Vision and Design

by Roger Fry

But of more immediate importance to our purpose is the æsthetic element in S. Francis’ teaching. To say that in his actions S. Francis aimed at artistic effect would perhaps give a wrong impression of his character, but it is true that his conception of holiness was almost as much an æsthetic as a moral one. To those who know S. Bonaventura’s life a number of stories will suggest themselves, which indicate a perfectly harmonious attitude to life rather than a purely moral one: stories such as that of the sheep which was given to him, and which he received joyfully because of its simplicity and innocence, “and holding it in his hands he admonished it to be intent to praise God and to keep itself from offending the brethren; and the sheep observed fully the commandment of the Blessed Francis, and when it heard the brethren singing in the choir ran thither quickly, and without any teaching bent before the altar of the Blessed Virgin and bleated, as though it had human reason.”

S. Francis, the “Jongleur de Dieu,” was actually a poet before his conversion, and his whole life had the pervading unity and rhythm of a perfect work of art. Not that he was a conscious artist. The whole keynote of the Franciscan teaching was its spontaneity, but his feelings for moral and æsthetic beauty were intimately united. Indeed, his life, like the Italian art which in a sense arose from it, like the Gothic French art which was a simultaneous expression of the same spirit, implies an attitude, as rare in life as in art, in which spiritual and sensuous beauty are so inextricably interwoven that instead of conflicting they mutually intensify their effects.

Not only was the legend of S. Francis’ life full of suggestions of poetical and artistic material, but his followers rewrote the New Testament from the Franciscan point of view, emphasising the poetical and dramatic elements of the story. In particular they shifted the focus of interest by making the relationship of the Virgin to her son the central motive of the whole. It will be seen that Italian artists down to Raphael turned rather to the Franciscan than the Vulgate version.[22] In fact, S. Bonaventura and the great poet of the movement, the cultivated and ecstatic Jacopone di Todi, did for the Christian legend very much what Pindar did for classical mythology; without altering the doctrine they brought into full relief its human and poetical significance.

It is not surprising, then, to find that the great church at Assisi, built with all the magnificence that the whole of Italy could contribute to honour the spouse of Divine Poverty, should be the cradle of the new art of Italy—the neo-Christian or Franciscan art, as we might almost call it.

The lower church of S. Francesco was probably decorated almost immediately after the building was finished, between 1240 and 1250, but these early works are almost obliterated by a second decoration undertaken after 1300. We must therefore turn to the upper church, the paintings of which were probably completed before 1300, as the chief source of our knowledge of the emergence of the new Italian style. It was there that the Italian genius first attained to self-expression in the language of monumental painting—a language which no other nation of modern Europe has ever been able to command except in rare and isolated instances.

And here we plunge at once into a very difficult, perhaps an insoluble problem: who were the painters who carried out this immense scheme of decoration? The archives of the church have been searched in vain, and we are left with a sentence of Ghiberti’s commentary, and Vasari, who here proves an uncertain guide, so that we are thrown chiefly on the resources of internal evidence.

The paintings of the upper church may be briefly enumerated thus: In the choir are faint remains of frescoes of the life of the Virgin; in the right transept a Crucifixion and other subjects almost obliterated; in the left transept another Crucifixion, better preserved, and archangels in the triforium. The nave is divided into an upper and lower series; the upper series contains scenes of the Old and New Testaments, the lower is devoted to the legend of S. Francis, and in alternate vaults of the roof are paintings of single figures.

It would be out of place to discuss all these frescoes in detail, but it may be worth while to select certain typical ones, around which the rest may be grouped, and see how far they bear out what little documentary and traditional authority we have.

We will begin with the Crucifixion of the left transept, which is clearly by an artist of decided and marked personality. It is certainly less pleasing and less accomplished than the works of the later Byzantine school, and in spite of certain motives, such as the floating drapery of the Christ, which show Byzantine reminiscences, it is derived in the main from the native Italian tradition. This is shown in the stumpy proportions of the figures and the crude, not to say hideous, realism of the faces of the crowd. The classical origin of the tradition is still traceable in the sandalled feet and the reminiscence of the toga in some of the draperies. But the chief interest lies in the serious attempt made by the artist to give dramatic reality to the scene in a way never attempted by the less human Byzantines. The action of the Magdalen throwing up both arms in despair is really impressive, and this is a more vivacious rendering of a gesture traditional in Western early Christian art; an instance occurs in the fifth century MS. of Genesis at Vienna. But the artist shows his originality more in the expressive and sometimes beautiful poses of the weeping angels and the natural movements of the Virgin and S. John.

Very nearly allied to this are the archangels of the triforium, and some of the frescoes of the upper scenes in the nave, such as the Nativity and the Betrayal. These belong to the same group, though they are not necessarily by the master of the Crucifixion himself.