In this picture the daughter of Herodias is represented twice, the first time in the main body of the fresco, dancing in front of the table at which the king is seated, while in the centre an attendant brings in the Baptist's head upon a dish, and offers it to the king; and again on the extreme right of the fresco, where, in a sort of inner room, the dancer kneels to her mother, and presents her with the head.
There are in the Bardi Chapel frescoes of Sta. Chiara and St. Louis, also by Giotto; but both have been restored especially the latter,[72] which is wholly ruined thereby. Formerly in the Baronzelli Chapel, but now in a small room close to the sacristy, hangs the greatest masterpiece of our artist upon panel; indeed the only one of his works executed in that manner which can fairly be called worthy of his powers.[73] This is the famous Coronation of the Virgin, a picture in five compartments, the four outer ones of which represent a choir of angels with various musical instruments, and an attendant company of saints, prophets, and martyrs, while the centre division shows the Virgin dressed as a bride seated upon a throne, and bending her head to receive the crown from Christ.
It is wholly beyond my power to convey to my readers any idea of the exceeding loveliness of this work, and no description could, I think, give more than a faint shadow of its beauty. Descriptions of pictures are stupid things at the best, and when the attempt is made to describe a work whose beauty consists less in any hard tangible perfection of form and colour, than in a delicate purity of feeling and an intense belief in the subject treated of, when we have to catalogue as beauties, the expressions of a choir of angels, and the raptures of the surrounding saints, words seem totally inadequate to the task.
Perhaps some faint idea of the picture may be gained by likening it to the Paradise of Fra Angelico, which hangs in the Uffizi Gallery, and which is probably familiar to most of my readers, if only through the medium of the innumerable copies which have been made of the figures of the playing and singing angels which surround its frame. Fancy these Angelico figures enlarged slightly and made human, instead of angelic; fancy them arranged in rows, one above the other, the first row kneeling, and the second standing behind them, while further in the background, tier above tier, rise the heads of prophets and martyrs almost to the top of the golden background. Put two pictures of this sort on each side of a central one of Christ and the Virgin, lower Fra Angelico's key of colour just a little, till his pinks, blues, and yellows have shades of neutral colour toning them down, let the types of the saints and angels be rather heavier in the jaw, and broader in the face than his, and then you have the bones, so to speak, of Giotto's Coronation.
More than this I cannot tell you of the beauty of this picture, and it were useless to dwell upon the tender gravity of the singing angels, the devotion of the listening saints, the exquisite balance of the groups, and the pure brightness of the colouring. In a picture the whole of whose effect depends upon such subtle combination of faith and skill as does this Coronation, it is worse than useless to attempt to catalogue its merits as if for an auctioneer's programme. It is best to say, simply, that in a devotional age a great painter put forth his whole strength, to embody his faith in the loveliest design he could conceive, and that the result was worthy of him.
In the cloisters of the S. Maria Novella there are some frescoes attributed to Giotto much injured by damp, and one, the Birth of the Virgin, spoilt by restoration; one, however, remains, of great beauty, which in its leading figures is as fine as any of Giotto's work; this is the Meeting of Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate. The leading figures here are fortunately comparatively uninjured by the damp, though Anna's blue robe has lost a little of its colour; the faces are full of expression, tender and loving to a degree, and the attitudes of both figures both graceful and natural. In this work the painter has gained a nearer approach to female beauty than in any other fresco which I have seen. After a long and careful examination of these frescoes I am unwillingly forced to come to the conclusion that they are not by Giotto, but are later works of his school. I say unwillingly, for it is with the greatest reluctance that I differ on this point from Mr. Ruskin, who has in one of his small series, called Mornings in Florence, expatiated very enthusiastically upon the merit of these works. The technical reasons which have most certainly lead me to this conclusion can hardly be stated so as to interest the general reader, but the main points which are evident upon the surface of the matter are—1st, the comparative crudeness and poorness of colour in three out of the four frescoes, a crudity which is scarcely to be accounted for by any amount of restoration. The colour is not so much violent as it is weak and uninteresting; 2nd, the exaggeration in gesture never used by Giotto in subordinate figures, and a certain wilful ugliness of attitude which I have never found in that painter's works; 3rd, the difference in the drawing of the drapery, which is sharp and thin in its folds, the folds being far more numerous than in Giotto's work, and their angles much more abrupt. The last difference is one of beauty. As far as I know Giotto was incapable of drawing a face of the slender rounded type such as Anna's in the second of these frescoes which I have referred to. Both the drawing of that face and its delicate modelling belong to another and a later hand than his. Lastly I may state for whatever it is worth, that I heard only a few days since that it is probably the case, according to the best opinion of the archæologists, that the cloister in which these frescoes are, is of a later date than that of Giotto's death. If this be so of course it sets the matter at rest, but whether it be so or not I think a careful examination of the frescoes will satisfy any one interested in the matter that they cannot fairly be attributed to our artist. It must be remembered that the work of the Giotteschi, as they are called, is exceedingly puzzling and confused and liable to be mistaken very easily even by one who is devoting his whole attention to the subject. Mr. Ruskin has in two former instances been led to attribute works to Giotto which are not by that artist according to almost indisputable evidence: the instances I allude to are, one in speaking of the frescoes at Avignon as by this artist, the other in attributing to him a picture now discovered to be by Lorenzo Monaco in the Uffizi Gallery.
FLORENCE.
Showing Giotto's Campanile, and the "Duomo."
THE CAMPANILE.