Lafenestre, in his history of Italian painting for the Beaux-Arts of Paris already referred to, says that what has survived of Giotto's work justifies the enthusiasm of his contemporaries. None of his predecessors accomplished anything like the revolution that he worked. He fixed the destinies of art in Italy at the moment when Dante fixed those of literature. The stiff, confused figures of the mosaics and manuscripts grew supple under his fingers and the confusion disappeared. He simplified the gestures, varied the expression, rectified the proportions. Perhaps the best example of his work is that of the upper Church of Assisi, all accomplished before he was thirty. What he had to represent were scenes of life almost contemporary yet already raised to the realm of poetry by popular admiration. He interpreted the beautiful legend of the life of the Saint preserved by St. Bonaventure, and like the subject of his sketches turned to nature at every step of his work. If his figures are compared with those of the artists of the preceding generations, their truth to life and natural expressions easily explain the surprise and the rapture of his contemporaries.
Beautiful as are the pictures of the Upper Church, however, ten years after their completion Giotto's genius can be seen to have taken a still higher flight by the study of the pictures on the vast ceilings of the Lower Church. The four compartments contain the Triumph of Chastity, the Triumph of Poverty, the Triumph of Obedience, and the Glorification of St. Francis. The ideal and the real figures in these compositions are mingled and grouped with admirable clearness and inventive force. To be appreciated properly they must be seen and studied in situ. Many an artist has made the pilgrimage to Assisi and none has come away disappointed. Never before had an artist dared to introduce so many and such numerous figures, yet all were done with a variety and an ease of movement that is eminently pleasing and even now are thoroughly satisfying to the artistic mind. After his work at Assisi some of the best of Giotto's pictures are to be found in the Chapel of the Arena at Padua. Here there was a magnificent opportunity and Giotto took full advantage of it. The whole story of Christ's life is told in the fourteen episodes of the life of his Mother which were painted here by Giotto. For their sake Padua as well as [{145}] Assisi has been a favorite place of pilgrimage for artists ever since and never more so than in our own time.
ST. FRANCIS' MARRIAGE WITH POVERTY (GIOTTO, ASSISI)
No greater tribute to the century in which he lived could possibly be given than to say that his genius was recognized at once, and he was sought from one end of Italy to another by Popes and Kings, Republics and Princes, Convents and Municipalities, all of which competed for the privilege of having this genius work for them with ever increasing enthusiasm. It is easy to think and to say that it is no wonder that such a transcendent genius was recognized and appreciated and received his due reward. Such has not usually been the case in history, however. On the contrary, the more imposing the genius of an artist, or a scientist, or any other great innovator in things human, the more surely has he been the subject of neglect and even of misunderstanding and persecution. The very fact that Giotto lifted art out of the routine of formalism in which it was sunk might seem to be enough to assure failure of appreciation. Men do not suddenly turn round to like even great innovations, when they have long been satisfied with something less and when their principles of criticism have been formed by their experience with the old.
We need not go farther back than our own supposedly illuminated Nineteenth Century to find some striking examples of this. Turner, the great English landscapist, failed of appreciation for long years and had to wait till the end of his life to obtain even a small meed of reward. The famous Barbizon School of French Painters is a still more striking example. They went back to nature from the classic formalism of the early Nineteenth Century painters just as Giotto went back to nature from Byzantine conventionalism. The immediate rewards in the two cases were very different and the attitude of contemporaries strikingly contrasted. Poor Millet did his magnificent work in spite of the fact that his family nearly starved. Only that Madame Millet was satisfied to take more than a fair share of hardships for herself and the family in order that her husband might have the opportunity to develop his genius after his own way, we might not have had the magnificent pictures which Millet sold for a few paltry francs that barely kept [{146}] the wolf from the door, and for which the next generation has been paying almost fabulous sums.
All through the Thirteenth Century this characteristic will be found that genius did not as a rule lack appreciation. The greater the revolution a genuinely progressive thinker and worker tried to accomplish in human progress, the more sure was he to obtain not only a ready audience, but an enthusiastic and encouraging following. This is the greatest compliment that could be paid to the enlightenment of the age. Men's minds were open and they were ready and willing to see things differently from what they had been accustomed to before. This constitutes after all the best possible guarantee of progress. It is, however, very probably the last thing that we would think of attributing to these generations of the Thirteenth Century, who are usually said very frankly to have been wrapped up in their own notions, to have been only too ready to accept things on authority rather than by their own powers of observation and judgment, and to have been clingers to the past rather than lookers to the present and the future. Giotto's life shows better than any other how much this prejudiced view of the Thirteenth Century and perforce of the Middle Age needs to be corrected.
During forty years Giotto responded to every demand, and made himself suffice for every call, worked in nearly every important city of Italy, enkindling everywhere he went the new light of art. Before the end of the century he completed a cartoon for the famous picture of the Boat of Peter which was to adorn the Facade of St. Peter's. He was in Rome in 1300, the first jubilee year, arranging the decorations at St. John Lateran. The next year he was at Florence, working in the Palace of the Podesta. And so it went for full two score years. He was at Pisa, at Lucca, at Arezzo, at Padua, at Milan, then he went South to Urbino, to Rome and then even to Naples. Unfortunately the strain of all this work proved too much for him and he was carried away at the comparatively early age of sixty in the midst of his artistic vigor and glory.