But there is another kind of interest also. Wordsworth says that children are the best philosophers; and in the case of art at any rate there is some truth in what he says, for "this is a general law, that supposing the intellect of the workman the same, the more imitatively complete his art, the less he will mean by it; and the ruder the symbol, the deeper is its intention" (Ruskin's Lectures on Art, § 19). The more complete his powers of imitation become, the more intellectual interest he takes in the expression, and the less therefore in the thing meant. What then is the meaning of these early pictures? To answer this question, we must go back to consider what it was that gave the original impulse to the revival of art in Italy. To this revival two circumstances contributed. First, no school of painting can exist until society is comparatively rich, until there is wealth enough to support a class of men with leisure to produce beautiful things. Such an increase of wealth took place at Florence in the thirteenth century: the gay and courteous life of the Florentines at that time was ready for the adornment of art. The particular direction which art took was due to the religious revival, headed by St. Francis and St. Dominic, which occurred at the same time. Churches were everywhere built, and on the church walls frescoes were wanted, alike to satisfy the growing sense of beauty and to assist in teaching Christian doctrine. These early pictures are thus to be considered as a kind of painted preaching. The story of Cimabue's great picture (see No. 565) well illustrates the double origin of the revival of art. It was to its place above the altar in the great Dominican church of Sta. Maria Novella at Florence that the picture was carried in triumphal procession; whilst the fact that a whole city should thus have turned out to rejoice over the completion of a picture, proves "the widespread sensibility of the Florentines to things of beauty, and shows the sympathy which, emanating from the people, was destined to inspire and brace the artist for his work" (Symonds: Renaissance, iii. 137).[15] The history of Giotto is no less significant. It was for the walls of the church of St. Francis at Assisi that his greatest work was done. It was there that he at once pondered over the meaning of the Christian faith (with what result is shown by Ruskin in Fors Clavigera and elsewhere), and learned the secret of giving the resemblance of the objects of that faith in painting. Thus, then, we arrive at the second source of interest in these old pictures of Florence—rude and foolish as they sometimes seem. "Those were noble days for the painter, when the whole belief of Christendom, grasped by his own faith, and firmly rooted in the faith of the people round him, as yet unimpaired by alien emanations from the world of classic culture, had to be set forth for the first time in art. His work was then a Bible, a compendium of grave divinity and human history, a book embracing all things needful for the spiritual and civil life of man. He spoke to men who could not read, for whom there were no printed pages, but whose hearts received his teaching through the eye. Thus painting was not then what it is now, a decoration of existence, but a potent and efficient agent in the education of the race" (ibid. p. 143). The message which these painters had to deliver was painted on the walls of churches or civic buildings; and it is only there—at Assisi, and Padua, and Florence, and Siena—that they can be properly read. But from such scraps and fragments as are here preserved, one may learn, as it were, the alphabet, and catch the necessary point of view.
But why, it may be asked, did painting come to its new birth first at Florence, rather than elsewhere in Italy? The first answer is that painting thus arose at Florence because it was there that a new style of building at this time arose. The painters were wanted, as we have seen, to decorate the churches, and in those days there was no sharp distinction between the arts. Not only were architects sculptors, but they were often painters and goldsmiths as well. Giotto and Orcagna are instances of this union of the arts. But why did the new style of building arise specially in Florence? The answer to this is twofold: first, the Florentines inherited the artistic gifts and faculties of the Etruscan (Tuscan) race. Even in late Florentine pictures, pure Etruscan design will often be found surviving (see 586). Secondly, in the middle of the thirteenth century new art impulse came from the North in the shape of a northern builder, who, after building Assisi, visited Florence and instructed Arnolfo in Gothic, as opposed to Greek architecture. Thus there met the two principles of art—the Norman (or Lombard), vigorous and savage; the Greek (or Byzantine), contemplative but sterile. The new spirit in Florence "adopts what is best in each, and gives to what it adopts a new energy of its own, ... collects and animates the Norman and Byzantine tradition, and forms out of the perfected worship and work of both, the honest Christian faith and vital craftsmanship of the world.... Central stood Etruscan Florence: agricultural in occupation, religious in thought, she directed the industry of the Northman into the arts of peace; kindled the dreams of the Byzantine with the fire of charity. Child of her peace, and exponent of her passion, her Cimabue became the interpreter to mankind of the meaning of the Birth of Christ" (Ariadne Florentina, ch. ii.; Mornings in Florence, ii. 44, 45).
☞ In the left-hand corner of the Vestibule will be found a very remarkable series of archaic Greek portraits dating from the second or third century A.D. (Nos. 1260-1270).
The architecture of the Entrance Hall and Vestibule is worth some attention, for here is the finest collection of marbles in London. Many distant parts of the world have contributed to it. The Alps, from a steep face of mountain 2000 feet high on the Simplon Pass, send the two massive square pillars of light green "cipollino" which form the approach to the Vestibule from the Square. Their carved capitals are of alabaster from Derbyshire, whilst the bases on which they stand are of Corrennie granite from near Aberdeen. The square blocks of bluish gray beneath the upper columns come from New Zealand. Ascending the stone steps, the visitor should notice the side walls, built up of squares of "giallo antico," which was brought from the quarry at Simittu, in the territory of Tunis. It had long been known that Rome was full of the beautiful "giallo antico," sometimes yellow, sometimes rosy in colour, but always of exquisite texture and even to work. It had come from the province of Africa; and the quarry was rediscovered by a Belgian engineer working on the railway then being made from Tunis to the Algerian frontier. He observed at Simittu a half-consumed mountain with gaps clearly marked, from which the last monoliths had been cut, and the work of the Romans was presently resumed by a Belgian Company. No more beautiful specimen of the "giallo antico" similar to that used in Augustan Rome could be desired than slabs in the entrance to the National Gallery. The cornice above the "giallo antico" walls is of "pavonazzetto" from the Apennines, near Pisa, and the same marble forms the base of the red columns. These splendid columns come from quarries near Chenouah, just west of Algiers, which were first opened by the French some years ago. Red Etruscan is the unmeaning trade name of this jasper-like stone, which is also used for door frames in many of the new rooms with very sumptuous effect.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] My references to this book are to the new edition of 1897.