The great difficulty of accounting for Giotto's introduction of hitherto unused matter into his pictures, lies in the fact that it does not seem to have been due especially to any partiality on his part for this or that branch of nature, as to a principle of getting to the bottom of his subject, whatever it was. He appears to have had a power of grasping the spirit of whatever scene he was engaged upon, and illustrating that appropriately, which is, as far as I know, unequalled in the records of painting. And it is noteworthy that this spirit is with him always the reverse of eclectic: no painter can be more entirely free from all principles of aristocracy; his sympathies are always with the people; the view he takes of any subject is the plain, common-sense view, such as plain, common-sense people can understand.
Connected with this is the third great characteristic of Giotto, perhaps the strongest in his whole nature, and certainly the one which was least in accordance with the spirit of his time. This is his strong dramatic power.
This power shows itself in almost every work of the master's we have left us, and even survives his death, and lives in the work of his pupils. His pictures are not alone scenes, they are SITUATIONS, on each the curtain might fall without any sense of incongruity. Besides their appropriateness of gesture and oneness of feeling, they possess the great characteristic of dramatic art, in making the scene live before you, subduing its various incidents into one strain of meaning, yet keeping each incident complete and individual, as well as making it help the main purpose. In most of Giotto's pictures there will be found a diversity of action and expression, all of which lead up to the main action, and help to enforce and illustrate it. A minor point in which the same quality shows, is in the amount of emotion which this painter is capable of expressing by a single gesture, an amount so great that it occasionally runs some danger of lapsing into caricature. This is especially plain in such pictures as the Betrayal and the Entombment, in the Arena Chapel. But where this dramatic quality is most strongly marked is in the bas-reliefs on the base of the Campanile; in all these Giotto has succeeded, not only in choosing the most appropriate figures for illustrating his meaning, but in seizing the very moment which is most significant.
To sum up these three main characteristics of Giotto's style, they are—First, a lighter, purer tone of colour than had been in use before the time of Cimabue, and a greater variety and purity of tint than had been attained by that master, especially in the more distant portions of the picture. Second, the introduction into his compositions of a certain amount of natural detail which had been before totally neglected, and the substitution of the portraits of actual men and women for the imaginary beings that had formerly filled up the backgrounds of the Byzantine pictures. Third, comes the power of illustrating the real meaning of his subject, and not merely suggesting it, as had formerly been the case, allied to which is the dramatic quality of which I have just spoken.
I feel how barren is all this description to explain the progress in art made by this artist—the progress from stagnation to movement, from death to life, from symbolical types, to the things themselves. It would appear unnecessary to dwell upon the few points in which his work was technically deficient, or those in which he but repeated the errors of his predecessors, but the following may just be mentioned.
The comparative dulness of the reds in use at that time, the lack of depth of hue, and variation of colour in differing aspects of light and shade; the comparative poorness of the drapery, as compared with that of the later Venetian and Florentine masters; the deficiency in the rendering of form, and the elementary amount of knowledge of perspective and anatomy—on all these points might exception be taken to his work with perfect justice, and yet when each had been given its due amount of criticism, the wonder would still be that he accomplished so much, and not so little. For two hundred years after the death of Giotto the advance in the drawing of landscape was so slight as to be almost imperceptible, and yet, compared with his landscape, that of those that preceded him was as "moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine."
I have omitted in this description the main characteristic of Giotto's style, and I have done so because it is so intangible that it can only be felt, not described. This characteristic, hinted at by Lord Lindsay in the quotation which is placed at the head of this chapter, is the simple faith in which each of these compositions abounds; the feeling conveyed to the spectator that thus, and no otherwise, did the occurrence take place, and that the painter has not altered it a jot or tittle for his own purposes. This must be felt to be believed, and I only call attention to it here lest it should be supposed that it has failed to impress me.
CHAPTER X.
GIOTTO AT ASSISI.—THE UPPER CHURCH.
Of all the minor disadvantages of travel which have accompanied the substitution of the locomotive for the coach, perhaps none is so real an evil as the very partial impression an ordinary traveller derives from a short visit to some interesting land. When Rome and Florence, for instance, are brought within the compass of a day's journey, the tourist is little likely to care to break his journey for comparatively obscure cities, much less villages, scurries past "reedy Thrasymene" without recognition, and scarce notices the towers and churches of Perugia, rising green and grey on the mountain side. Still less likely is our tourist to arrest his comet-like progression at a rough country station, some fourteen miles from the old Etruscan city, a station where very obviously, neither guard nor porter expects him to alight, and which he has some difficulty in identifying by the help of a nearly illegible inscription, as Assisi. And yet there was a time when this forgotten town played no inconsiderable part in the world's history, and was the central seat of an Order that reckoned princes among its followers, and practically divided with the Dominicans the spiritual sovereignty of Europe.[64] And even now, if any very strong-minded traveller should be able to defy the ominous silence of Bradshaw,[65] and the neglect of Cook, and more regardful of what has been, than what is, spend a few days in the home of poverty, he will not regret, we think, in after years his deviation from the accustomed routine of travel; nay, if he gain no other advantage, he will at least have had a brief space in which to take quiet breath, ere the red-books and the valet de place are again in requisition, ere St. Peter's becomes No. 17 in the often consulted plan, and Rome takes "at least a week to see properly." For at Assisi there is no hurry, and so strong is the spirit of the place that the most energetic tourist quickly succumbs to it; even those who rush over here from Perugia for a day's excursion, treading softly ere they have been a couple of hours in the city of St. Francis. And now we will suppose that "our uncommercial traveller" has safely escaped the clutches of the three or four inn touts whom his arrival has roused into unwonted energy, and consigning his bag to the least ill-favoured, has set out manfully along the dusty road leading from the station to the town; for be it noted that Assisi is not strong in equipages, and the solitary rough wooden box denominated omnibus, is hardly an attractive conveyance at first sight, though ere long the traveller begins to look upon it as an old friend, as it is to be found during the greater part of the day, standing about in various unexpected parts of the town, being apparently left wherever it has taken a passenger. One further violence we must do to the mind of the well-instructed tourist, namely, to beg that he will not accept guidance, nor torment himself with details, archæological or otherwise, but simply open his eyes to all the quiet influences of past devotion and present beauty which he will find around him. And first, he will see by the side of the road a vast church, in the most uninteresting style of Renaissance architecture, not unlike a small edition of St. Peter's. This is St. Mary of the Angels, little notable, save for its size, and a small chapel it contains, where St. Francis first assembled his few followers. In it there is only to be seen—a spoilt fresco, by Perugino; walls dark with age, save where, here and there, the dim lamplight falls upon the silver offerings of penitence and thanksgiving; and some carved doors, more curious than beautiful. These need not delay us much from the steep ascent to the town. Another dusty mile of road, and Assisi lies before and above us, rising a confused mass of tiled roofs and massive walls, from the grey depths of the olive-groves which surround it. Not only on a mountain, but of the mountain, does the town seem to be built, the ponderous blocks of dim red and dusty yellow stone, scarcely seeming to have more the characteristics of houses than of the cliffs above, save where, here and there, a square tower of church or fortification lifts itself into clear pre-eminence of definition from the tumbled confusion of roofs, walls, and buttresses. Another turn in the long, winding road, and the great attraction of the few sightseers who visit Assisi, the Convent of St. Francis—with what Bradshaw calls its "three superb churches," which are, in fact, two—stands revealed. Picture to yourself a long mass of building, standing upon a double range of tall arches, and pierced with a multitude of small windows. This is the convent building itself; beyond it, on a level with its roof, rises the Church of St. Francis, with its square campanile. Of the same dull-yellowish colour as the other buildings of the town, there is little beauty in the church from this point of view, save that of massive strength, and a certain simplicity of design which, when carried out upon so large a scale, almost amounts to grandeur. So, leaving the convent on our left, we enter beneath a massive square tower the first street of the city. It is difficult to say whence comes the sense of extreme desolation which oppresses us, not from the absence of life certainly, for at this point there are commonly a few of the villagers and townspeople chatting round an old fountain, and on every side resounds the squeaking of the pigs, that every well-to-do inhabitant of Assisi keeps tethered on the ground-floor of his house. Nor is it that there are no signs of commercial enterprise, for we notice the hammered brass and copper jars and cauldrons glimmering dimly in the recesses of one of the dark shops, and some strings of onions and other vegetables in another. Is it something, we wonder, in the construction of the town itself, in its rough-hewn blocks of dusty stone, its huge buttresses, its blocked-up arches, its weather-beaten tiles, the defacement of its ruined fountains, and the general appearance of enormous toil with which the city must have been constructed? Or is it still more the case, that even at the first glance we connect the appearance of the town with the state of the superstition to which it owes its existence; whose power changed the small Etrurian village into a shrine of the deepest sanctity and proudest priesthood, and having done its work for good and evil, faded gradually away, and now finds voice only on the trembling lips of the half-dozen monks who are all that remain at Assisi of the famous Brotherhood? For whatever reason, the place is desolate—desolate as no place can be which has not once been great; and as we ascend the street, the impression deepens. Few of the houses have glass to their windows; the old arched entrances are blocked up with rough stone, and low, square doorways supply their place; the ground-floor of the house is commonly used as a store-room, a stable, or a piggery. The upper windows show us nothing within that we are accustomed to connect with ideas of domestic comfort. Even the massive ironwork seems to partake of the general desolation, and is coated with the grey dust of centuries. Here and there we pass a fountain, generally situated in a small grass-grown open space, with a couple of earthen pitchers left to fill themselves leisurely; and over all there is still the sense of death in life, needing a vigorous effort on our part to endure. We begin to think there was some sense in that philistine American we met at Florence, who smiled so scornfully at our determination to visit Assisi, and to have thoughts of the next train to a more lively spot. However, food and wine at the modest little hotel quickly dissipate our loneliness; our musings on St. Francis and his monks assume a more pleasant complexion, and by the time we find our way down the long street to the convent, we are in a fit mood to appreciate any beauty or pleasure which we may chance to find there. And indeed he would be hard to please who could be discontented with the enjoyment here provided, for whether it be Nature or Art for which his "thirsty soul doth pine," here he may satiate himself at leisure.