Page:Bryan's dictionary of painters and engravers, volume 1.djvu/246

 Vices, while the Last Judgment was painted above the arch of the doorway, and the An- nunciate Virgin, to whom the cliapel was dedi- cated, was above the opposite arch. This great decorative worlc at Padua may well be looked upon as the culminating ex[ires3ion of Giotto's art. Nowhere do we find his ideal of concise directness of representation more successfully expressed than is the case here, and nowhere do we find him reaching a similar perfection in the presentation of form and movement. The entire decoration of this beautiful chapel rightly takes a foremost place among the wonders of modern art. To enter into a detailed mention of the various frescoes would here be impassible. The great painting of the ' Last Judgment' alone would offer material sufficient for an almost endless study. The influence of Dante was no doubt strong over Giotto at the time when he painted this great work, and it is conceived quite in a Dantesque spirit.

It is impossible to enumerate all the works that Vasari attributes to Giotto. Most of these have long since perished, so that we have onl}' his tes- timony in respect to them ; but it would really seem that Giotto went about from one place to another in Italy, painting wherever he went, in the manner Ruskin describes, being regarded merely as "a travelling decorator of walls at so much a day, having at Florence a bottega or workshop for the sale of small tempera pictures." It is not certain whither Giotto next went, after his work at Padua was accomplished. Vasari states that he painted at various times at Pisa, Verona, Ferrara, Ravenna, Urbino, Arezzo, Lucca, and Naples, but it is difficult to trace him in these cities, though here and there some dilapidated fresco is assigned to him. At Naples, especially, an important series of frescoes, illustrating the Seven Sacraments of the church, in the chapel of the Incoronata, has long been attributed to him, but without reason, they being evidentlj' later works by a pupil. It appears certain, from a document not long since brought to light, that Giotto really was in Naples in the year 1333, working at the orders of King Robert, with whom he seems to have been on terms of friendly in- timacy. No genuine work remains to us, however, to testify to his labours in that city.

In Florence, Giotto painted no fewer than four family chapels in the then newly-built church of Santa Croce. All of these chapels were covered at different dates with whitewash, the decorations of two of them being irretrievably lost thereby. Others of these paintings, however, in the Bardi and Peruzzi chapels, have been freed from their covering, and although terribly re- stored and repainted, still afford the spectator some idea of their original beauty. The frescoes of the Bardi Chapel illustrate the history of St. Francis, the same subject that was treated in the earlier pictorial history at Assisi. A curaparison of the two series is interesting. Although lacking in the energy of expression so characteristic of the earlier works, the latter series shows a great advance in distribution and arrangement. In the ' Death of St. Francis,' more especially, Giotto suc- ceeded in producing one of the most perfect and beautiful compositions known to Italian art, and one which was repeatedly copied both by sculptors and painters during the two centuries following. Ghirlandaio, as late as the end of the fifteenth century, copied Giotto's composition closely, in his well-known fresco in the church of the SS. Trinitk The paintings in the Peruzzi Chapel, evidently of a somewhat later date, have for their subject scenes from the lives of the Baptist and of St. John the Evangelist. Although in many parts even more ruined than their compmious of the Bardi Chapel, they still show Giotto at his best as a composer, and enable us to arrive at some faint idea of the monumental quality of his maturer style.

Still another celebrated series of frescoes in Florence — those in the chapel of the Podesti, or Bargello — have long been considered to be by Giotto's hand, but they hardly stand the test of a severe critical examination, and are appar- ently the work of an exceptionally able followei whose identity remains as yet to be discovered. Apart from the Stefaneschi altar-piece, but few genuine panel-pictures by Giotto have been handed down to us. Of those which bear unmis- takable signs of his handiwork, the best known and most important is doubtless the large picture of the Virgin and Child adored by Angels, in the Florence Academy. The Louvre also possesses a fine, though much-damaged, altar-piece, represent- ing the Stigmatizatioa of St. Francis. A most exquisite example of the master's work is to be found in the sacristy of the Arena Chapel at Padua. Another genuine little painting, repre- senting the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, is in the possession of Mrs. J. L. Gardner, of Boston, U.S.A. The much-quoted Baroucelli altar-piece, with its apocryphal signature, although still looked upon by many otherwise competent critics as a genuine work, certainly shows nothing in common with Giotto's known manner, and is visibly the production of a pupil or follower not far removed from Taddeo Gaddi in character. To Taddeo himself undoubtedly belong the two long series of little panels still bearing Giotto's name, in the Accademia at Florence.

Of Giotto's private life little is known. Like Dante he appears to have been devoted to the Franciscan order. He was a man of great natural ability, of shrewd understanding and sound com- mon-sense, and, according to all the anecdotes that are told of him, was exceptionally quick at repartee. He married, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, Donna Ciuta di Lapo, and had eight children, remarkable, it is said, for their ugliness. Giotto's last work in Florence was as an archi- tect. In 1334, after the death of Arnolfo, he was made superintendent of the works of Sta. Maria del Fiore, and it was from his design, although successively altered in its later stages by Andrea Pisano and Francesco Talenti, that the beautiful Campanile of Florence arose. The lower range of bas-reliefs aronnd this bell-tower — illustrative of the Creation of Man and his subsequent occupa- tions — were also very probably executed under his influence and inspiration, if not from his designs, by Andrea Pisano.

Giotto died at Florence on January 8, 1337, and was buried in the church of Sta. Maria del Fiore. His numerous pupils and followers, known under the general name of Giotteschi, many of whom had already attained celebrity during the master's own lifetime, were deeply imbued by his teaching, and carried on his work with varying success throughout the length and breadth of Italy in the same naturalistic spirit as himself.