I have spoken as shortly as I could of the sort of art in painting, mosaic, and sculpture which preceded Giotto; but before I close this very imperfect, and I fear confused and tedious, historical sketch, there is one other source of artistic influence which I must briefly mention, that is the influence of the Lombardic architecture of the twelfth century, which is seen to the greatest perfection in the cities of northern Italy, and which Mr. Ruskin once asserted to be the "root of all the mediæval art of Italy—without which no Giottos, no Angelicos, and no Raphaels would have been possible." The influence of this architecture upon Giotto, and his intense liking for it, is evident from the frequency with which he introduced it into the frescoes.
The Lombardic is the development in the West of the Romanesque architecture, whose leading feature was the round arch; it is the Byzantine style, without some of its Eastern characteristics, but with other peculiarities derived from Western sources.
Perhaps its most special feature, the one in which it has been without a rival in any bygone age, and is without a rival still, is in the decorative use of brick and terra-cotta. The very name has reference to this, for in the great plains of Lombardy where there is little stone, clay was naturally used as far as it possibly could be, to supply its place; and mouldings and statues which would have been carved from the solid stone or marble under more favourable circumstances, were here moulded out of brick. Hence arose a style which, as it could not depend upon the richness of its material, or the difficulty of its workmanship, could gain its only reward from its delicacy of invention and grace of design, and in which the actual building of its sculptured tiles formed no inconsiderable part. This elevation of an ignoble material into value and dignity was, as Grüner says, actually effected in the Lombardic churches, and to them belongs that subtle charm which we involuntarily experience on discovering the perfect adaptation of simple things to great uses. Though nowhere carried to such perfection as by the Lombards of the twelfth century, this decorative use of brick was by no means a discovery of the more modern times, as we see from the following extract from Thomas Hope's Historical Essay on Architecture:—"The ancient Romans wherever they found clay more abundant or easier to work than stone, used it plentifully, both in regular layers throughout the body of the walls as we do, and in an external reticulated coating, which has proved to be as durable as stone itself, from the fineness of its texture and the firmness of its joints. Indeed far from considering brick as a material fit only for the coarsest and most indispensable groundwork of architecture, they regarded it as equally adapted for all the elegances of ornamental form—all the details of rich architraves, capitals, friezes, cornices, and other embellishments. Sometimes it owed to the mould its various forms, and at others, as in the Amphitheatrum Castrense, and the temple of the god Ridiculus, to the chisel."[20]
I almost despair of conveying an idea of the peculiarities of this architecture to those who have never seen any examples of it, its chief elements being those of simplicity and intricacy, solidity and lightness; it appearing, in fact, to be a mass of contradictions. Its Byzantine origin, or rather the influence on it at some time of Byzantine art, is clearly perceptible in the variety of colour which is employed; yellow, and white, and red, and green, and black tiles and bricks being used alternately, with the utmost skill and the greatest variety of effect. But it is to the varieties of tower and cupola and dome that Lombardic architecture shows its most distinctive character; every combination of round arch vaulting with square, hexagonal, or circular towers, was used by them with a boldness, and a disregard of convention for which I know no parallel. And the result justified their daring.
Constructed first simply on the model of the old Roman basilica, then modified and extended by the influence of the art which Greek workmen brought from Constantinople, combining the fancy of the Arab, the roughness of the Goth, and the formalism of the Greek, this architecture grew from the seventh to the twelfth centuries, like a flower or tree, rejecting none of the influences with which it was surrounded. It may be possible, I have no doubt it is, for those who are skilled in the science of architecture, to discover the elements of a correct uniform style in these Lombardic buildings; but I confess that to me it seems but as the result of people who were prepared to make use of anything that came in their way, and had never formulated a method of building at all. The Roman arch, the Byzantine dome, the Arabian minaret, the square tower, the mosque, the basilica, and the temple, were all mingled here in a confusion of detail, which was yet executed with the utmost simplicity, we had almost said poverty, of material, and of which it is difficult to say whether the first impression produced, is wonder at the variety, indignation at the eccentricity, or delight at the effect of the whole building.[21]
I have now touched on the chief sources of artistic influence in Italy towards the middle of the thirteenth century, which, briefly summed up, are these—an art of painting which had become little more than a handicraft, carried on in Rome after the recipes of long perished masters, and in other parts of Italy either dormant, or kept alive only by such men as Giunta of Pisa, and the pupils of the Greek artists; an art of mosaic work which also owed its chief, if not its only, importance, to Byzantine workmen, and which was even then engaged in decorating the shrine of St. Mark at Venice, with Grecian designs. In sculpture, the Pisani, father and son, and their pupils and fellow workers, trying to revive classicalism as a barrier against the false state of religious art, but failing to see that, after all, the strength of the ancients lay not in their ideal, but in their real perfection of nature—and so losing itself in the wilds of imitative and traditional art; and lastly, there were flourishing in Italy, two great schools of architecture closely allied, the Byzantine and the Lombard, and gradually spreading was a third school destined to destroy them both, which we have nicknamed Gothic. Try to realise the artistic state of the country amongst this medley of dead and dying styles, with the whole influence of the classic past in favour of the traditional mode of painting and sculpture, and the whole strength of the priesthood arrayed against any attempt to make fresh inroads upon the sacred realm of Church symbolism and scriptural formalism; the Church still holding fast to the ascetic theory as the one saving grace, perhaps even the more strongly, because the ascetic practice had become a thing of the past.
CHAPTER III.
FRESCO PAINTING.
"Ascend the right stair from the further nave
To muse in a small chapel scarcely lit
By Cimabue's Virgin. Bright and brave