In these last designs of Giotto's life, there is a curious recurrence to the ideas of his earliest time, a curious delight in depicting natural objects, and treating his subject from the humorously dramatic point of view; such as indeed he never altogether lost, but which lies very much in the shade in the later frescoes of this master. In fact, in some of these bas-reliefs, the comic element almost entirely predominates, as, for instance, in that which is entitled Logic, in which two furious disputants stand face to face, the countenances inflamed with passion, one apparently being just on the eve of proceeding to the argumentum ad hominem, the other rapping an open book querulously with his finger. Others show a depth of perception of character which perhaps would hardly have been expected from the artist, as in the relief of Arithmetic, where a master is instructing two of his pupils in that gentle science. One of the boys is evidently intelligent enough, and bends happily over his book; the other is of a heavy bovine type, and is listening with a puzzled expression to the master's explanation. Of all the designs, perhaps the finest are simply narrative, and of such, the three first of the series, the creation of Adam, the creation of Eve, and the relief called The First Arts, are singularly beautiful. It should be noticed here that Giotto's knowledge of, and skill in depicting, trees, made great advances from the time of the frescoes in the Arena to that of these reliefs. No doubt something must be allowed for the genius of those who executed the reliefs; but if they were done from Giotto's designs, and there is a concensus of opinion that such was the case, the advance is a very marked one. I am the more inclined to believe in this progress as in the drawing of the brambles, in the great fresco of St. Francis wedding Poverty in the Lower Church of Assisi, there are the elements of such leaf and bough drawing as are seen here; and even at Assisi, the advance from the Arena, in the drawing is very evident. Especially fine in design, and as far as it goes, true to nature, is the drawing of the vine in the relief of Noah's Drunkenness, or as it is sometimes called, the Convention of Wine. The drawing of the leaves and grapes, and their disposition in the panel, is perhaps the finest piece of good sculptural design to be found at such an early date; and I should have selected this relief for reproduction, had it not been, owing to Giotto's intense perception of the essential meaning of his subject, so unpleasing in the degradation of the drunken figure, as to unfit it for purposes of illustration.
THE FIRST ARTS. BAS-RELIEF DESIGNED BY GIOTTO.
On the Campanile, Florence.
Our artist's sympathy with animal life, also revives in these works in its full force, and may be seen in many instances. Look for example at the fresco of ploughing, where the driver is guiding the oxen by the simple, yet perfectly efficient plan, of twisting the tail round his wrist, and pulling it one way or the other, when he wishes to turn. Or look at the puppy in the bas-relief of Shepherd Life, as he sits outside the patriarch's tent watching the sheep file past. What a sense of comical responsibility and mischief there is in his face, the quintessence, so to speak, of puppydom. Or look, for another kind of truth, at the action of the horse in the fresco of Riding, and the manner in which the rider is urging him with hand and voice at the same time, and the wind is blowing out his mantle behind. There is a curious circumstance with regard to this last design, which I discovered by chance a few weeks ago when walking in the sculptor's rooms of the British Museum. That is, that there is a figure in one of the great friezes there, not that of the Parthenon, but the next in beauty, that of the Erectheum, which is almost identical in the figure of its man and his action with this of Giotto's. The very lines of the cloak blowing out behind are almost identical, and the grasp of the rider's knees, the pose of his figure and the outstretched arm (what is left of it in the Greek sculpture, it has been taken just below the elbow) are all exactly similar. The whole spirit of the Greek frieze is as vivid in Giotto's work as it is in the original sculpture, executed more than a thousand years before. It merely shows the extraordinary unity of all good art, that a mediæval Italian, working purely from nature and life, should be able to arrive by himself, at a representation which has all the feeling of that which is acknowledged to be the finest art the world has ever seen. It must be noticed that where Giotto falls short of his Grecian predecessor, is chiefly in the nobility of the types both of man and horse. Giotto's horse is going, and his man is urging him as certainly as in the frieze, but his horse is comparatively a common every-day cabhorse and is going in something of the same rocking-time manner we may see in Hyde Park any day of the week. And the man is like most of Giotto's men, a very ordinary individual, somewhat of what hunting men call "a tailor," perhaps, though he is evidently accustomed to riding. The Grecian sculptor has refined the types of both man and horse, and given the latter a grand sweeping action, such as would be promptly stopped by the police, if indulged in within the limits of the park. This difference, however, is a difference in aim, not a difference in feeling; the beauty of line, and the meaning of the scene are given with almost as much intensity by our artist as by the unknown sculptor who preceded him. Most unfortunately I only found this similarity too late to permit me to make use of it in the book; for a drawing of these two figures side by side would have shown the likeness and dissimilarity more than pages of description.
RIDING. BAS-RELIEF DESIGNED BY GIOTTO.
On the Campanile, Florence.
Many other bas-reliefs of this series are of great interest, but there is no space left for me to dwell upon them, nor are their merits other than those which I have spoken of so frequently throughout this book, of simple truth, of keen discernment, and of genuine feeling. At every step the work seems to say to us, "Here is the representation of something true;" and the artist seems to say, "I have only tried to give you facts in the most beautiful arrangement consistent with truth; if you want more, or less, why, you must go elsewhere."
And so it is that from the time when he draws the meditations of a puppy, to that in which he hangs his massive tower of coloured marble, between the earth and heaven, his work seems simple, grand, and sincere. He is not painting pictures to aggrandise himself, he is only lovingly recording what he knows, feels, or hopes. He is not above, nor below his work; his work is himself; it is himself, in joy, or sorrow, or curiosity, or surprise; in mirth, or indifference. He is human in his failings as well as in his greatness, and pretends to no greater merit, than that of doing good work in a straightforward manner.