefly in the school of the Carracci." It is perhaps not always borne in mind by those unacquainted with painting, that the range of colouring in fresco is strictly limited; no colours being employed in it by the early Italians except such as were natural, and nearly all the more brilliant colours are artificial, such, for instance, as lake, vermilion, azure. The blues were more fugitive than any other hues, and in many cases have wholly disappeared, turned green or black, or flaked off from the surface of the walls.
Thus it will be clearly understood that the difference between painting in fresco and painting in secco, or (as it is more commonly called) in distemper, lies in two things, the kind of vehicle employed—water in the first, and glue of some sort (chiefly of egg) in the second method; and in the nature of the colours used, the first being restricted to tints comparatively simple and elementary, the second able to make use of the most elaborate colours obtainable. The first method is eminently suited to the expression of great thoughts in simple language, the second is more adapted to give pleasure, from the exquisiteness of the colours employed, and the skill with which the details are elaborated. The latter is the painting of the studio; the former the painting of the church, the palace, or the market-place. I do not think this difference is sufficiently understood in the present day; it does not appear as if painters had grasped the fact that the greatest strength of fresco lay in its emancipation from all the necessities of minute detail and careful elaboration; a freedom gained by the nature of the material. It is not that in itself this freedom is a good thing, but that it affords the artist a means of expression which he can hardly gain through the medium of painting in oil. In much the same way as a modern dining-room, however perfect in its decoration and gorgeous in its upholstery, can never give us the same effect as the rough pillars of some ruined temple; so does the comparative rough sublimity of fresco afford to a true artist a means of expressing great thoughts and lofty ideas in a comparatively facile manner. For it must be remembered he has not only spaces to decorate of a size commensurate with his subject, be it ever so important, but he has hardly to do more than to express his great thought clearly, and all small details are lost in the splendour of his conception. This is the real power of size in painting; a large picture, if it be not finished with the care of a small one, needs to be a representation of some thought which gains in grandeur from the size of its canvas; there can be no justification for covering ten feet square with the representation of an incident of no particular importance, or a scene of no particular beauty; for with every added foot of space which the artist takes up, he really makes an added claim to importance, and a subject which might have been of sufficient interest to have justified a painting on a minute scale, does but betray its insignificance when delineated on a large one. The whole of art being but the nicest possible adaptation of means to ends, it rightly shocks and repels us when we find an artist wilfully violating these conditions, and, in order to appear of greater importance in our eyes, making what might be a tolerable molehill, into a very indifferent mountain. This was very clearly seen by the old Italian masters, who almost invariably chose fresco as the medium for their most important works, assigning to oil painting a lower province.
In connection with this subject the following quotation of Michelangelo's opinion may be interesting:—"Quand il fut question de peindre dans la Chapelle Sextine, le frère Sebastiano, peintre Vénitienne, conseiller de le Pape, de forcer Michel Ange à le faire à l'huile, et la mur fut préparé à cet effet. Le grand homme arrive, et fait degrader cet apprêt, disait fièrement que la peinture à l'huile n'était bonne que pour les dames, les personnes lentes, et qui se pique l'adresse, tels que le frère Sebastiano; et l'ouvrage fut fait à fresque, parce que à genre de peinture méprise cette attention à manœuvre; vain merite qui est perdu pour elle. La touche disparait dans l'enduit qui la dévore, elle n'occupe pas l'âme du grand artiste, qui alors tout entière aux caractères, aux formes, aux expressions, et à la saillie des corps. Son goût ne se manifeste pas sans science, sa main ne s'occupe que d'expérience, et il se livre tout entier à cette tâche difficile—la seule digne de lui. S'il la remplie, la spectateur est transporté, et comme l'auteur, il va cherche rien au-delà."[26]
We cannot stay to define the limits, within which it seems to us that this is a correct expression of the merits of fresco, but that it is in the main true is indisputable, and it is impossible to tell the good effect which might be produced upon the art of the present day, by encouraging our young painters to work in fresco, simply requiring of them that they should have something to say, and say it clearly. No theories as to the production of a great school of painting, will, I think, be able to map out a better means of attaining good art, than this simple one of making clear expression of a great subject the first object. Curiously enough, the only English artist who seems thoroughly to have understood the great scope of fresco painting was Fuseli, and in his lectures at the Royal Academy may be found a clear and enthusiastic exposition of this method.
CHAPTER IV.
CIMABUE.
"I say 'Consider it' in vain; you cannot consider it, for you cannot conceive the sickness of heart with which a young painter of deep feeling toils through his first obscurity; his sense of the strong voice within him, which you will not hear; his vain, fond wondering witness to the things you will not see; his far away perception of things that he could accomplish if he had but peace and time, all unapproachable, and all vanishing from him, because no one will leave him peace, or grant him time."—John Ruskin, Political Economy of Art.
Look back six hundred and forty years, and linger in fancy by the side of the Arno, where Florence in the height of her power and beauty, stood then as now, and you may hear the joy-bells ringing across the swift river for the birth of one of her proudest sons. Thirty years more, and the whole city will rise in procession to honour him, and bear his work in triumph to the quiet church of St. Mary; and six hundred years later, the representation of that honour will hang on the walls of an English gallery; and people will talk, question, and whisper about The Cimabue Procession. They may well admire it and ask its meaning; for to the painter it commemorated we owe the art of England as surely, as that to Leighton we owe the picture which represents the old master's triumph.
In two ways are we indebted to Cimabue for the emancipation of painting; first, for the work which he did himself accomplish; and second and in chief, for his discovery and education of the shepherd boy, whose fame was ultimately to eclipse his own.[27] I say that the master's fame was to be eclipsed by his pupil, but that must be taken with one most important reservation. However much we may be convinced of Giotto's superiority, we are always forced to bear in mind the fact, that had it not been for Cimabue, that superiority would in all probability never have been known. Differing in the particulars of the story, all the accounts of Giotto's early life agree in this important fact, that it was Cimabue who discovered his early talent, who persuaded his father to let him enter his profession, and who educated him as a painter at his own expense, from the time that he was ten years old. Is not this a greater monument to Cimabue's name, than any amount of Madonnas carried in triumph through the "street of gladness?" Rightly understood, is it not even a surer testimony to the fact of his being a true artist; for does it not prove that the painter had more devotion to his art than his fame? To see in a youth, poor and unknown, the signs of genius, greater perhaps than your own, to take him from his obscurity, and to instruct his ignorance, careless of the effect which may be thereby produced upon your own reputation, and finally to stand aside while he wins the honour which is his due, but which nevertheless would have fallen to your share, had it not been for your own action; this seems to me as great a sacrifice of petty pride, and as great a triumph over natural selfishness, as can well be conceived. And this is what Cimabue did, urged by no duty, and without possible reward, save that of doing his best for his art and his pupil. We owe him then a double debt: for his own work in loosening the bonds of tradition, and for the instruction of the artist whose paintings and sculptures were to inaugurate the real methods of art, and extend its province, from the mere exponent of religious legend to the representation of the passions of humanity and the beauty of nature.
What little is known of the life of Cimabue we can give in a very few words. Even Vasari, garrulous as he is, has little more to tell us, than that he lived, painted certain pictures, received certain honours, had a pupil called Giotto, whose fame eclipsed his own, and died.