I should have liked to dwell a little upon the other interesting portions of the town, of its quaint and often beautiful architecture, or of the many glorious walks along the mountain to be taken therefrom, but it would lead me too far from my subject, and I must be content with mentioning that it would be difficult to find more impressive hill scenery than that which surrounds Assisi, though it is of a somewhat gloomy character. The olive and the cypress are almost the only trees to be seen on one side of the town, and the mountains slope abruptly down to a narrow valley, through which foams a mountain torrent. In the immediate neighbourhood are the spots connected with the actual life of St. Francis and Sta Chiara (the saint who was the first of his female followers), the most interesting of which is the Hermitage of St. Francesco, lying in a cleft of the mountain, some two miles from the town. Many another church and monument is there of interest in this place, but we have outstayed our space, and, we fear, our readers' patience; so let us take the midnight train to more civilised Florence, throw behind us the dreamy idleness of the few hours we have spent amongst traditions of saint and miracle, and leave Assisi sleeping upon the mountain-side in its accustomed solitude. In one last look from our comfortable first-class carriage, we see the convent and the sharp points of its surrounding cypresses, dark against the clear starlight, and in another instant the train has swept on out of the shadow of the mountain, and we are in the nineteenth century once more.
CHAPTER XII.
GIOTTO'S LATER WORK AT FLORENCE.
"The characteristics of Power and Beauty occur more or less in different buildings, some in one and some in another; but all together, and all in their highest possible relative degrees, they exist, as far as I know, only in one building in the world, the Campanile of Giotto."—John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps.
The later work of Giotto at Florence falls into two distinct divisions, the one consisting of his frescoes and his great panel picture of the Coronation of the Virgin, the other of his sculpture and architecture, both of which last have as their sole remaining example, the Campanile, in the Piazza del Duomo, better known as "Giotto's tower." The limits of my space compel me to speak very briefly upon each of these divisions, which I regret the less because they are by far the best known and most frequently written about of Giotto's works; and when Mr. Ruskin has put forth his whole strength in description, an inferior writer may be well pardoned for unwillingness to make his inferiority manifest. With this brief word of apology then, I speak first of the frescoes in the Santa Croce.
Giotto painted four chapels here, but the only remaining frescoes are those in the chapels of the Peruzzi and the Bardi, the former containing scenes from the lives of St. John the Evangelist and St. John the Baptist, the latter representations of the life and death of St. Francis. Both these chapels have suffered a good deal from restoration, especially that of the Bardi, which has been so coarsely repainted as to have entirely lost all beauty of colour, and which I shall not therefore dwell upon in detail.
The top fresco on the right hand wall of the Peruzzi Chapel, has also been quite ruined by coarse repainting, and when examined with a good glass shows a coarse black line round every portion of the composition, not unlike that used by the disciples of a certain modern school of decorative painting, who seek to gain the effect which their incompetence otherwise denies them by outlining their compositions in this manner.
The two lower frescoes on the right hand wall, however, representing respectively the Healing of Drusiana by St. John, and the Ascension from the grave of that Evangelist, though they have been a good bit restored, have had the restoration, carefully and sparingly done, and retain still a beauty of colour as great as is to be found in any of Giotto's works. The chief differences observable between these frescoes and those of the earlier years are such as we might expect to find in the later work of an earnest painter, and are briefly as follows:—First, a loss of the semi-burlesque spirit observable in the Arena Chapel, and not wholly absent from the four great frescoes of the Lower Church at Assisi. All is grave and dignified in treatment; the action proceeds in a still vivid, but not eager, manner; it is the difference between the Stabat Mater played on the organ, and "The Campbells are coming," on the bagpipes of a Highland regiment. Allied to this change, and dependent upon it, is the loss of a good deal of the incidental drama of the composition, a certain diminution of interest in the spectators, who are now more parts of the general scene, and less individual characters affected in different ways by what is happening. The composition gains, perhaps, in dramatic unity, gains certainly if judged by the canons of later art, but loses in dramatic intensity, and, it seems to me, in truth to life. Again, there is much more composition, and that of a more elaborate kind, than in the Arena work: the figures are larger proportionately to the fresco in which they are placed, and possessed of a uniform grace and dignity which were absent from the earlier frescoes. Increased knowledge of form and power of arrangement, is seen in the figures of the men, and the treatment of the draperies; the latter especially, while still being drawn with comparative breadth and simplicity, have gained in beauty of line, and slightly in attention to the form beneath them. Lastly, there is to be noticed an advance in the treatment of colour which is the most important of all the changes. It is with the greatest diffidence I speak upon this point, as it is nearly impossible, in the dim light of this chapel (whose only window is covered with a yellow curtain), to be sure of what is the painter's original work and what is restoration; but while making every allowance for error, it seems to me that there is here shown, in places where the work is almost certainly genuine, a great increase in the power of gradation of colour, a capability of making each portion more beautiful in itself, besides being beautiful as a part of the whole. There is not found in these frescoes (in the Peruzzi), any longer those broad masses of comparatively ungradated tint which are so common in the Arena series; and there is further to be found an extension of the scale of colouring, a power of combining more delicate and more varied hues than in the earlier frescoes.
The whole tone of the picture is sharper and more mellow than before, and though this is by no means an unmixed gain, for much of the crystalline purity and freshness of the earlier pictures is lost thereby, yet on the whole the gain is greater than the loss, much in the same way that though we may regret the absence of the bright eye and ardent impetuosity of youth, we must needs give greater honour to manhood which has fulfilled the promise, though it may have lost something of the freshness, of "the wild gladness of morning."
On the left hand wall of this chapel there are also three frescoes of which the uppermost is of comparatively little importance; the remaining two are—first, The Birth of John; second, The Daughter of Herodias dancing before Herod. The lower of these is a good deal faded, but (I believe) not at all restored, and both are of exceeding beauty. In the first, the picture is divided into two parts by pillars supporting the section of a house similar to those of which Giotto generally formed his interiors. The larger portion of the fresco represents the mother of the Evangelist lying upon her bed surrounded by friends and attendants, and in the smaller part the nurse is presenting the infant to the father, who is apparently deep in thought. The figure of the nurse holding out the child, and all the attendants and friends who press round the bed, are full of interest, and the whole composition of the picture very fine.
More beautiful, however, to me, is the lowest fresco of Herodias, if it were only for the figure of the violin (for it is a sort of violin) player, a figure whose grace and truth of action has, I think, never been surpassed.