The Story of Assisi

by Lina Duff Gordon

To us their interest seems rather to lie in that they plainly show how the earliest masters, whilst endeavouring to illustrate the franciscan legend, failed so completely to satisfy their employers that they were bidden to stay their hand and continue to paint the well-worn theme of the history of the world's redemption, which required less invention than the legend of St. Francis, where a new out-look on life had to be acquired. So the franciscans, failing to find a painter who could illustrate their founder's life to their satisfaction, contented themselves with other things, perhaps hoping that in course of time one might arise who could do justice to the theme. Well it was that they waited.

Shortly after these frescoes had been completed in the Lower Church, art received a new impulse (one likes to think that the struggles of the first artist towards something better and more true to life had to do with this); others came, with Giotto at their head, and painted over some of these early efforts, leaving us only Cimabue's great Madonna, a few ruined frescoes, a Byzantine pattern, and stray touches of colour in dark corners of the church to remind us of these first decorators of San Francesco.

We get a melancholy picture from Vasari of the depths to which art had sunk, and of the degenerate artists still following a worn-out tradition until it became as a dead thing in their hands deprived of all inspiration, when "in the year 1240, by the will of God, Giovanni Cimabue ... was born in the city of Florence to give the first light to the art of painting."

Cimabue is rightly called the Father of Italian art, as he represented a new era among Italian masters who were awakening to their country's needs; when men, filled with strange restless energy, grew tired of the Byzantine Madonna with her court of stiff, lifeless saints, and looked for something in closer touch with their mood and aspirations.

Round the name of Cimabue are grouped many charming legends belonging to a time when the people, anxious to possess the new thing their hearts craved for, looked eagerly and critically at an artist's work. There is the story of how when he had finished the picture of the Virgin Mary, the Florentines came to his workshop, and, expecting much from him, yet were amazed at the wonderful beauty of the grand Madonna, and carried the picture with rejoicing, to the sound of music, to the Church of Sta. Maria Novella, where it still hangs in the dark chapel of the Ruccellai; a street in Florence down which the picture passed being called Borgo Allegri, because of the gladness of that day. It is only a legend, and one that has been oft repeated, and as often doubted. Now the existence of Cimabue is even questioned by some, but whoever invented the story understood the great change which had come among the people and into art. It was only right that in the church of the saint who personified the feeling of the age, caught its spirit, and sent the impulse of the people even further, should centre all the first efforts towards this awakening and revival, until, step by step, the masterpieces of Giotto were reached. When we remember this, the large fresco of Cimabue in the right transept of the Lower Church becomes more full of beauty and meaning.[70] The great spirit of her presence fills the church, her majesty and nobility is that of the ideal Madonna, grave to sadness, thinking, as her eyes look steadily out upon the world, what future years would bring to the Child seated on her lap, who stretches out a baby hand to clasp her veil. All the angels round the throne sway towards her; in their heavy plaits of hair shines a dull red light, and in their wings and on the Madonna's gown are mauve and russet shades like the colours of autumnal oaks.... "To this day," says Mr Ruskin, "among all the Mater Dolorosas of Christianity, Cimabue's at Assisi is the noblest; nor did any painter after him add one link to the chain of thought with which he summed the creation of the earth, and preached its redemption."

St. Francis has not been forgotten in this fresco, but Cimabue having given all his art to make the Virgin and her choir of angels beautiful, his figure is not quite one's idea of the ethereal Umbrian preacher, and his being there at all spoils the symmetry of the grouping. It is not improbable that the figure of St. Clare stood on the other side, and was erased when the Chapel of Sta. Maria Maddalena was built, and the ornamental border painted round this fresco, which cut off part of the wings of the two angels on the left of the Virgin.

Vasari vaguely tells us of some frescoes from the lives of Jesus Christ and of St. Francis, painted by Cimabue in the Lower Church, and later writers have thought these must have been destroyed to make room for Giotto's work. If paintings were there at all they were more likely to have been the work of inferior artists, for it seems improbable that Giotto, coming to Assisi for the first time when he was quite a youth, should destroy any work of his master, who was still alive, in order to substitute his own early efforts.

The Upper Church

Not only was the Upper Church essentially fitted for fresco painting, but it required an elaborate scheme of decoration, just as a setting, however perfect, needs a gem to complete it; and it almost seems as though "Jacopo" had stayed his hand, with the intention that here, at least, architecture should be subservient to wall decoration, and had foreseen the need of large spaces to be covered with paintings, as brightly coloured, as clear, and as closely set together as are the colours upon a butterfly's wings.