“The works of these earliest painters,” observes M. Breton, “seem to mark the transition from painting to sculpture: they are long figures as stiff as columns, single or arranged symmetrically, forming neither groups nor compositions, without perspective or effects of light and shade, and having nothing to express their meaning than a sort of legend proceeding out of the mouths of the characters. These frescoes, which are so weak when looked at in an artistic point of view, are remarkable for their material execution, being extremely solid in their workmanship. It is astonishing to see the wonderful preservation of some pictures of saints that adorn the pilasters of St. Nicholas in Treviso and the walls of the church in Fiesole, whereon are preserved the frescoes of Fra Angelico.”
Among the paintings remaining to our time, the first in which the authors departed from the uniform style of the Byzantine masters are those which adorn the interior of the ancient temple of Bacchus, now the Church of St. Urban in the Campagna of Rome: there is nothing Grecian either in the figures or draperies, and it is impossible not to recognise in them an Italian pencil; the date, however, is 1011. Pesaro, Aquila, Orvieto, and Fiesole, possess examples of the same epoch.
Fig. 240.—Portrait of the Pope Sylvester I. Fresco-Painting in Mosaic, on a gold ground, in the Basilica of St. Paul-extra-Muros, Rome.
At last, in the thirteenth century, notwithstanding its fierce intestine struggles, Italy, and especially Tuscany, witnessed the dawn of the sun of the Fine Arts, which, after a long period of darkness, was to shine with so much brilliancy over the whole world. Pisa and Siena, earliest in the revival, gave birth respectively to Giunta and Guido (Palmerucci), each of whom in his time acquired great renown; but the only works of these artists which remain now, in the Cathedral of Assisi, seem but to indicate a desire of progress without manifesting any real advancement in art.
Fig. 241.—The Apostles in the Garden of Gethsemane. Fresco by Berna, at San-Geminiano. (Fourteenth Century.)
To Guido of Siena succeeds, but not immediately, the friend of Petrarch, Simon Memmi, whose frescoes in the Campo Santo of Pisa testify to his powerful genius, and denote the first remarkable stage of art.
In the collegiate church of San-Geminiano[34] may be still seen a fresco by Berna ([Fig. 241]), an eminent master in the school of Siena, who died in 1370.
Passing, but not without mention, Margaritone and Bonaventura Berlinghieri, who were only the timid harbingers of a great individuality, the Florentine school places in the first rank of its celebrities Cimabue (1240-1300), justly regarded by the artistic world as the true restorer of painting. Cimabue pointed out the path; Giotto, his pupil, trod it. He took nature for his guide, and has been surnamed “nature’s pupil.” Real imitation was the object of his endeavour, and as he found this system marvellously applied in the beautiful antique marbles which had already inspired, in the preceding century, the sculptors John and Nicolas of Pisa, he made an earnest study of these ancient chefs-d’œuvre. The impulse was given, and the Campo Santo of Pisa shows us its first results in “The Dream of Life.”