Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VII.djvu/835

 GIOTTO of any other Italian painter. Giorgione's works in fresco, of which he executed many on the facades of Venetian palaces, are almost en- tirely obliterated, but his portraits in oil, among the most admirable ever painted, and remark- able for the warmth of their coloring, particu- larly in the flesh tints, as well as their grace and animated expression, are in good preserva- tion, although they are not numerous. Of his historical paintings, the "Moses rescued from the Nile," in the Pitti palace at Florence, is esteemed his chef d'auvre. GIOTTO, called also GIOTTO DI BONDONE from his father, and by some AMBEOGIOTTO, the regen- erator of Italian art, born at Yespignano, near Florence, in 1276, died in the latter place about 1337. Tradition relates that the painter Cima- bue discovered him, a shepherd boy in the val- ley of Vespignano, in the act of drawing upon a smooth piece of slate the figure of a sheep grazing near him, and was so struck with the genius which the work evinced that he took him into his own house in Florence and taught him his art. Giotto speedily excelled his mas- ter, who undoubtedly at the close of his life conformed his style to that of his pupil. Art was then feebly struggling to free itself from the trammels of the Byzantine style. Cimabue and Duccio di Siena had indeed attempted to improve on existing models, but Giotto reject- ed them altogether. The symbolic represen- tation of a subject, according to conventional rules, had hitherto been the highest aim of the artist. Giotto first gave life to art by making his works truly reflect nature. From the remote- ness of the epoch in which he painted, it is not surprising that many of his works have perish- ed ; but from the specimens that remain and the traditions of those that are lost it is easy to account for his influence over central Italy, from Padua to Naples. Social and political revolutions, the quality of the materials used, the effects of climate, and the vandalism of his own and of later times, have destroyed or hopelessly injured his choicest works. Some of them have been whitewashed over, among them his portraits of Dante and other eminent citizens of Florence, one of his earliest works painted on the walls of the chapel of the Po- desta, now the Bargello or prison in Florence, which Mr. Richard H. Wilde and Mr. Bezzi brought to light in 1840. These are said by Vasari to be the first successful attempts at por- traiture. The record of Giotto's life is not very clear, but it is certain that before the death of Cimabue his reputation was such that Pope Boniface VIII. summoned him to Rome, where he designed his famous mosaic of the Navicella, representing the disciples at sea in a tempest and Christ raising Peter from the waves. It is now in St. Peter's, but frequent restorations have left little of the original work besides the composition. We next hear of him at Padua, where about 1306 he executed in the chapel of the Madonna dell' Arena his 42 paintings representing the life of the Virgin. He here GIRAFFE 819 met his friend Dante, then exiled from Flor- ence, to whose influence the allegorical ten- dency which these and many of his subsequent works exhibit is justly ascribed. An instance of this is afforded in the majestic figures of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, representing the three vows of the order of St Francis, over whose tomb they are painted in the famous abbey church of the Franciscan order at Assisi, the repository of so many curious specimens of old Italian art. Robert of Naples entertained him honorably at his court, where he painted the sacraments for the Incoronata ; and he is even said to have followed Clement V. to Avi- gnon, and to have painted there and elsewhere in France. The wonder and enthusiasm which his works excited are perhaps without a paral- lel in the history of Italian art. A contempo- rary writer naively illustrates the feeling of the time by expressing his surprise that in Giotto's pictures " the personages who are in grief look melancholy, and those who are joyous look gay." Boccaccio says that "through Giotto that art was restored to light which had been for many centuries buried." Giotto excelled also in sculpture and architecture. The famous Campanile of Florence, erected in 1334, was from his designs. His school flourished for upward of a century after his death. GIOVIO, Paolo (PAULUS Jovius), an Italian Latin historian, born in Como, April 19, 1483, died in Florence, Dec. 11, 1552. He studied at Pavia, abandoned medical for historical inqui- ries, was protected by Popes Leo X. and Clem- ent VII., by Charles V. and Francis I., wield- ed a venal pen, was loaded with honors and favors, and having lost all that he possessed when in 1527 Rome was sacked by the army of the constable of Bourbon, was rewarded with the bishopric of Nocera. His most impor- tant work is a " History of his own Time " in 45 books, 6 of which are wanting. His ve- racity is not to be relied on. GIRAFFE, or Camelopard (giraffa camelopar- dalis of most authors ; cervus camelopardalis of Linnaeus), an African genus of the rumi- nants, with persistent horns, common to both sexes, having but a single species, as above. The characteristics of this singular animal, which appears, in some particulars, to parti- cipate in the qualities of the camel, the ox, and the antelope, are these : The lip is not grooved, is entirely covered with hair, and is very much produced before the nostril ; the tongue is ex- tremely long and prehensile, capable of being protracted or retracted at will, and of being tapered so as to enter the ring of a small key ; the neck is very long, the body short, hind part lower; false hoofs none; tail elongate, with a tuft of thick hair at the end. The horns constitute the principal generic characteristic, since they are of neither the bovine nor cervine form, but are'in fact bones, exhibiting through- out precisely the same structure as the other bones, united to the frontal and parietal bones by a distinct suture, covered with a hairy skin,