Giotto

by Harry Quilter

I feel my inability to convey to my readers any adequate idea of the general style of Giotto's painting, and this not so much because it is a complicated one or difficult to understand, as because of its very simplicity. A few points may be mentioned in which it differed from that of his predecessors in Italy, from the pictures of the Renaissance period, and lastly from those of our own time; but when all is said, the peculiar beauty of the colouring, the simplicity and purity of the feeling, the strength and directness of the painter's aim, and the unstudied grace of his compositions will remain to baffle any description that can be given.

First let me note that previous to the time of Giotto (since the decay at least of Greek art) colour in painting meant almost exclusively the arrangement of gorgeous hues on a golden background. The tints used being little, if at all, gradated, but laid on more in the manner of a mosaic than a modern picture. Derived, as were the traditions of painting, from manuscripts of Mount Athos and mosaics of Byzantium, they were almost wholly confined to the composition of pure colours in pleasing juxtaposition, and these colours were almost invariably full and deep. It may, perhaps, make my meaning clearer if I take an antithetical example from the art of the present day. Everybody knows the characteristics of French landscape painting, a beautiful tone of grey and black, and perhaps a few other tertiary tints, and no form or colour whatever, depending entirely on the gradation for its beauty. Well, before Giotto there was no such thing as tone, save in pure colours; and gradation of colour was practically unknown. The colours used were dark and rich, purples and crimsons and deep blues, and here and there orange and green and heavy blue-blacks. These, laid upon a gold ground, more or less ornamented with chased designs, formed the chief portion of the pictorial art of the centuries preceding Giotto. Looking into one of these pictures was like looking into a decaying fire, where amidst masses of dark shade there still burnt gloomily here and there, patches of glowing cinders and bright flame. Hung in the dim recess of a chapel or an oratory, lighted by the faint glimmer of the silver lamps, these works of Christian art may well have harmonised with the dark ages of superstition which gave them life, but they were essentially unsuitable for having any real effect upon men's minds, apart from their religious uses. They had no connection with the real life of the world, full of varying emotions and conflicting passions; they had no affinity with the times when the hardbound earth cracked at the close of winter, and the sun shone once more in a blue sky, and all men's "pulses throbbed together with the fulness of the spring."

This was the first change that Giotto made in artistic method. "Away with the gold background," he said; "let us have the blue sky," and, as in the days of creation, "it was so." This we may fancy was the first step, but with it came many others. With the introduction of the sky came a corresponding lightening of the tones used throughout the picture, a corresponding increase in the amount of light depicted in the composition.

And, as over the whole of Byzantine art, there had brooded a gorgeous gloom, through which the tints only revealed themselves dimly and slowly, as we may see at the present day, the hues of tropic sea-weed glow faint beneath the waves of the China Sea, so over Giotto's frescoes there shone a calm, full light, not bathed in sunshine or enhanced by contrasted shade, but a plain clear breadth of day, sufficient to reveal clearly each object in the picture.

Just think what a change this one alteration in tone must have brought about! what an instrument it was for the correcting of the absurd traditions which then governed the practice of painting. It must have been like that produced by a Times leader upon the iniquities of local boards of guardians; namely, delight and amazement to the world at large, horror and consternation to the idiots who had done ill by stealth (though strictly in accordance with rule), and blushed to find it fame.

So keep this fact well in view, that the great change effected by Giotto was the change from rush-light to daylight, and it was only after this that further advance became possible. Do not run away with the idea that he gained thereby the whole truth; far from it. There were two centuries and a half of painters to come after him before the whole truth of light and shade was mastered, for Giotto may be said to have practically ignored shade altogether.

Nor did he advance much further in the gradation of colour than his predecessors had done; his paint is generally put on in broad flat washes, with little attempt at gradation; its beauty depends chiefly upon the exquisite manner in which these washes are combined with one another. Thus he never reaches to the utmost beauty of colour, which is only obtainable with the utmost gradation of light and shade; but his work presents itself like a landscape, ere the sun rises, on a fine summer's morning, when each object lies clearly and a little coldly defined, in the shadowless air.

It must be remembered that with the attempt to master the intricacies and gradation of light and shade, came also the use of secondary and tertiary tints, to an extent unknown in the time of Giotto, who may almost be described as the last of the pure colourists, taking pure in the sense of primary. Chiaroscuro went on gradually advancing in importance, relatively to colour and subject, till in the times of Rembrandt we find it absolutely thrusting colour and subject out of the field altogether, and making the flash upon a tin pannikin, or the obscurity of a cottage kitchen, of equal importance with the grandest traditions of our race.

What is perhaps best known as the special quality of Giotto's art is his study of nature; and it is right that I should say a few words upon this somewhat indefinite phrase, and try to show in what Giotto's study of nature consisted, and wherein it differed from that of preceding painters.

If we were able to return in reality to the old times when our painter lived, I do not fancy we should find—as many good people suppose—that the folk of that day were ignorant that there were such things as domesticated animals and birds, trees and flowers, clouds and sunsets. You may be very sure that mediæval Florentines on the ridge of Fiesole, have often paused to watch the sun gilding the spires of Florence, much as the English traveller does; and young lovers wandering idly amongst the almond-trees by the Arno, plucked the blossoms, and admired their loveliness, as we do to-day. It was only that somehow the idea had never occurred to any one that these things were suitable for pictures; there was a notion that it would be a sort of irreverence to put such vulgar details into religious scenes—arising perhaps from a similar feeling to that which makes many well-trained Christians dislike to pray for any specially desired object. Perhaps it was owing to Giotto's early training, or rather no training, in the midst of a wild mountain country, perhaps only to his rough humorous, anti-reverential character, but probably to the combination of circumstance and individuality, that made him introduce into his compositions all sorts of extraneous matter. That to the last he entertained a strong sympathy with his early shepherd life, it is impossible to doubt, and in the designs for the decoration of the base of the Campanile, only two of which he lived to execute with his own hand, there is a singularly beautiful bas-relief, illustrating the pastoral life, in which the sheep, and the puppy watching them, are as fine as anything we have from his hand.