The Tuscan School of Painters
It is an undisputed fact that the revival of painting, like that of sculpture, commenced in Tuscany. It is equally certain that about the middle of the thirteenth century, or a little later, which is the point at which improvement first manifested itself, the prevailing style was the Byzantine, introduced by Greek artists from Constantinople. But it has not by any means been clearly discerned wherein the peculiarities of that style consisted; and it has been usually assumed that it was a rude and defective manner which, as the first step in advance, the Italian painters had to discard. Materials are extant which justify a different conclusion, and evince that the introduction of this foreign taste, gross and faulty as it was, truly formed the first stage in improvement.
From the ninth century till the middle of the thirteenth, painting among the Byzantine artists differed from contemporary Italian works in several important particulars. In both quarters art was timidly imitative; but in the Eastern Empire the models from which it borrowed were more various than in the West, and the execution was usually better; the fashion of the drapery and ornament had a peculiar character of semi-oriental barbarism; and, while in both countries the drawing of the figure was generally bad, the common tendency of the Greeks was to lengthen it disproportionally, and that of the Italians to represent it as short and squab. But the most palpable distinctions were two in the technical treatment. First, in the oldest Italian paintings the vehicle of the colours is transparent, and the tone is therefore light and clear; in the works from Constantinople the tone is dark and yellowish, being produced by the use of some colouring matter which, if modern chemists have rightly analysed it, was wax. The second difference was this—that the Greeks, besides ornamenting their draperies richly with gilding, surrounded their figures with a golden ground; a barbarous practice, of which the oldest Italian works exhibit no trace. In those early productions of the thirteenth century, where we can trace the first ameliorations of art, we discover most, or all, of these peculiarities derived from the Greek style; some of them prevailed very long; and the most objectionable, the flaunting ground, was not entirely discarded even in the time of Raffaelle.
Campanile of Giotto, Florence
The oldest name celebrated in Italian painting is that of Cimabue, who, born about 1240, died in 1300. On the strength of his merit the Florentines claim the glory of having resuscitated art—a pretension which the school of Siena seems to have some right, in the person of Duccio, to contest with them. The works of Cimabue were Byzantine, in their style, in their colouring, and in their blaze of gold; and tradition says that he was taught in his youth by Greek artists. He improved, it is true, upon that school; but, though everything regarding him is obscure, there is no sufficient reason for believing that his improvement consisted in any departure from its principles. To him are commonly assigned some ill-preserved fresco paintings in the church of St. Francis at Assisi, which at all events give an idea of the masters from whom he learned; but his boldness and loftiness of conception are more clearly evinced by two rudely grand figures of Madonnas on wood, both at Florence, the more celebrated of the two in the church of Santa Maria Novella, the other in the Ducal Gallery.
From a Painting by Giotto
To this great artist succeeds the Florentine Giotto (1276-1336), whose history and works are somewhat better known. The Italian novelists have preserved anecdotes of his wealth, his ugliness, and his profane wit. The story which describes him as a shepherd boy, discovered by Cimabue drawing rude figures on a stone, is perhaps too picturesque to be true; and his undoubted pieces display a marked dissimilarity in spirit to those of his alleged teacher, while they deviate also from the Byzantine style in colouring, if in nothing else, having a clear rosy hue which indicates a return to the older Italian method, though it is also an improvement on it. In the theory of his art, however, Giotto departed essentially from all his predecessors. When we combine the criticisms of the older writers with the few pictures which still can be certainly or probably identified as his, we may describe his characteristics as consisting in an attempt, made under manifold difficulties, but attended with surprising success, to establish, instead of the rude, vague, devotional loftiness of Cimabue, a beauty derived from a closer observation of life, as well as enlivened by a better and less formal expression of ordinary human feeling. His only existing work, which is ascertained by a genuine inscription, is one in the church of the Santa Croce in Florence, containing five divisions, of which that in the centre represents the Saviour crowning the Virgin. The gallery of the Florentine Accademia delle Arti contains some small compositions of his, representing, in a fashion half religious and half comic, events from the history of St. Francis. Frescoes in the upper church of that saint at Assisi, assigned to Giotto by some critics, have been pronounced by others to be inferior, and unlike his genuine remains; but others on the vaulted roof of the subterranean part of the same building are undoubtedly his, and resemble the pieces of the academy both in execution and in spirit. Other pictures laying claim to his name occur in various galleries throughout Italy as well as elsewhere.[e]