In May 1900, on the inauguration of the Exposition Universelle, the opportunity was taken to rehang a large part of the collection, and the Galerie de Médicis (Room XVIII.) and the eighteen small cabinets built round it were first used for the better exhibition of a large proportion of the Flemish and Dutch pictures. Shortly afterwards, by the death of M. Thomy Thiéry, an Englishman who had become a naturalised Frenchman, over 100 paintings, mostly of the school of Barbizon, became an exceedingly valuable addition to the Louvre, and filled a void in the history of French painting in the nineteenth century. During the last two years the most memorable purchases by the Government have been that of Chardin’s Child with a Top (No. 90a), which was acquired together with the same artist’s Young Man with a Violin (No. 90b) for £14,000, and Hans Memlinc’s Portrait of an Old Lady ([Plate XVII.]) for £8000.
The national collection of the Musée du Louvre now includes in its Catalogue nearly two thousand eight hundred oil and tempera paintings, about four hundred of which have not been exhibited for many years.
EARLY SIENESE SCHOOL
THIS school of painting, one of the earliest in the history of art in Italy and probably the earliest with which the ordinary student of art in Italy will concern himself, was affected throughout the whole range of its history by the influence of the miniaturists. It was characterised by naïveté, and in the hands of its earliest painter, Duccio di Buoninsegna (1255–1319), strove to realise an effect of hieratic sumptuousness, its precision and grace being that of “a sanctuary swept and garnished.”
The Louvre possesses no picture by Duccio, who derived his technique from the Byzantine miniaturists, although he modified their methods. Standing between the old world and the new, Duccio occupied an important position at the head of the school of Siena, which in the early years of the fourteenth century set a noble example to the other towns and incipient schools of Tuscany. Passing reference may here be made to the artistic aims and religious aspirations of the cities of Rome, Pisa, and Arezzo, but it is Siena which stands out pre-eminently at this early date as interpreting scenes of quiet rapture and sacred peace, its own social life being bound up in “chivalry, the meat of the eye,” and “piety, the wine of the soul.” Both Duccio, who was first employed by the Government of his native city as early as 1278, and Cimabue, his senior by fifteen years (if we are to accept the much contested records), have alike been hailed as the author of the Rucellai Madonna which still hangs in the Church of S. Maria Novella in Florence. This picture was a generation ago almost unanimously accepted by responsible critics as the work of the Florentine painter, and those who still advocate the claims of “Florentinism” are loath to destroy their cherished illusions. It is not our duty here to bring forward the arguments in favour of its later ascription to Duccio, who, we are led to believe, painted it early in his career, before he had learnt to free himself from the stiff gestures and Byzantine types of a former tradition. Duccio, it must be conceded, never quite succeeded in giving to his compositions that sense of life, character, and design which we find in the works of Giotto, his junior by some twenty years, who was the first artist to accomplish vast schemes of monumental decoration. Duccio, however, was the bearer of that torch which was to kindle the flame of religious art both in Siena and Florence. Nevertheless, Sienese painting was destined, almost from the moment of its birth, to show signs of dwindling into a school of trite copyists and shallow quietists. Early in the fourteenth century the lofty ideals manifested by emotional Siena spread to scientific Florence, and by the beginning of the fifteenth century the city on the Arno gave unmistakable signs of becoming the leading art centre in Tuscany.
DUCCIO’S FOLLOWERS
The greatest of Duccio’s followers was Simone Martini (1285?–1344), who was also slightly influenced by Giotto. Simone, whose Christ bearing His Cross (No. 1383, [Plate I.]) is the earliest Sienese picture in the Louvre, has been well described as “a reactionary who made a whole beautiful world of his own.” In this small picture the colours stand out most clearly, although the drawing and perspective are, of course, faulty. It belongs to a series of which other panels are at Antwerp and in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin. A Crucifixion (No. 1665) that is catalogued as being by an unknown Sienese artist may be attributed to Ugolino da Siena (fl. 1290–1320); it would seem to be the centre panel of a large and lost altarpiece.
PLATE I.—SIMONE MARTINI
(1285?–1344)
SIENESE SCHOOL
No. 1383.—CHRIST BEARING HIS CROSS
(Jésus-Christ marchant au Calvaire)