Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/332

Rh design underlies all other qualities in the works of great painters. Mere life-like figure painting is not, in the best sense, art at all. But so long as the idea of beautiful design governs, all the qualities required for the representation of nature may be carried very far, with good effect, even in decorative wall painting. In the mediæval Italian schools scenic representation (though always subordinated to monumental exigencies, and never pursued in the modern manner) was ever being advanced farther and farther. In fact, the progress that was made in these schools, from the time of Cimabue to the time of Raphael, was a progress in truth of rendering almost altogether. In fundamental principles of design the art of Giotto is not inferior to that of any subsequent painter in Italy. It is in little more than skill of drawing and modelling that the art of Raphael, for instance, surpasses that of Giotto. Pictorial treatment may undoubtedly be carried too far for monumental effect; and though the limits of such treatment in wall painting may be difficult to define with precision, it may safely be said that it is always carried too far when mere representation becomes the leading motive of the painter. With the mediæval Italians it was never carried to this extent. The monumental idea was always dominant. In the frescoes of the Church of St. Francis of Assisi this was conspicuously so. The elements of representative painting are here so slightly developed as to remove the work but little in character from that of the Northern Gothic. In general effect it produces little other impression than that of a bright colour embellishment, though attentive examination reveals many subtleties of development that Gothic painting hardly ever exhibits. It is the same with the frescoes of the Spanish Chapel in Florence, and even with the paintings by Ghirlandajo in the choir of Sta. Maria Novella, though the pictorial skill in these last is much further advanced. In Giotto's frescoes in Sta. Croce the modelling of flesh and draperies is often remarkably natural, while those of Massaccio in the Carmini, and those of Lippi in the choir of Prato, are highly and exquisitely elaborated.

It is true, however, that mediæval wall painting in Italy, while always monumental in character, was treated