At this time, Jacopo di Voragine compiled the "Golden Legend," a collection of sacred stories, some already current, some new, or in a new form. This famous book added many themes to those already admitted, and became the authority and storehouse for the early painters in their groups and dramatic compositions. The increasing enthusiasm for the Virgin naturally caused an increasing demand for the subjects taken from her personal history, and led, consequently, to a more exact study of those natural objects and effects which were required as accessories, to greater skill in grouping the figures, and to a higher development of historic art.
But of all the influences on Italian art in that wonderful fourteenth century, Dante was the greatest. He was the intimate friend of Giotto. Through the communion of mind, not less than through his writings, he infused into religious art that mingled theology, poetry, and mysticism, which ruled in the Giottesque school during the following century, and went hand in hand with the development of the power and practice of imitation. Now, the theology of Dante was the theology of his age. His ideas respecting the Virgin Mary were precisely those to which the writings of St. Bernard, St. Bonaventura, and St. Thomas Aquinas had already lent all the persuasive power of eloquence, and the Church all the weight of her authority. Dante rendered these doctrines into poetry, and Giotto and his followers rendered them into form. In the Paradise of Dante, the glorification of Mary, as the "Mystic Rose" (Roxa Mystica) and Queen of Heaven,—with the attendant angels, circle within circle, floating round her in adoration, and singing the Regina Coeli, and saints and patriarchs stretching forth their hands towards her,—is all a splendid, but still indefinite vision of dazzling light crossed by shadowy forms. The painters of the fourteenth century, in translating these glories into a definite shape, had to deal with imperfect knowledge and imperfect means; they failed in the power to realize either their own or the poet's conception; and yet—thanks to the divine poet!—that early conception of some of the most beautiful of the Madonna subjects—for instance, the Coronation and the Sposalizio—has never, as a religious and poetical conception, been surpassed by later artists, in spite of all the appliances of colour, and mastery of light and shade, and marvellous efficiency of hand since attained.
Every reader of Dante will remember the sublime hymn towards the close of the Paradiso:—
"Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio!
Umile ed alta più che creatura,
Terrains fisso d'eterno consiglio;
Tu se' colei che l'umana natura
Nobilitasti si, che 'l suo fattore
Non disdegno di farsi sua fattura;
Nel ventre tuo si raccese l'amore
Per lo cui caldo nell' eterna pace
Cosi è germinato questo fiore;
Qui se' a noi meridiana face
Di caritade, e giuso intra mortali
Se' di speranza fontana vivace:
Donna, se' tanto grande e tanto vali,
Che qual vuol grazia e a te non ricorre
Sua disianza vuol volar senz' ali;
La tua benignita noa pur soccorre
A chi dimanda, ma molte fiate
Liberamente al dimandar precorre;
In te misericordia, in te pietate,
In te magnificenza, in te s' aduna
Quantunque in creatura è di bontate!"