175. I return for a moment to my gable at Assisi. You see that the crest of the waves at the top form a rude likeness of a fleur-de-lys. There is, however, in this form no real intention of imitating a flower, any more than in the meeting of the tails of these two Etruscan griffins. The notable circumstance in this piece of Gothic is its advanced form of crocket, and its prominent foliation, with nothing in the least approaching to floral ornament.
176. And now, observe this very curious fact in the personal character of two contemporary artists. See the use of my manually graspable flag. Here is John of Pisa,—here Giotto. They are contemporary for twenty years;—but these are the prime of Giotto's life, and the last of John's life: virtually, Giotto is the later workman by full twenty years.
But Giotto always uses severe geometrical mouldings, and disdains all luxuriance of leafage to set off interior sculpture.
John of Pisa not only adopts Gothic tracery, but first allows himself enthusiastic use of rampant vegetation;—and here in the façade of Orvieto, you have not only perfect Gothic in the sentiment of Scripture history, but such luxurious ivy ornamentation as you cannot afterwards match for two hundred years. Nay, you can scarcely match it then—for grace of line, only in the richest flamboyant of France.
177. Now this fact would set you, if you looked at art from its aesthetic side only, at once to find out what German artists had taught Giovanni Pisano. There were Germans teaching him,—some teaching him many things; and the intense conceit of the modern German artist imagines them to have taught him all things.
But he learnt his luxuriance, and Giotto his severity, in another school. The quality in both is Greek; and altogether moral. The grace and the redundance of Giovanui are the first strong manifestation of those characters in the Italian mind which culminate in the Madonnas of Luini and the arabesques of Raphael. The severity of Giotto belongs to him, on the contrary, not only as one of the strongest practical men who ever lived on this solid earth, but as the purest and firmest reformer of the discipline of the Christian Church, of whose writings any remains exist.
178. Of whose writings, I say; and you look up, as doubtful that he has left any. Hieroglyphics, then, let me say instead; or, more accurately still, hierographics. St. Francis, in what he wrote and said, taught much that was false. But Giotto, his true disciple, nothing but what was true. And where he uses an arabesque of foliage, depend upon it it will be to purpose—not redundant. I return for the time to our soft and luxuriant John of Pisa.
179. Soft, but with no unmanly softness; luxuriant, but with no unmannered luxury. To him you owe as to their first sire in art, the grace of Ghiberti, the tenderness of Raphael, the awe of Michael Angelo. Second-rate qualities in all the three, but precious in their kind, and learned, as you shall see, essentially from this man. Second-rate he also, but with most notable gifts of this inferior kind. He is the Canova of the thirteenth century; but the Canova of the thirteenth, remember, was necessarily a very different person from the Canova of the eighteenth.
The Cauova of the eighteenth century mimicked Greek grace for the delight of modern revolutionary sensualists. The Canova of the thirteenth century brought living Gothic truth into the living faith of his own time.
Greek truth, and Gothic 'liberty,'—in that noble sense of the word, derived from the Latin 'liber,' of which I have already spoken, and which in my next lecture I will endeavour completely to develope. Meanwhile let me show you, as far as I can, the architecture itself about which these subtle questions arise.