The Story of Assisi

by Lina Duff Gordon

The best masters of Tuscany having, by the beginning of the thirteenth century, covered most of the walls of San Francesco with choice work, it now remained for Siena to send artists to complete their loveliness by effigies of calmly sweet Madonnas and saints whose gentle beauty seemed rightly fitted for their Umbrian surroundings.

The first to come, probably very few years after Giotto had left, was Simone Martini, "the most lovable," Mr Berenson calls him, "of all the artists before the Renaissance."[83] He married Giovanna Memmi, a Sienese, whose brother Lippo Memmi often helped him in minor works; this may account for the confusion between the two, and why he is so often called by his brother-in-law's surname. One of the artist's claims to immortality, the highest, according to Vasari who was not partial to the Sienese, was the praise he won from Petrarch for the portraits he painted on more than one occasion of Madonna Laura. Simone's talents were sung by the "love-devoted" Tuscan poet who calls him "mio Simon," and in one perfect sonnet tells how he must surely have been in paradise and seen the loveliness of Madonna Laura, as he has drawn her features with such fidelity that all on earth must perforce acknowledge her beauty.

The Chapel of St. Martin at Assisi is filled with such faces as Petrarch describes. It possesses, too, all the varied colour of a garden, only a garden not inhabited by earthly mortals, but by gentle knights and fairy kings wearing wonderful crowns of beaten gold, with cherubs' heads, flowers and moons upon their surface, and women who hold their lilies with caressing fingers. All gives way before his sense of the beautiful, the ornate and the charming, so that he creates a world apart of saints and angels with a feeling of remoteness about them which is one of the most striking features of his art. He loved all that was joyous; he depicted no tragic scenes; his saints have already won their crowns in heaven, his kings are conquerors, and around a death-bed the angels sing. He may sometimes fail as a story-teller, and his compositions do not always give the same sense of perfection as those of other stronger artists, but his very faults are lovable, and all can be forgiven for the exquisite finish of his paintings, which, in their brilliant colouring, are like a piece of old embroidery where design and hues have been woven in by patient fingers. "To convey his feeling for beauty and grace and splendour," says Mr Berenson, "Simone possessed means more than sufficient. He was a master of colour as few have been before him or after him. He had a feeling for line always remarkable, and once, at least, attaining to a degree of perfection not to be surpassed. He understood decorative effects as a great musician understands his instruments."[84]

It is a little difficult to find out where Simone begins his legend of St. Martin, as he seems to have fitted in the different scenes just where he could, thinking, as was only right, more of the effect of decoration than of the sequence of the story. The two frescoes on the left wall refer to the well-known act of charity, when St. Martin, a young Lombard soldier serving in the army of the Emperor Constantine in Gaul, met, on a bitter winter's day, a beggar outside the gates of Amiens, and having nothing but the clothes he wore divided his cloak with the poor man. It is not one of Simone's pleasing compositions; far better is the next where Christ appears to the saint in a dream, wearing the cloak he had given in charity and saying to the angels who surround him: "Know ye who hath thus arrayed me? My servant Martin, though yet unbaptised, hath done this." The face of the young saint is very calm and palely outlined against his golden aureole as he lies asleep, clasping his throat gently with one hand. With what patience has Simone drawn the open-work of the sheets, the pattern on the counterpane, the curtain about the bed; no detail has been passed over. And who can forget his angels, the profile of one, the thick waving hair of another, and the grand pose of the standing figure, a little behind Christ, whose head is poised so stately upon a well-moulded neck.

THE KNIGHTHOOD OF ST. MARTIN BY SIMONE MARTINI

(D. Anderson—photo)]

Exactly opposite are two scenes belonging to the early times of the saint's life when he was yet a soldier. In one the Emperor Constantine is giving him his sword, while an attendant buckles on the spurs of knighthood; here also, as in most of the frescoes, we pick out single figures to dwell on, such as the youth with a falcon on his wrist, whose profile is clearly outlined yet tender, with that pale red-golden tinge over the face by which Simone always charms us. Remarkable for grace and motion is the man playing on the mandoline, with a sad dreamy face, who seems to sway to the sounds of his own music; whilst almost comic is the player on the double pipes, with his curious headgear and tartan cloak.

The next scene is divided by a rocky ridge, behind which is seen the army of the Gauls, who, by the way, have Assisan lions on their shields. St. Martin, after refusing to accept his share of the donations to the soldiers, declares his intention of leaving the army to become a priest, and when accused of cowardice by the Emperor, he offers to go forth and meet the enemy without sword or shield. Simone pictures him as he steps forth upon the perilous enterprise, holding the cross and pointing to the sky, as he refuses the helmet held out to him by the Emperor. Next day, says the legend, the Gauls laid down their arms, having submitted to the word of St. Martin who was then allowed to quit the world for the religious life.