Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/628

Rh 610 GIOTTO height of his fame, took the peasant boy, with the glad ' has again thrown in doubt the relative shares of the master consent of his father, to Florence to be his pupil. Of his early career after this we know no 1nore until we find hin1 at work as the foremost among many scholars employed under Cimabne at the interior decorations of tlie great memorial church of St Francis at Assisi. This church con- sists of two structures, one superimposed on the other; it is of the upper and not of the lower church that we speak at present. On the walls of this, a great series of frescos, now n1ore than half obliterated, was painted by the primi- tive masters of the Tuscan school, including some of older and some of younger standing than Cimabue. The series is in three tiers, the uppermost tier containing scenes from the Old Testament; the next, scenes from the New; the lowest, scenes from the life of St Francis. It is in this last tier tl1'_1ll‘0 can discern with certainty the hand of the youthful Giotto. The extent of his participation has been much debated. According to the 111ore probable opinion, it can be traced even in the earlier scenes of the history ; but it is in the later scenes only that the hand and promise of the master, the presence of a new and vital spirit, reveal themselves with fulness. Some interval (but the chronology of Giotto’s career is at all points obscure) would seem to have elapsed between the execution of these frescos and of others, better known than these, which adorn the lower story of the same structure. In fo11r lunette-shaped spaces in the vaulting of this lower church, Giotto has painted four vast compositions, of which the scheme was dictated to him, no doubt, by some pious and learned mouth- piece of the wishes of the order. One of these exhibits the mystical wedding of Francis with Poverty; a second. is an allegory of Chastity; a third of Obedience; a fourth shows the saint gloriﬁed in heaven among the angels. To describe and explain these famous compositions would be beyond our scope. The ideas they embody cannot b11t seem strained and cold when we express them in modern langu-ige. Strained and cold, indeed, the ideas would have been in any other age of the world ; but we must remember that the religious temperament of that age i11 Italy gave even to pedantry the colours of passion, and an ardent and solemn reality to the most far—drawn fantasies of devotion. And however cool the private judgment of Giotto in such matters may have been, it is not his private judgment which speaks to us from the painted allegories of Assisi ; it is the sincere imagination of the men among whom he lived; it is the ardour and solemnity of the devotional spirit of his race. In one of the transepts of the same lower church there are frescos of the Passion of Christ, and others of the life of St Francis, which modern authorities hul-1 against ancient, most likely with justice, to be also fr.un the hand of Giotto. Assuming that the later work of the master at Assisi belongs to the year 1296 or thereabouts, we have good evidence tlut two years afterwards he was working at tome for the Cardinal Stefaneschi, nephew of Pope Boniface VIII. The remains of his industry in this employ- ment may be seen in a mosaic of the IVavz'ce_/la, or Christ saving St Peter from the waves, now preserved in the portico of St Peter’s at Ilome, and in three panels, kept in the sacristy of the canons of the same church, which originally formed part of a ciborium. It is also recorded that Giotto adorned certain MSS. with miniatures for this patron ; and in truth there exists in public libraries a very rare class of MSS., in which the miniatures bear the marks, if scarcely of the hand, at any rate of the immediate inﬂu- enee of Giotto. Lastly, a discoloured fragment of a fresco of the church of St John Lateran shows the ﬁgure of Pope lonif-ace VIII. announcing from a balcony the opening of the famous Jubilee of the year 1300. Soon after this, Giotto was once more in his native city. {ecent research and of his pupils in the decorations of the chapel, called by Ghiberti the chapel of the Magdalene, in the Bargello or palace of the Podesta at Florence. These were painted to celebrate the paciﬁcation between the Black and White parties in the state, effected by the Cardinal d’Acquasparta as delegate of the Pope in 130:}, and consisted of a series of Scripture scenes, besides great compositions of Hell and Paradise. It is in the Paradise that the painter has intro- duced those groups, typical of pacified Florence, in which occur the portraits of Dante, Brunetto Latini, and Corso Donato, and which, amid the emotion of all who care for art or history, were recovered in 1841 from the white- wash that had overlain them. The whole central period of Giotto’s life, from about 1305 to about 1334, is divided between periods of residence at Florence and expeditions, of which we call in very rare instances trace the date or sequence, undertaken in conse- quence of commissions received from other cities of the peninsula. IIe was as n1ucl1 or more of a traveller as ivas Van Eyck a century later; and his travels exercised as much or more of the same. fertilizing and stimulating influence on art in Italy as did those of the great Fleming in the nortl1-west of Europe. The familiar story of the O belongs to a journey to France, which was projected by Giotto but never undertaken. Pope Benedict XI., the successor of Boniface VIII., sent a messenger to bring him proofs of the painter’s powers. Giotto would give the mes- senger no other sample of his talent than an O drawn with a free sweep of the brush from the elbow ; but the pope was satisﬁed, and engaged Giotto at a great salary to go and adorn with frescos the papal residence at Avignon. Benedict, however, dying at this time (1305), nothing came of this commission; a11d the Italian 14th century frescos, of which remains are still to be seen at Avignon, have been proved to be the work, not, as was long .suppo.sed, of Giotto, but of the Sienese master Simone Martini, called Simone .Ien1mi. Another certain date in Giotto’s career belongs to the close of the period we have deﬁned. In 1328 he had painted in the palace of the Signoria at. Florence a portrait (now lost) of Charles of Calabria kneel- ing before the Virgiu. Two years later he was invited by the father of this prince, King lobert of Naples, to come and work for him in that city. Some fre.scos in the chapel of the Incoronata had been long erroneously supposed, on the authority of Petrarch, to represent a part at any ratc- of the industry of Giotto during the three years which he spent at Naples. It is the merit of .lessrs Crowe and Cavalcaselle, while conclusively setting aside this tradition, to have called attention to a real and very noble work of the master existing in a hall which formerly belonged to the convent of Sta. Chiara in that city. This is a fresco celebrating the charity of the Franciscan order under the figure of the miracle of the loaves and ﬁshes, with the personages of St Francis and St Clare kneeling on either hand. Between these two dates (1305 and 1330), Giotto is said to have resided and left great works at Padua, Ferrar-.1, Urbino, Ravenna, Itimini, Faenza, Lucca, and other cities ; and in several of these paintings are still shown which hear his name with more or less of plausibility. But among them it is at Padua only that his authentic and mature powers can really be studied, and that in perhaps the greatest and most complete series of creations of all that he has left. These are the frescos with which he decorated the chapel b11ilt in honour of the Virgin of the Annuncia- tion by a rich citizen of the town, Enrico Scrovegni, and called sometimes the chapel of the Arena, because it is on the site of an ancient amphitheatre. Since it is recorded that Dante was Giotto’s guest at Padua, and since we know