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 _ARL\* TUSCAN 
 
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 W. MAR i IN CON WAY
 
 University of 
 California
 
 A/- ,
 
 EARLY 
 TUSCAN ART
 
 WORKS ON ABIV 
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE WOODCUTTERS OF THE NETHERLANDS IN THE FIFTEENTH 
 CENTURY. In Three Parts. (i) History of the Woodcutters. 
 (2) Catalogue of the Woodcuts. (3) List of the Books containing 
 Woodcuts. Cambridge University Press, 1884. 8vo. 
 
 THE GALLERY OF ART OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION, LIVERPOOL. 
 
 With Twelve Autotypes. London and Liverpool, 1885. Folio. 
 
 THE ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT of REYNOLDS AND GAINSBOROUGH. 
 
 With Illustrations. London, 1886. 8vo. 
 
 EARLY FLEMISH ARTISTS AND THEIR PREDECESSORS ON THE 
 LOWER RHINE. With Twenty-nine Illustrations. London, 1887. 
 8vo. 
 
 EXHIBITION OF REPRODUCTIONS OF THE WORKS OF RAPHAEL 
 IN THE WALKER ART GALLERY, LIVERPOOL: Catalogue of 
 Raphael's known Drawings, Pictures and Frescoes. Liverpool, 
 1887. 
 
 LITERARY REMAINS OF ALBRECHT DURER; with Transcripts from 
 the British Museum Manuscripts, and Notes upon them by LINA 
 ECKENSTEIN. Cambridge University Press, 1889. 8vo. 
 
 DAWN OF ART IN THE ANCIENT WORLD. London, 1891. 8vo. 
 THE DOMAIN OF ART. London, 1901. 8vo.
 
 bd 
 
 = 
 
 H 
 
 I 
 
 I
 
 EARLY 
 
 TUSCAN 
 
 ART 
 
 FROM THE 12TH TO THE 
 
 15TH CENTURIES 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR W. MARTIN CON WAY 
 
 SLADE PROFESSOR OF FINE ART IN THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 
 
 ILLUSTRATED. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED 
 J3, Great Marlborough Street 
 
 1902 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 PRINTED BY KELLY'S DIRECTORIES LIMITED, 
 L O Jf D O N AND KINGSTON.
 
 TO 
 
 HENRY THODE 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ART IN THE UNIVERSITY OF 
 HEIDEI,BURG 
 
 HISTORIAN OF FRANCISCAN ART
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. P AGE 
 
 I. THE FIRST IMPULSE ...... i 
 
 II. FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND THE POPULAR REVOLUTION 48 
 
 III. GIOTTO . 92 
 
 IV. THE SIENESE SCHOOL 140 
 
 V. THE EFFECT OF THE DOMINICANS UPON ART IN 
 
 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. . . . -177 
 
 VI. FRA ANGELICO . . . . . . .219
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 The Crucifixion (San Marco, Florence) . . . Frontispiece 
 Baptistery and Cathedral at Pisa . . . Facing page 30 
 Lintel of the East Portal of the Baptistery at Pisa 31 
 
 Fragment of a Byzantine Sarcophagus (Campo Santo, Pisa) 
 
 Facing page 33 
 
 Pulpit in the Baptistery at Pisa ... 37 
 
 Madonna (Lower Church, Assisi) ... 43 
 
 Adoration of the Magi (Lucca Cathedral) . 79 
 
 Cathedral Pulpit (Pisa) 83 
 
 Nativity (Baptistery Pulpit, Pisa) ; Nativity (Cathedral Pulpit, 
 Pisa) ........ Facing page 85 
 
 The Last Judgment (Fagade of Orvieto Cathedral) 86 
 
 The Resurrection (Rheims Cathedral) . . 88 
 
 The Upper Church, Assisi .... 99 
 
 St. Francis Preaching before Pope Honorius III. (Fresco in 
 the Upper Church, Assisi) .... Facing page 105 
 
 St. Francis before the Sultan (S. Croce, Florence). . Between 
 
 pages 120, 121, and facing the other print. 
 St. Francis before the Sultan (Upper Church, Assisi) . Between 
 
 pages 120, 121, and facing the other print. 
 Burial of John Baptist (Gates of the Baptistery, Florence) 
 
 Facing page 129 
 Good Government . . . . . . 161 
 
 Glory of St. Thomas Aquinas (Pisa) . . 184 
 
 Christ as Pilgrim ...... 236 
 
 Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus (San Marco, Florence) 
 
 Facing page 237
 
 Early Tuscan Art* 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 AFTER the series of staggering blows dealt to 
 the civilisation of the West by successive waves 
 of barbarian invasion, the history of European 
 Art during several centuries is a history of weak 
 survivals and crude efforts. Throughout the 
 Dark Ages it was only at Byzantium and in the 
 Byzantine Empire that a school of Art of high 
 quality had a continuous though chequered 
 existence. But Byzantium cannot be regarded 
 as Europe. It was an outpost of the great 
 Oriental world whose Art-influences frequently 
 touch and affect the West, and are in turn 
 affected by it, but whose life is a thing apart 
 from the life of Europe. For centuries the lands
 
 2 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 that had been Roman, and those east of them 
 now occupied by Teutonic peoples, were devas- 
 tated by frequent wars. The old means of 
 communication between place and place became 
 less practicable ; organization of large areas of 
 country under a single government became im- 
 possible ; continuous trade between distant lands 
 virtually ceased ; and great communities broke 
 up into small local units. For a time, indeed, 
 some vigorous master of a mobile fighting force 
 might succeed in uniting under his sway a 
 number of these local units, but the bond was 
 essentially feeble and personal. With the pass- 
 ing of the conqueror, and the dissolution of the 
 rudimentary organization that had depended on 
 his individual genius, the bond was either wholly 
 broken or so loosened as to be an ineffectual 
 tie. 
 
 This period, though from the point of view 
 of Roman civilization a period of destruction 
 and decay, was in the history of the civilization 
 of the world a period of birth and growth. 
 Each breaking wave of inroading barbarians, 
 which shattered the monuments and submerged
 
 THE LOWEST EBB. 3 
 
 the institutions of Imperial Rome, carried the 
 seeds of a larger life. The education of the new 
 savage or semi-savage inhabitants began with 
 the very day of their arrival upon the soil of the 
 Empire. In process of time small local centres 
 of growth appeared in different parts of Europe ; 
 local civilizations (at first of a very simple sort) 
 began to arise, and, with them, rude local 
 schools of Art. These young local schools pre- 
 served some ancient traditions, but mingled with 
 them a new life and expressed a new spirit. 
 They delighted in new forms of decoration and 
 depicted new subjects in a new way. The 
 history of such local nascent schools is an inter- 
 esting, a complicated, and a difficult subject, 
 with which we are not now concerned. Suffice 
 it to say, that by the end of the tenth and 
 beginning of the eleventh centuries, many of 
 them had come into independent and even 
 vigorous existence in different parts of the 
 Western world. 
 
 The long period from about the fifth to the 
 eleventh century may be described, from the 
 point of view of civilization and government, as
 
 4 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 a period of cellular growth. Only walled towns 
 and strong castles could maintain themselves in 
 the fighting chaos. There were limits to the 
 possible size of a town, set by the conditions of 
 the food supply ; for a town could not retain a 
 larger population than could be fed by the area 
 of surrounding lands over which its protection 
 extended. The principality dominated by a 
 castle was likewise limited by the length of its 
 striking arm. Thus there was room in Europe 
 for a very large number both of castles and 
 small towns. Monastic institutions fitted into 
 the same scheme of things and had a corres- 
 ponding growth. Each centre required a ruler 
 in those days of rudimentary organization, 
 naturally a despot. Thus there grew up all 
 over Europe a numerous baronial class of 
 nobles, bishops, abbots, and knights, who con- 
 trolled small communities and directed the ex- 
 penditure of the surplus products of industry 
 of what I shall henceforward describe as the 
 Art- Fund. 
 
 The eleventh century must have been a re- 
 markable period of relative prosperity in the
 
 BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX. 5 
 
 West of Europe, otherwise Peter the Hermit, 
 with all his eloquence, could not have aroused 
 at the end of it the Crusading enthusiasm 
 which his preaching inspired. The Crusades 
 were proof of Europe's recovery from the bar- 
 barian invasions. Thenceforward the West had 
 not only life enough for its own needs, vigour 
 enough for its own internal organization, but it 
 had a surplus to play with as it pleased. The 
 Crusades were the first use that it made of this 
 surplus. The same youthful, rollicking vigour 
 that was manifested in them was shown in the 
 growth of international commerce, the begin- 
 ning of organized manufacture, and in the efflor- 
 escence of chivalry and monkhood. The voice 
 of Europe was uplifted in the song of the 
 Troubadour, and the gaiety of Nations became 
 possible once more. 
 
 The great Saint and representative man of 
 the twelfth century was Bernard of Clairvaux 
 (1091-1153), friend and contemporary of Suger. 
 A comparison between Bernard and Francis of 
 Assisi, if we had space for it, might be used 
 as typical of the contrast of their times. Bernard
 
 6 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 was a man of the governing caste, son of noble 
 parents. His friends and first followers were 
 nobles. He and they were students of the 
 University of Paris. At the age of twenty-two 
 he entered the aristocratic order of the Cister- 
 cians. After fifteen years of retirement he came 
 forward as a great moral force. All manner of 
 responsibilities were laid upon him. He drew 
 up statutes for the Templars, reorganised the 
 Cistercians, reformed the Cluniacs. Louis the 
 Great appointed him to decide between Innocent 
 II. and Anaclet, rival claimants of the Papacy. 
 He reconciled the Milanese clergy with Rome. 
 He procured the condemnation of Abailard by 
 the Council of Sens. He founded 160 houses 
 of his own order. He was author of many 
 treatises and sermons. He was, perhaps, greatest 
 of all as a writer of letters. He corresponded 
 with most of the kings and potentates of 
 Christendom. His advice was sought and 
 followed by the great. He was the pre-eminent 
 counsel giver of his day. In his letters, says 
 Frederick Harrison, "from first to last there is 
 no trace of dictation, no consciousness of self,
 
 TWELFTH CENTURY REVIVAL. 7 
 
 of any assumption of a right, no pride, anger, 
 or rigour ; there is nothing but the spontaneous 
 outburst of a soul, which the sight of evil 
 humiliates and hurts ; which in the presence of 
 oppression, of vice, of indolence, or of anarchy, 
 is wrung with grief, pity, and remorse." Such 
 was the characteristic leader of the twelfth 
 century, and such was the basis of his wonderful 
 authority. Evidently it was a day of life, 
 growth, and promise. 
 
 In the twelfth century arts of all kinds 
 began to flourish over the West. Cathedrals, 
 monasteries, city palaces were built. Decoration 
 became more elaborate, costume more rich, 
 tools more efficient. It was a day, not merely 
 of artistic promise, but of performance. The 
 twelfth century Renascence was effected under 
 the guidance and by the initiative of the noble 
 class. Its arts were essentially aristocratic. Its 
 architecture is that of the Baron's Castle, the 
 Bishop's Cathedral Church, and (in Italy) the 
 Noble's city palace. Its decorations tend to 
 massive magnificence. Its leading qualities are 
 dignity, splendour, and power. If twelfth cen-
 
 8 THE FIRST IMPULSE, 
 
 tury Art appealed to the populace at all, it did so 
 as a manifestation of the greatness and might 
 of the ruling powers. There was nothing about 
 it popularly pleasing, nothing to rejoice the 
 hearts of the crowd or delight the fancy of the 
 ignorant. That so few names of artists of this 
 period should have come down to us is not 
 matter for surprise. They were obscure crafts- 
 men ; the best of them were master-masons, 
 working under the orders of a superior caste. 
 There is something impersonal about their work, 
 expressing as it does not the fancies of an indi- 
 vidual but the pride of a class. 
 
 What I have thus far said is true of Western 
 Europe generally, and of Italy as part of the 
 West. With great local variety and short 
 priorities of one locality before another, the 
 general course of development was everywhere 
 the same. Henceforward, however, it is with 
 Italy alone that we are mainly concerned. In- 
 vaded, like the rest, by barbarian hordes, Italy 
 retained more strongly than remoter countries 
 the memory of her great imperial days. If she 
 had forgotten, her conquerors would have re-
 
 INFLUENCE OF ANTIQUITY. 9 
 
 minded her ; for it was the ambition of Ostro- 
 goths, Lombards, and Franks in turn, to revive, 
 as far as they could, the glories of the past, 
 whose ruins they beheld on all sides, and to 
 appropriate those ruined glories to themselves. 
 Roma Caput Mundi retained in the Pope a 
 sovereign, whose claim to universal spiritual 
 dominion was something more than a pale re- 
 miniscence of the temporal dominion of the 
 Caesars. Thus when the revival of Art began 
 in Italy, artists naturally turned for inspiration 
 to the surviving monuments of antiquity, which 
 then existed in greater number and complete- 
 ness than to-day. Partly by imitation, partly 
 by the direct survival of technical traditions, the 
 style fittingly designated Romanesque deve- 
 loped, not in Rome or Italy only, but in many 
 parts of Northern Europe as well. Italy, how- 
 ever, was its centre the country of its strongest 
 growth and completest exposition. 
 
 But if Italian artists were more potently in- 
 fluenced by Imperial Roman traditions than, for 
 example, were the artists of Northern France or 
 of the Rhine, they were likewise more directly
 
 io THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 brought in contact with two other powerful 
 tendencies, the Byzantine and the Saracenic. 
 Byzantium, as I have already said, was for 
 many centuries, especially from the ninth to 
 the twelfth, the most important Art-centre in 
 Europe. When Constantine created it the 
 capital of the Eastern Empire, he likewise 
 made it a museum of a multitude of the 
 finest then existing works of Classical Art. The 
 best workmen were likewise conveyed to the 
 new city and busily employed. You cannot, 
 however, transplant a school of art. Transplan- 
 tation involves change. Just as Greek artists, 
 moved to Rome, produced a new style in the 
 capital of the Caesars, so Roman artists trans- 
 ferred to Byzantium were brought in contact 
 with new influences, and led to originate a new 
 style. We find this style emerging about the 
 sixth centur> T . Its most important factor was 
 derived from the East, doubtless from Persia, 
 that ancient home of vigorous Art-life. But 
 Oriental exuberance was chastened by Greek 
 reserve. Thus, from the sixth century onward, 
 under the patronage of the splendid Imperial
 
 THE BYZANTINE SCHOOL. n 
 
 Court, successive generations of artists, inheriting 
 the matchless skill and traditional technical 
 knowledge of Greece and Rome, produced beau- 
 tiful works of art of all kinds in the Byzantine 
 or Greek style. The Byzantine School, like the 
 Byzantine Empire, had its ups and downs, its 
 periods of prosperity and feebleness. Under 
 Justinian it attained definite expression and 
 flourished exceedingly. The iconoclastic troubles 
 paralyzed it for a time, but in the ninth, tenth, 
 and part of the eleventh centuries it enjoyed a 
 glorious revival, and some of its finest works 
 were then produced. 
 
 The Venetian conquest of Constantinople in 
 1204, while injurious to the prosperity of the 
 Eastern Empire, and ultimate cause of its final 
 ruin, helped to spread the influence of its arts 
 over the West. The walls of St. Mark's at 
 Venice to-day are beautified by the sculptured 
 stones, at that time pillaged from Byzantium by 
 the famous Doge Enrico Dandalo. The trea- 
 sury of the same wonderful church still contains 
 the vessels of crystal, the enamelled plates of 
 gold, the jewelled bookbindings, and other beau-
 
 i 2 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 tiful objects then carried away from the church 
 of Santa Sophia works which in those days 
 the artists of no other city in the world could 
 have matched. The vitality of the Byzantine 
 School, even after centuries of calamity and 
 when the conquering Turks were already almost 
 at the city's gates, is proved by the splendid 
 mosaic decorations of the church now known as 
 the Kahrije Jami ; whilst some of the best 
 Byzantine mosaics in St. Mark's at Venice are 
 those in the Baptistery, which cannot be earlier 
 than the fourteenth century and may even belong 
 to the fifteenth. 
 
 Modern travellers usually see little true By- 
 zantine work. They are accustomed to associate 
 the name with all manner of bad old paintings 
 and late, even modern, Greek devotional ob- 
 jects. They are told that Byzantine artists did 
 nothing but repeat with endless iteration the 
 same series of subjects treated in the same 
 manner. The actual Byzantine works which 
 are likely to attract their attention are mosaics 
 which have been repeatedly restored. Now 
 wall-mosaics, in the nature of things, must be
 
 BYZANTINE ART. 13 
 
 simple in design, and, compared with paintings, 
 crude in execution. If, instead of estimating 
 Byzantine Art by the mosaic decorations of 
 Ravenna and Venice, the student will search 
 out the sculptured marbles and fine ivory car- 
 vings that were actually made in Constantinople 
 by accomplished workmen, he will derive from 
 them a very different estimate of the quality 
 and power of their Art. 
 
 Its main characteristics are dignity and refine- 
 ment. There is no stiffness in a Byzantine figure 
 of good period. The stiffness in works of the 
 Byzantine style is a quality applied by Western 
 workmen attempting to imitate the grave for- 
 mality of the East. If I could plant the reader 
 in the nave of St. Mark's at Venice, and could 
 show him the gilded bas-relief of the Virgin, 
 immured just to the left of the entrance, he 
 would learn in a moment of what benign beauty 
 and dignified grace Byzantine sculptors were 
 capable. The enamelled plaques of the won- 
 derful Pala-d'Oro above the high-altar, the work 
 of many hands and various dates, would com- 
 plete the lesson. He would find them marvel-
 
 14 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 lous in delicacy, matchless in colour, and of 
 utmost refinement in design. If with these 
 works before him he would call up the memory 
 of any European work of art whatsoever, made 
 before the end of the twelfth century, he would 
 realize the pre-eminence of the Byzantines, not 
 only in technical skill (wherein they have never 
 been surpassed) but in grace, beauty, and re- 
 finement. 
 
 While the artists of Europe were vaguely 
 feeling their way to artistic expression, the 
 artists of Byzantium possessed an elaborate 
 style, a definite ideal, and every technical power 
 required for its complete embodiment. When 
 therefore, at the close of the Dark Ages, the 
 demand for Art arose in Western Europe, it was 
 inevitable that men should turn for inspiration 
 to Byzantium. A continual succession of crafts- 
 men from that city travelled westward and 
 found employment. The Byzantine style filtered 
 through the West and became a more or less 
 important factor in every nascent Western school. 
 Italy, owing to its geographical position and 
 commercial relations with the East, naturally
 
 THE SARACENIC STYLE. 15 
 
 experienced Byzantine influences more strongly 
 than any other country. 
 
 The amount of influence exercised by the 
 arts of the Mussulman peoples upon the rising 
 schools of Europe is more difficult to estimate. 
 The conquering Arabs had no arts of their own 
 save the arts of speech. For all the formative 
 arts they were dependent upon the peoples they 
 overcame. Denying themselves, as they did, 
 the right to represent the human form, they, 
 obtained in compensation a matchless power of 
 decorative design. Their woven stuffs, their 
 glass and beaten metal, their Arabesque mural 
 decorations, became, and throughout the Middle 
 Ages remained, the best in the world. All that 
 Venetian workmen in their best days ever made 
 in this kind was but an imitation of the unsur- 
 passable products of the peoples of Islam. To 
 what extent the Saracenic style may have been 
 indebted in its origin to Byzantium we cannot 
 yet say. The probability seems to be that the 
 debt was small, and that the style arose from a 
 mingling of the styles of the Sassanid artists of 
 Persia and the Coptic craftsmen of Egypt.
 
 1 6 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 The history of the origin of Saracenic archi- 
 tecture has yet to be written. The first defi- 
 nitely Saracenic building to which we can point 
 is the mosque of Ibn-Tulun at Cairo, which we 
 know to have been copied from a mosque at 
 Samarra, showing distinct Sassanian traditions. 
 The style once initiated developed, and irt sub- 
 sequent centuries produced a multitude of beau- 
 tiful buildings in every part of the Mussulman 
 world. Splendid mosques and baths, fine cara- 
 vanserais, and beautifully decorated houses were 
 common all over the Eastern world at the time 
 of the Crusades. By war, and by the commerce 
 that war preceded and helped to beget, the men 
 of Europe, and especially the noble and com- 
 mercial classes the men controlling the Euro- 
 pean Art-Fund were brought in contact with 
 this architecture, and could not fail to be struck 
 by its grace and beauty, so far superior to that 
 of their castles and churches at home. 
 
 The influence of the arts of Islam upon the 
 West was continuous. It affected architecture, 
 but it affected manufactures still more strongly. 
 We cannot now attempt to trace that influence
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ISLAM. 17 
 
 in detail. For present purposes it suffices if 
 we bear in mind that the Italian workmen of 
 the twelfth and thirteenth centuries must have 
 had the products of Syria and Egypt often 
 before their eyes, and that the reputation of the 
 buildings of Islam and some idea of their 
 character and style must have been known to 
 the Architects and Guilds of Masons who built 
 the twelfth and thirteenth century cathedrals 
 and palaces of Italy and of the whole West of 
 Europe. 
 
 The South of Italy and Sicily fell more 
 strongly under combined Byzantine and Sara- 
 cenic influences than any other part of Christen- 
 dom. For several centuries Sicily (A.D. 535 
 827) and an important part of South Italy, 
 largely Greek in blood, formed an integral part 
 of the Eastern Empire. Greek was a living lan- 
 guage there down to the twelfth century. At 
 the time of the iconoclastic troubles in Constan- 
 tinople there was a considerable immigration of 
 the supporters of images into these countries. 
 We know of ninety-seven Basilean convents 
 
 founded in Calabria at this time. For two cen- 
 
 2
 
 1 8 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 turies and a half (827 1090) Sicily was under 
 Saracenic government, the tenth century being 
 the culminating period of Saracenic prosperity 
 there, a time of abundant Art-production. When 
 the Saracens were succeeded by the Normans 
 (1090 1194) and they by the Germans (1194 
 1268) both the Saracenic and Byzantine styles 
 had obtained a firm hold on Sicily and the 
 South. Numerous examples of architecture and 
 mosaic decoration might be quoted in illustration 
 of this statement, which holds true also for the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 
 
 The Sicilian churches of this period were 
 sometimes Romanesque in plan, as at Monreale 
 and Cefalu, sometimes Byzantine. The archi- 
 tectural details are commonly Saracenic, the 
 decorative sculpture frequently Byzantine in char- 
 acter. Mosaics, as we might expect, show 
 strongest Byzantine influence, and were often, as 
 at Cefalu, the work of Greek craftsmen. In 
 the Palatine Chapel at Palermo we find mosaics 
 of about 1 1 43. The apse contains figures of 
 Christ and saints, the rest of the church scenes 
 from the Old and New Testaments of modified
 
 ART IN SICILY. 19 
 
 Byzantine character ; but the roof is decorated 
 in Saracenic style and even adorned with Cufic 
 inscriptions. How far these works were known 
 in Central and Northern Italy we cannot say. 
 They must have been known at such ports as 
 Pisa, where we shall presently find a South 
 Italian artist actively employed. With Venice 
 at one end of the peninsula and Sicily at the 
 other so intimately affected by the Greek style, 
 the intervening districts naturally experienced, 
 more or less, the same influence. 
 
 In Italy and Sicily the twelfth century was a 
 building epoch. Already in 1063 the Church of 
 St. Mark at Venice (such as we now see it) 
 and the Cathedral of Pisa were founded ; and 
 the Cathedral of St. Martin at Lucca was begun 
 about the same time. We may remember the 
 foundation of those three important buildings as 
 practically contemporary with the Norman con- 
 quest of England. It is noteworthy that two 
 of them arose in growing ports enriched by 
 Oriental commerce. Pisa, at that time, had inti- 
 mate relations with Tunis and Egypt. Venice, as 
 
 always, was more closely in touch with Constan- 
 
 2*
 
 20 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 tinople. St. Mark's was frankly imitated from 
 the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constanti- 
 nople, which was pulled down in 1464. Except 
 for later Gothic additions, St. Mark's is a purely 
 Byzantine edifice. Indirectly it may to some 
 extent have influenced the development of archi- 
 tecture throughout Italy, but its effect beyond 
 Venetia must have been small and may be 
 neglected. It is, however, worth mention in this 
 place that, in the thirteenth century, workmen 
 were sent from Venice to Rome to complete the 
 mosaic decoration of S. Paolo fuori le mure. 
 
 The Pisan Cathedral and Baptistery are of 
 more complicated origin. They belong to a 
 group of buildings at Pisa, Lucca, and as far 
 away as Florence, erected mainly during the 
 twelfth century, which possess a marked style of 
 their own. In plan and general design they are 
 in no wise Byzantine but Romanesque, descend- 
 ing by unbroken tradition from the days of the 
 later Empire. As the merchants and nobles of 
 Pisa grew rich and progressed in refinement, it 
 appears that there developed amongst them a 
 dilletante appreciation for old Roman work. It
 
 PIS AN ARCHITECTURE. 21 
 
 is stated, for instance, that they sought for fine 
 carved Roman Sarcophagi and other sculptured 
 marbles and imported them in their ships wher- 
 ever they could find them. A wealthy Pisan of 
 the twelfth century liked to be buried, when his 
 time came, in a Roman sarcophagus. Thus Pisa 
 in process of time came to possess quite a 
 museum of good classical sculpture of a decora- 
 tive kind. 
 
 Owing to the proximity of the Carrara moun- 
 tains, marble was always plentiful at Pisa and 
 Lucca, and there were always sculptors of a sort 
 in that region capable of working it. It is easy 
 at the present day to find examples of their rude 
 and often frightful handiwork. The Pisan gentry 
 knew enough to prefer antique sculpture to that. 
 A little further inland, at Lucca, local sculptors 
 were evidently better appreciated. Still further 
 inland they probably had the field to themselves, 
 for the transport of any large piece of finished 
 sculpture overland along mediaeval roads must 
 have been almost impossible. 
 
 As a rule, in speaking of the revival of 
 Italian Art, we are accustomed to think of Flor-
 
 22 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 ence as the centre of the movement. In fact, 
 Florence lagged behind. Rome, Sicily, Pisa, 
 Lucca, and Venice led the way. If it were not 
 necessary to limit the scope of our present sur- 
 vey we might find in the Rome of the eleventh, 
 twelfth, and thirteenth centuries no inconsider- 
 able amount of interesting work. Great build- 
 ings were raised or begun at that time. Im- 
 portant mosaic decorations and still existing 
 series of wall paintings were made. But from 
 Rome we should only learn the same lesson that 
 is taught by Pisa, Lucca, and Florence. To 
 them, therefore, our attention may be confined. 
 When, in consequence of settled industry and 
 efficient defence against external invasion and 
 internal feud, the cities of Italy began to grow 
 rich, wealth came at first into the hands of the 
 governing classes. These, as we have seen, 
 were the nobles. It was the nobles, therefore, 
 who presided over the first stage of the Italian 
 artistic renaissance. What they wanted were 
 palaces, cathedrals, and churches. They were 
 desirous that the buildings they erected should 
 be magnificent ; creditable to the city that was
 
 INFLUENCE OF ARISTOCRACY. 23 
 
 theirs, creditable to themselves as men of wealth 
 and power. They had no alternative but to 
 employ such artists and craftsmen as the day 
 afforded, and to supply them with means for 
 doing the best they were capable of. They 
 were, in fact, just in the position of the people 
 of Liverpool, who want a cathedral to-day. The 
 people of Liverpool vaguely hope to possess a 
 fine building ; but they cannot design one for 
 themselves, nor build it. They must choose 
 among existing architects and contractors ac- 
 cording to their lights. What they can settle 
 by resolution of public meeting is the general 
 style of the future building, which they for 
 their part decided should be Gothic thereby 
 probably dimly meaning that they would like it 
 to resemble Westminster Abbey rather than St. 
 Paul's. Similarly the men of Pisa and Lucca 
 asked for a Roman building, those of Venice 
 for a Byzantine, each city wanting the simili- 
 tude of the finest kind of church they knew 
 of Pisans being more familiar with Rome, 
 Venetians with Constantinople. When, how- 
 ever, the building actually came to be erected,
 
 24 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 the people of Pisa and Lucca found, what the 
 people of Liverpool will likewise some day dis- 
 cover, that you may settle the general style of 
 a building, but that the character of the work 
 when actually made depends not upon your 
 orders but upon the feelings, ideals, and capa- 
 cities of the men who do the work. Forgeries 
 in an old style you can get, but not works of 
 vital art. 
 
 Pisa and Lucca, from the eleventh to the 
 thirteenth centuries, had four classes of workmen 
 to draw upon. These were Greeks, local arti- 
 ficers, Lombards from the Como direction, called 
 Comaschi, and South Italians.* The Greeks 
 were superior workmen, wholly Byzantine in 
 feeling, tradition, and skill. The local men were 
 rude masons and little more. The Comaschi 
 were a guild of masons, carvers, and architects, 
 North European in their leanings. They seem 
 
 * Works by Lombard masons of the Como School exist in many places 
 in the neighbourhood of Lucca. There are sculptures of 1099 and later at 
 Brancoli and Berceto. At Pistoja are signed works of Gruamons and his 
 brother Adeodatus ( 1 162, 1 166, etc.). At Grapoli is a pulpit and a hideous 
 figure of St. Michael. At Pisa and elsewhere are works by Biduinus, a 
 Lombard, who was under the influence of Bonannus, who made the bronze 
 gates at Pisa with date-palms and orange-trees upon them.
 
 ARCHITECTURE AT LUCCA. 25 
 
 to have wandered all over Europe and worked 
 wherever they could find a job, just as Italian 
 masons do to-day, labouring indifferently on the 
 dam at Philae, or on a sky-scraper in New 
 York, and returning home at frequent intervals. 
 The South Italian artists and craftsmen united 
 some knowledge of the Saracenic style to 
 Byzantine and classical Roman traditions. In 
 the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth century 
 buildings of Pisa and Lucca, we find traces of 
 the activity of men drawn from these four classes. 
 Naturally the Roman style in their hands under- 
 went extensive modifications, and the buildings 
 that resulted were not Roman at all, but in a 
 new style, which we may call early Tuscan. 
 
 Take, for example, the cathedral at Lucca. 
 Its faade is the characteristic feature on which 
 the best skill obtainable was lavished. The 
 church itself was first built and substantially 
 finished in the eleventh century. The facade 
 was built on to it during the next hundred and 
 fifty years. It consists of a great vaulted por- 
 tico, entered by three large arches from the 
 Piazza, and giving access to the church by three
 
 26 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 doorways opposite the arches. Above the por- 
 tico are three galleries (one over the other) of 
 small marble columns carrying round arches. 
 The great portico was built in the last years of 
 the twelfth century, the three galleries in the 
 first years of the thirteenth (the lowest is dated 
 1204), while the decoration of the portals into 
 the church and of the wall between them and 
 above them went on from about 1230 till 1260. 
 In all the sculpture decorating this facade I can 
 find small trace of Byzantine influence. The 
 twelve representations of the occupations of the 
 months were done by Como workmen, and are 
 reminiscent of French Gothic sculpture of the 
 day. The incidents from the legend of St. 
 Martin, with their large simple drapery and 
 their monumental character, may likewise be 
 Como work, done under the direction, perhaps, 
 of the architect Guidetto, who in 1246 made 
 under Greek influence the font for the Bap- 
 tistery at Pisa, so highly praised by Ruskin. 
 In none of these bas-reliefs can we trace clas- 
 sical influence. In so far as they are not 
 French they are a spontaneous North-Italian
 
 SAN M1CHELE AT LUCCA. 27 
 
 product. When, however, we come to the north 
 portal we find work of another character. The 
 tympanum is occupied by a descent from the 
 Cross, known to have been made by Niccolo 
 Pisano ; whilst the lintel below it was either by 
 him or by his assistants. Here we find a com- 
 plete mingling of styles. Classical tradition is 
 strong in some figures ; Gothic influence appears 
 in others ; whilst, of the architecture introduced 
 in the background, some is Romanesque, some 
 Gothic. 
 
 A short distance away rises the Church of 
 San Michele, whose facade bears a general re- 
 semblance to that of the cathedral, and was 
 building about the same time. Its decoration 
 consisted of a multitude of vegetable and animal 
 figures, inlaid in the flat surface of the encasing 
 marble. In its unrestored condition it received 
 Ruskin's warmest eulogy, but the whole is now 
 replaced by a cold modern copy, unsoftened by 
 the hand of time, from which little aesthetic 
 pleasure can be derived.* Incidentally, it is 
 
 * Two engravings in Stones of Venice and Seven Lamps are the best 
 existing records of its unrestored aspect.
 
 28 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 worth notice that this fa9ade, beloved by Ruskin 
 so dearly, was described by Leighton as " un- 
 fathomed foolishness." Are we, therefore, to 
 conclude that one of these great men was wholly 
 right and the other wholly wrong ? I think not. 
 Their radical difference of judgment arose from 
 the fact that in the same work of art each 
 beheld a quality not discerned by the other, and 
 each failed to behold a quality by the other dis- 
 cerned. Ruskin saw, and was specially capable 
 of appreciating, the details of decoration, but he 
 was careless about the general design. Leigh- 
 ton was struck by the feebleness of the general 
 design, regarded as a work of architecture, for 
 which the decorative details (possibly when he 
 saw them already restored) were no compensa- 
 tion in his eyes. Thus difficult is it for any 
 man, however gifted, to preserve at all times 
 the balance of all his powers of discrimination. 
 
 This scheme of inlaid decoration is to be re- 
 garded as an example of Saracenic influence. 
 Probably we must look to Cairo and Damascus 
 for the origin of the double columns, knotted 
 together as if they were ropes, examples of
 
 THE CATHEDRAL AT PISA. 29 
 
 which may be found all over Italy. They may, 
 indeed, have come to Venice by way of Con- 
 stantinople, but even so I do not believe them 
 to have been of Byzantine invention. Como 
 architects adopted them early in the thirteenth 
 century, as the Broletto of Como stands to 
 prove. The inlaid beasts of Lucca were cer- 
 tainly of Mussulman origin, and their parallel 
 can be found in the East to-day. 
 
 Equally instructive, as showing the various 
 factors that combined to produce the first 
 Italian Renaissance, are the churches at Pisa 
 especially the wonderful group of Cathedral, 
 Baptistery, and Campanile, which was built 
 simultaneously with the Lucca churches. Of 
 the Campanile, the world-renowned Leaning 
 Tower, we need say no more than that it is 
 architecturally an example of what Leighton 
 called " unfathomed foolishness " ; but no such 
 stricture can be passed on the Cathedral or the 
 Baptistery. The former is a Christian Basilica, 
 Romanesque in general plan ; but, had there 
 been no Byzantium, the Baptistery would cer- 
 tainly have been different. The well-known
 
 30 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 Baptistery at Florence is an example of a con- 
 temporary Romanesque building of the same 
 kind. The differences between them are due 
 to the strength of Byzantine influence at Pisa 
 and the absence of it at Florence. But it is in 
 the details of sculptured decoration at Pisa that 
 we find direct evidence of the participation of 
 Greek artists. It is customary nowadays to 
 regard Vasari's statements with grave suspicion. 
 He is, however, uncommonly likely to be right 
 when he records the traditions current in his 
 day. He says that in Niccolo Pisano's time 
 certain Greek sculptors were carving the figures 
 and other incised ornaments of the Cathedral 
 and Baptistery of Pisa, and he further states 
 that " besides the ancient sarcophagi there were 
 many spoils of marbles brought by the Pisan 
 fleet," amongst which doubtless may be num- 
 bered some fine pieces of Byzantine, and 
 perhaps even of Saracenic, work still discover- 
 able in the Campo Santo. 
 
 It is worth mentioning that Diotisalvi, the 
 architect of the Baptistery, was a Lucca man, 
 who had built St. Cristoforo's at home, before
 
 
 
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 PI SAN BYZANTINE. 31 
 
 (in 1158) he was fetched away to Pisa to 
 superintend a greater work. It was evidently 
 at Pisa that he fell under Byzantine influence. 
 For all we know a Greek may have been asso- 
 ciated with him as designer of the Baptistery. 
 At all events, the sculptors of much of the 
 decoration were certainly Greeks. As an ex- 
 ample of pure Byzantine work of a fine type, 
 probably carved on the spot and for its place, 
 I would cite the upper lintel stone of the 
 eastern portal of the Baptistery, whereon are 
 depicted Christ blessing the Cup, with the 
 Virgin on His right, John the Baptist on His 
 left, and four angels flanking them on either 
 side, the two ends of the band being pleasantly 
 filled with the similitude of palm-trees. No- 
 thing can be imagined more severe, nothing 
 more dignified, than these half-length figures. 
 As architectural decoration they fulfil every 
 requirement. Their drapery is perfectly simple. 
 There is nothing experimental or uncertain 
 about the work. The stone is wrought to a 
 high degree of finish ; faces and figures repro- 
 duce forms as severely typical as those of any
 
 32 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 statue of Buddha. It is not popular work in 
 any sense, but traditional, and evidently comes 
 from no turbulent, rapidly developing or chang- 
 ing society, but from one which has attained its 
 final form and produced its ripest fruit. 
 
 Equally remarkable, and for its position 
 equally decorative, is the lower belt of carving, 
 once separated from the upper by an inscrip- 
 tion now unfortunately lost. At first sight it 
 seems so different from the other that Ruskin 
 described it as "already semi-Gothic." Yet on 
 close examination I find it to be wholly free 
 from Northern influence. As in the upper stone 
 we have a fine example of the Byzantine em- 
 blematic treatment, in the lower we find a 
 specimen of Byzantine narrative, beautifully 
 wrought out in every detail, compact, and as 
 complete a telling of the legend as the space 
 could be made to hold. The decorative pur- 
 pose of the work is never for a moment subor- 
 dinated to popular narrative effect. The story 
 is only told to those who will patiently puzzle 
 it out, and by no means shouted from the wall 
 in the later fashion of the fourteenth century.
 
 A BYZANTINE SARCOPHAGUS. 33 
 
 It is a beautiful example of Byzantine reserve, 
 a quality inherited from classical times and 
 never lost by Greek artists even down to the 
 present day. 
 
 Portions of a very interesting sarcophagus, 
 labelled Byzantine, are preserved in the Pisa 
 Campo Santo, and were doubtless twelfth or 
 thirteenth century loot from some Levantine 
 place. Pure Byzantine they are not, as an 
 examination of the figures in the central discs 
 of the panels immediately shows. The lovely 
 decoration seems to me rather Arabesque than 
 Byzantine. Let it suffice for us to call it 
 Levantine. Of the four panels required for the 
 face and ends of the sarcophagus one was 
 lacking. Its place was supplied by a panel of 
 local work, resembling the decorative panels 
 that form the breast- work surrounding the font 
 in the Baptistery. One of the latter panels is 
 obviously imitated from one of these older 
 imported panels, and affords us an admirable 
 instance and proof of the way in which the 
 nascent Pisan style was influenced by older 
 styles. The new panels are bolder in design, 
 
 3
 
 34 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 calculated to produce their effect at a greater 
 distance, and more under the dominion of archi- 
 tecture than the older panels. Those existed 
 to be looked at for their own sake ; the new 
 panels are made to contribute to the general 
 effect of a great composition. No one can 
 enter the Baptistery and not feel its interior to 
 be enriched by them. Yet, during somewhat 
 long and frequent visits to that building I have 
 seldom seen a visitor stop to look at them. 
 Whether they were the work of Greeks acting 
 under the orders of a local architect, or of local 
 sculptors inspired by Oriental examples such as 
 the one I have shewn you, I cannot say. The 
 result in either case is the same. Oriental 
 decorative traditions found their way into Pisan 
 workshops and produced a permanent effect on 
 the workmen. 
 
 In this medium of mingling art traditions and 
 vigorous artistic impulse, Niccolo Pisano grew 
 up and learnt his craft as mason, sculptor, and 
 architect. We need now only concern ourselves 
 with one of his works, the famous pulpit in the 
 Pisan Baptistery, which he finished in the year
 
 NICCOLO PISANO. 35 
 
 1260. He may then have been about fifty 
 years old. At all events, he was no longer 
 young ; his style was formed ; he was an artist 
 of experience. A single glance at the pulpit 
 suffices to show the strength of the Roman 
 classical tradition by which the artist was ani- 
 mated. We do not need Vasari to tell us that 
 Niccolo was an earnest student of Roman sculp- 
 ture. He was not the first local artist to 
 imitate Roman work, for Biduinus had done so 
 before him, copying in bas-relief a lion slaugh- 
 tering a roe, which the visitor to the Campo 
 Santo may still behold. Biduinus, however, 
 was a poor artist ; Niccolo a great one. We 
 can point to a vase and sarcophagus, still pre- 
 served in the Campo Santo, from which he 
 took hints ; but his works are not copies of the 
 antique, though inspired by the antique style. 
 If he learnt anything from the Greek sculptors, 
 it was the delicate manipulation of marble. 
 His sculptures are carried to a finer finish than 
 those of any earlier local sculptor. His style 
 of design, however, is wholly free from Byzan- 
 tine tendency. His figures are arranged, and 
 
 3*
 
 36 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 indeed overcrowded, in the later Roman way, 
 but they incarnate the classical, not the Byzan- 
 tine dignity. His Virgin is a Juno, not by 
 any means the Greek M?)rr?p Otov. His angels 
 are not the Byzantine courtiers of the Greeks. 
 He arrived at his forms by combined study of 
 nature and of classical Roman remains. There 
 is thus nothing popular about his treatment. 
 He was not appealing to the multitude, but to 
 a class. The employers for whom he worked 
 set the tone of his work. His art is aristo- 
 cratic rich, magnificent, dignified, learned, as 
 the arts in aristocratic periods are wont to be. 
 
 The architecture of Niccolo's pulpit sets us a 
 more difficult problem to solve. We can find 
 the sources of his sculpture style, but whence 
 came the architectural motive ? Earlier pulpits 
 were oblong in plan. The hexagonal form of 
 this one may have been suggested by the 
 roundness of the building in which it was to 
 stand. If the cusped arches and pilasters 
 between them were removed, and the body of 
 the pulpit were placed directly on the capitals 
 of the columns, the thing would be Romanesque.
 
 AHnari. Photo. 
 
 Niccolo Pisa no. 
 
 PULPIT IN THE BAPTISTERY AT PISA. 
 
 Farini; page 37.
 
 NICCOLO'S FIRST PULPIT. 37 
 
 There are two Byzantine capitals under the 
 staircase, but I doubt their belonging to 
 Niccolo's design, for they are quite out of har- 
 mony with the rest. The question that awaits 
 an answer is, Where did the cusped arches 
 come from ? They are not Byzantine. Cusped 
 arches, indeed, are found in France in the early 
 years of the thirteenth century, as at St. Jean 
 in Chalons-sur-Marne, at Amiens, and at Sees. 
 We find a quatre-foil window in 1215. Not 
 improbably, if more twelfth or early thirteenth 
 century Florentine and Pisan palaces had come 
 down to us, we might find examples of cusped 
 arches in them also, earlier in date than this pulpit. 
 The destruction of palaces that went on in 
 the thirteenth century was wholesale. The 
 materials of at least sixty of them were 
 used up in ten years in Florence alone for 
 building the city walls. From ancient accounts 
 we gather that the fa9ades of twelfth century 
 Tuscan palaces resembled those of the Pisan 
 and Lucca churches, and, like them, were 
 decorated with arcaded galleries. Possibly 
 enough, Niccolo's trefoil arches might find a
 
 38 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 parallel in some of these destroyed facades. 
 Or he may have taken the idea of them from 
 some Como workman. Ultimately, however, 
 they are doubtless of Oriental origin. Niccolo 
 uses them in no experimental manner. By 
 means of them he gives to his pulpit a third 
 horizontal division, beautifully proportioned 
 between the other two. The result is admir- 
 able. The pulpit was imitated several times 
 both by himself and by his pupils, but not 
 equalled. It is to be regarded, not as an inno- 
 vating example of a new style, but as the cul- 
 mination of a style that had been developing 
 for at least two centuries and was on the verge 
 of being replaced by another. Niccolo, as we 
 shall hereafter see, lived to be himself affected 
 by the new tendencies, and injuriously affected. 
 He is to be remembered as the last and 
 greatest sculptor of the first Italian Renaissance, 
 of that movement which began in the eleventh 
 century and was closed for Italy at the end of 
 the thirteenth. 
 
 We have now, in conclusion, to enquire what 
 was the condition of the pictorial arts during
 
 BYZANTINE-ITALIAN PAINTINGS. 39 
 
 this same period. The old writers give us the 
 impression that painting at this time was done 
 chiefly by Greek masters. But such poor 
 remains of mural decoration as have come 
 down to us make it certain that local painters 
 were employed in no inconsiderable number. It 
 is easy to prove that, side by side with Greek 
 artists and Italians working under them, paint- 
 ings were made and mosaics designed in a 
 style that was not Greek. Painting, in fact, 
 tells the same tale that we have heard from 
 architecture and sculpture. It shows that when 
 the demand for works of art revived, under 
 the impulse of growing prosperity, in the chief 
 centres of Italian wealth, patrons availed them- 
 selves of such skill as the localities afforded, 
 importing where possible the best artists they 
 could procure from abroad to supervise and 
 direct native workmen. It shows also that local 
 painters, stimulated by steadier employment to 
 improve their powers, turned, like the sculptors, 
 to study the best examples of their Art acces- 
 sible to them. We find several instances of a 
 return to classical models, . especially in details
 
 40 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 of painted decoration ; but we likewise find that 
 Byzantine influences were much stronger over 
 painting than they were over sculpture, for 
 the simple reason that surviving classical 
 Roman paintings of a Christian type were few 
 and unimportant, whilst the whole Christian 
 world was flooded with the exported product 
 of the painters' studios of Constantinople. 
 
 It seems clear that in the twelfth and early 
 thirteenth centuries, such cities as Pisa, Lucca, 
 Siena, Florence, and still more Venice, sup- 
 plied themselves with the panel pictures they 
 required by trade with Constantinople. The 
 galleries of Pisa and Siena to-day are singularly 
 rich in old Byzantine pictures and icons, chiefly 
 of an inferior kind. For one that has sur- 
 vived, a hundred may have been destroyed. 
 Thus, as far as panel pictures were concerned, 
 the patron of those days was accustomed to the 
 Byzantine style and wanted nothing better. In 
 wall decoration local painters may have had a 
 freer hand, but they could only obtain approba- 
 tion for panel pictures similar to those produced 
 by Byzantine artists.
 
 BYZANTINE-ITALIAN PAINTINGS. 41 
 
 There is nothing surprising in this when we 
 remember that pictures at that time were only 
 required as decorative aids to devotion. No 
 feeling is more conservative as to forms than 
 the devotional. The recent action of the 
 Liverpool Cathedral Committee is an excellent 
 case in point. They declared that Gothic 
 architecture is essentially devotional architecture. 
 Historically of course it is nothing of the sort, 
 but English people have been so long accus- 
 tomed to worshipping in Gothic churches that 
 they prefer to build a forged Wardour Street 
 Cathedral in that style than to set up a better 
 edifice in the style of our own day. 
 
 Tuscan painters thus had their style decided 
 for them ; and that is doubtless why they 
 lagged in development behind contemporary 
 sculptors and architects. Imported pictures 
 were naturally of small size, but with so many 
 large churches building, it was not unnatural 
 that large altar pieces should presently have 
 been called for. I must so far anticipate as to 
 say that in the middle of the thirteenth century, 
 owing to the Franciscan movement, the Adora-
 
 42 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 tion of the Virgin received a great stimulus, 
 and imposing pictures of her were required. 
 Large paintings of Christ on the Cross were 
 likewise demanded. The best painters set 
 themselves mainly to produce works of these 
 two kinds. It is consequently among the large 
 Madonnas and Crucifixions of the thirteenth 
 century that we find the most finished examples 
 of painting, belonging to this epoch of Italian 
 Art. Many of these large Madonnas and Cru- 
 cifixions have survived, not because of their 
 preciousness as Works of Art, but through the 
 religous sentiment that gathered about them. 
 
 In the Church of San Dominico at Siena was 
 a famous Madonna by the painter Guido. It is 
 now in the Palazzo Publico, and bears the 
 modern date 1221. If this date could be 
 proved correct, we should be compelled to 
 recognise Guido of Siena as the first Italian 
 painter who mastered the Byzantine style and 
 adapted it to Tuscan requirements. Other 
 thirteenth century artists of importance were 
 the Berlingheri of Pescia, certain nameless 
 artists who painted frescoes at Assisi, Deodati
 
 Alinari, Photo. 
 
 Cimabne. 
 
 MADONNA. ^Lower Church, Assisi. 
 
 Facing faff 43.
 
 CIMABUE. 43 
 
 Orlandi of Lucca, Giunta of Pisa, and more. 
 The work of all these men shows the effort of 
 local artists to emulate the Greek style. If 
 naturalistic tendencies can be discovered in 
 their pictures, they found entrance not in con- 
 sequence of any striving of the artists to modify 
 or develop the Greek style in a new direction, 
 but because the style was foreign and they 
 could not entirely submerge themselves in it. 
 
 The greatest of the Byzantinized Italian 
 painters was Cimabue. Born in the first half of 
 the thirteenth century, he doubtless learned his 
 art, as tradition asserts, under Greek masters. 
 I can find no trace in any of his works of a 
 desire to innovate. He remained to the close 
 of his life thoroughly Greek in feeling. Our 
 estimate of him must be based on the 
 Madonna in the Academy at Florence, the 
 Rucellai Madonna in Santa Maria Morella, 
 some ruined frescoes and the beautiful 
 Madonna with angels at Assisi. The Madonnas 
 in the Louvre and the National Gallery are 
 probably school-pictures, closely imitated from 
 his works. Finally he is known to have been
 
 44 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 the designer of the figure of St. John the Bap- 
 tist in the Apse- Mosaic of the Cathedral at 
 Pisa. The finest and most mature of these 
 pictures is undoubtedly the Madonna and angels 
 painted on a wall of the lower Church of Assisi. 
 One glance at a photograph of it suffices to 
 show that here we have no innovator struggling 
 to express a new feeling in a new way, but 
 the accomplished exponent of an ancient and 
 established tradition. The artistic striving of 
 two centuries had led to this, that now there 
 were in Italy painters, who possessed mastery 
 in the old Christian style, men capable of 
 depicting with all needful refinement of finish 
 and pleasant dexterity of technique the Queen 
 and Courtiers of Heaven, splendid in dignity, 
 benign, and yet to us who know the pictures 
 that were to follow in the centuries then to 
 come, how aloof ! how reserved ! how sundered 
 from the common flesh and blood of human 
 mother and child. 
 
 Yet in this dignity, these large and simple 
 forms, this ideal majestic calm, there lingered, 
 nay, lived again the ancient classical power
 
 DUCCIO. 45 
 
 which might forthwith have blossomed, in who 
 shall say what glory, if the times had been 
 propitious and the demand for work of this 
 character had continued. But a new day was 
 at hand, new forces were working, destined 
 presently to revolutionize society and place the 
 control of the Art-Fund in the hands of new 
 men whom the old aristocratic and dignified 
 ideals did not please. With this revolution the 
 First Italian Renaissance was brought to a 
 close. Cimabue is not to be regarded as the 
 first Master of the new epoch, but as one of 
 the last and one of the greatest of the old. 
 What he was at Florence, that was Duccio at 
 Siena great Masters both of them, Greeks at 
 heart, the last of their artistic race. With 
 Niccolo Pisano, Cimabue, and Duccio the old 
 order passed away, and the promise of an im- 
 mediate classical revival ceased. Niccolo in his 
 old age experienced and yielded to the new 
 influences. Cimabue and Duccio never gave 
 way to them. They must have felt the 
 changes that were at hand ; but the dignity of 
 the Past had mastered their minds, and the old
 
 46 THE FIRST IMPULSE. 
 
 Ideals lived too strongly in them to be 
 abandoned. 
 
 There is something splendid in this Artistic 
 loyalty to the Past, like that of a noble caste 
 to an old Regime. The time may be against 
 them : they will not yield to the time. Popular 
 forces may be urging them into new paths ; 
 they will not budge ; they stick to the old. 
 While life is in them they adhere to the Ideal 
 to which they were born. It is at the moment 
 of perishing that some societies show themselves 
 at their best. Their last flower is finest. Thus 
 it was with the aristocratic classical Renaissance 
 in Italy. It produced great works and seemed 
 to be on the verge of producing greater when 
 life was withdrawn from it, and it made way 
 for a new movement, animated by a new and 
 conquering Ideal, and carried on by a new 
 class of men. To this movement our attention 
 must now be turned. 
 
 I shall have failed in my purpose, if I have 
 not implanted a suspicion in your minds, to be 
 verified hereafter I trust, or refuted, by your 
 own studies of the actual monuments of the
 
 A RENAISSANCE BEFORE GIOTTO. 47 
 
 period, that the works of Art, made in Italy in 
 the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, 
 possess high qualities of their own, different in 
 kind from those of later Italian Schools, but 
 equally precious. Blot out from Venice, Verona, 
 Lombardy, Tuscany, Rome, and Sicily the 
 buildings, mosaics, sculptures, and paintings 
 made during this period ; Italy would be notably 
 impoverished, especially in the element of 
 artistic grandeur. The Renaissance did not 
 begin with Giotto. Before he was born, it had 
 been proceeding for nearly three centuries, and 
 even before them Art had never been wholly 
 extinct. It is only in the North-West of Europe 
 that we can properly speak of the Dark Ages. 
 The lamp of Art burned in Italy from almost 
 pre-historic times, and burns to-day. It has 
 burned low during long periods ; sometimes it 
 has flickered as though about to expire ; but it 
 has always revived to shine even brighter than 
 before. Who shall say what the future may 
 yet have in store for that fair country and 
 fascinating race to which civilization is so 
 deeply indebted ?
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND THE POPULAR 
 REVOLUTION. 
 
 IN the previous chapter I endeavoured to 
 sketch the state of the arts and of civilization 
 in Italy during the twelfth and part of the 
 thirteenth centuries. A great change was at 
 hand. The period was one of increasing 
 upper-class prosperity, growing refinement, 
 developing luxury, expanding trade. The 
 relatively rich grew richer, the established 
 nobility more powerful. It was an age of 
 town growth. Population seems to have 
 flocked to and crowded the towns, where 
 new-built palaces crushed the hovels of the 
 abounding poor. We hear little about the 
 poor of those days, but we can infer that 
 poverty was grinding. The poor must have
 
 CIVILIZATION IN THE 12 TH CENTURY. 49 
 
 lived on the verge of possible sustenance, for 
 when famine came they died in multitudes. 
 Leprosy was rife amongst them ; plague 
 frequent. The monastic orders strong at 
 that time were mainly aristocratic,- such as 
 the Clunyites, cultivators of learning and peace 
 in a tumultuous age. Their business was to 
 save their own souls, not the souls of others. 
 The poor suffered in silence chiefly. Little at- 
 tention was paid to them. There was hardly 
 any folk-preaching. Such sermons as were de- 
 livered were, for the most part, in Latin, and 
 dealt with hair-splitting scholastic questions, 
 doctrinal disquisitions, types, symbols, and 
 allegories, outside the range of the popular 
 mind. A specimen Bishop of the day, when 
 asked to permit an itinerant evangelist to 
 preach, replied, " I can do all the preaching 
 my people need." His idea of spiritual pabu- 
 lum for his diocese was probably half-a-dozen 
 Latin sermons formally read on special occa- 
 sions during the year. 
 
 Yet at this time of aristocratic prosperity 
 and predominance, a new class was growing 
 
 4
 
 50 FRANCIS OF A SSI SI. 
 
 up, nourishing new ideas, not yet expressed, 
 and preparing a social revolution of high 
 import for the future of European civilization. 
 If commerce was not yet enriching the poor, 
 it was forming a middle-class of merchants 
 and skilled workmen. Doubtless in every 
 town of Italy many well-to-do commercial 
 families might have been found. At Assisi 
 resided one such family, into whose interior 
 life we can still penetrate with some clearness 
 of vision. The father, Pietro Bernardone by 
 name, was of Lucca descent. Lucca was a 
 centre of silk manufacture ; Bernardone was 
 a dealer in goods of that kind. His busi- 
 ness used to take him abroad, especially 
 to Provence, where he sold his wares and 
 found a wife. Why an Assisi merchant 
 should go peddling in Provence I cannot 
 say, but so it was. In his Assisi home 
 were bales of goods, which his French wife 
 stayed at home to look after. There, in 
 the year 1181 or 1182, a son was born to 
 him, during his absence, and named John. 
 This John Bernardone was destined to be-
 
 SOCIAL CONDITIONS. 51 
 
 come famous, as we shall see, so that many 
 details of his early life have been recorded. 
 He represents the upper middle-class of the 
 day. His father was rich as times went. 
 The boy learnt two languages, Latin and 
 French, was something of a poet, grew up 
 to be a captivating youth, and associated 
 with the young nobles of his city, even 
 taking a leading place amongst them. In- 
 spirer of revels and first in every frolic, 
 he shines out upon us from his earliest days 
 a brightly animated creature, a captivator of 
 hearts. 
 
 Such prominent merchant families tended 
 to associate with the nobles, but there must 
 have been plenty of tradesmen and artisans 
 less well-to-do. These tended to form a class, 
 opposed in spirit to the aristocracy, taking 
 no share in their sports, and not sympathis- 
 ing with their endless feuds ; for the family 
 and local feuds, that were the great fun of 
 that day to the parties that fought in them, 
 must have been very distasteful to artisans 
 and traders. Amongst such folk, and even 
 
 4*
 
 52 FRANCIS OF A SSI SI. 
 
 amongst the poor, the new spirit was spread- 
 ing. Workmen united in the cities into new 
 guilds. All sorts of new ideas, termed heresies, 
 found expression and received support from 
 more or less loosely organised bodies of men. 
 Petrus Waldus was only one of many inno- 
 vators, who came to grief in contact with the 
 established order. It was a fine turmoil of 
 a world, big with new issues to be fought out, 
 big with possibilities, abounding in hope and 
 courage, abounding also in misery and 
 despair. 
 
 To this world of keen town life, of growing 
 activity and waxing wealth, of rich young 
 knights fighting for sport, of passionate 
 rivalries, of aristocratic dominance and com- 
 mercial pushing, a world too of sad human 
 hearts, of grinding poverty, of disease and 
 manifold death, of discontent with old ideals, 
 of aspiration toward a better future, a 
 world for all its shouting practically dumb, 
 for all its peering out into the darkness 
 practically blind came suddenly, at the 
 most unexpected place, that flaming, start-
 
 THE COMING OF FRANCIS. 53 
 
 ling, over-powering apparition Francis of 
 Assisi.* 
 
 Upon the people sitting in darkness he burst 
 effulgent, coruscating, bewitching, like the 
 arctic aurora. To them he seemed fire of 
 heaven and brightness of the splendour of 
 God. The mediaeval imagination surrounded 
 the divinity with nine spheres of angelic 
 hierarchies. Outmost were angels and arch- 
 angels. Then " Thrones, Dominations, 
 Princedoms, Virtues, Powers." Finally, 
 
 Cherubim, embodying the love of God, and, 
 inmost of all, Seraphim, the ineffable glory 
 
 * Francis of Assisi was born 1181 or 1182, son of Pietro Bernardone 
 and Madonna Pica, his wife. He was named John and nicknamed 
 Francis, the Frenchman, because he spoke French. 1206 was the year of 
 his Conversion and Renunciation. 1209, he restored the Portiuncula. 
 1210, he and eleven followers applied to Innocent III. and obtained leave 
 to preach. He returned to Assisi and settled at Rivotorto, then moved to 
 the Portiuncula. This became the centre of his growing order. The rest 
 of his life was spent in wandering and preaching. 1212, Conversion of St. 
 Clare and foundation of the order of "Poor Clares." 1213, Clares settle 
 at St. Damiano. 1218, Brother Elias sent to the East. 1219, mission 
 sent to Hungary. 1219 or 1220 Francis went to Egypt and had an inter- 
 view with Sultan Alkamil (A. H. 615 635). 1221, great assemblage of 
 Franciscans at the Portiuncula ; Francis resigned generalship of the order. 
 1223, Bull of Honorius III. formally approving Francis' rule. 1224, 
 Vision on Mount Alvernia, the foundation of the "stigmata" legend; 
 4 Oct. 1226, Francis died at the Portiuncula ; 16 July, 1228, Canonised 
 on the day of the foundation of the Church of St. Francis at Assisi.
 
 54 FRANCIS OF ASSIST. 
 
 of his immediate presence. The people of 
 the thirteenth century expressed their sense 
 of the rare personality of Francis, by describ- 
 ing him as a seraph, lent to this poor world 
 for a brief space, a tongue of flame floated 
 down from the central glory of the Most High. 
 Seldom, indeed, has so pure and fair a soul, in 
 flight from heaven to heaven, lit upon our 
 earth a while and wakened it with such celes- 
 tial praise. By common agreement of men of 
 all subsequent generations and schools of 
 thought, Francis of Assisi is numbered among 
 the world's greatest men. He belongs, more- 
 over, to the very few, whom posterity loves 
 and will remember with affection when the 
 names of men it has feared, followed, and 
 obeyed have passed into oblivion. 
 
 The reputation of most great men is based 
 upon what they did, of some upon what they 
 thought and said, but the reputation of Francis 
 rests upon what he was, the life he led, the 
 fascinating personality that his life revealed. 
 Coming when he did he was a saint, but he 
 possessed other than merely saintly qualities,
 
 FRANCIS' CHARACTER. 55 
 
 which, thank Heaven ! are not so rare in any 
 age. He united a strong practical capacity 
 to a nature intensely ideal and an artistic 
 creative disposition. He was a born leader 
 of men. His was essentially a taking persona- 
 lity. He could get his own way. He was a 
 man hard to deny. He inherited the light- 
 heartedness of the Provencals, and was en- 
 dowed also with their eloquence. He could 
 fire men's minds with his ideals the love of 
 God, of Nature, and of Mankind. " God's 
 Minstrel " they called him, Jongleur de Dieu. 
 With true artistic instinct he moulded his 
 own life into a perfect unity. From the 
 day of his Renunciation to the day of his 
 death, we do not hear of a single word or 
 action of his, out of harmony with the sin- 
 gleness and purity of his main idea. The old 
 hierarchies at first looked askance at him, 
 and bade him in his rags and filth go herd with 
 swine ; but the people accepted him at once, 
 God's poor, and even the hierarchies could 
 not long resist his potent charm. Christ-like 
 in life, more than any other man, he was
 
 5 6 FRANCIS OF A SSI SI. 
 
 Christ-like in effect. His power did not die 
 with him. The multitude of legends that 
 gathered about him enable us to judge of the 
 kind of impression he made upon the people 
 of his day. He seemed to them more than a 
 mere man. There was a moment when he 
 might have been proclaimed a reincarnation 
 of the divinity. Nothing but good states- 
 manship avoided that calamity. 
 
 Most of the great men of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury are names and little more. Francis is 
 a man of flesh and blood, so intimately known 
 to us that we can love him. People who came 
 in contact with him went away and wrote 
 down their impressions. It was an unusual 
 thing .to do in those days, but in Francis' 
 case it was frequently done. His portrait, 
 even, was painted. Several lives of him exist 
 written by his contemporary followers. They 
 present likenesses of a figure in all cases recog- 
 nisably the "same. His very \vords are some- 
 times reported with evident verbatim accuracy, 
 though unfortunately they only afford us 
 another instance of how little the reported
 
 FRANCIS' RENUNCIATION. 57 
 
 word may carry with it of the effect of the 
 word spoken. Francis was powerful as a 
 speaker, but his influence was based upon his 
 actions. He began by doing : he preached 
 afterwards because he could not help it. At 
 a critical moment the Gospel message came 
 to him : " Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, 
 . . . . freely ye have received, freely give. 
 Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in 
 your purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither 
 two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves." 
 He obeyed literally. He abandoned himself 
 to utter poverty and went to dwell with the 
 outcast lepers of Assisi and to care for them. 
 It was this forthright and downright obedi- 
 ence to spiritual prompting that made men 
 look to him at once, and prepared them to 
 hearken to his words. When John, son of 
 Bernardone, whom they had known gayest 
 among the gay, appeared in the heyday of his 
 young manhood, as Francis, frequenter of 
 lepers, who could choose but wonder ? His 
 action drew men to him. He did not seek 
 followers. They sought him. He did not in-
 
 58 FRANCIS OF ASSIST. 
 
 tend to found an order. The order formed 
 itself about him and he was forced to provide 
 it with a Rule. Its members came to do what 
 he did, to live his life. What he desired to 
 do was to obey the orders of Christ and to be 
 helpful to men. The old monastic orders had 
 been concerned with saving their own souls. 
 To this end they retired from the world and 
 gave themselves up to prayer. The new order 
 was concerned to save the souls of others. 
 Its members therefore frequented the busy 
 haunts of men and became preachers. 
 
 The world of Francis' own day thought of 
 him chiefly as a preacher. Years of ascetic 
 life spoiled his looks. His garments were 
 dirty, his person mean, his face not hand- 
 some,* but God gave his words unheard-of 
 power ; such is the record of one who heard 
 him. He said of himself, " I am small of 
 stature and black (statura pusillus nigerque). 
 Thomas of Celano, who minutely describes his 
 appearance, says that his voice was " power- 
 
 * ' ' Sordidus erat habitus ejus, persona contemptibilis, et fades indecora " 
 (Thomas Spalatensis).
 
 FRANCIS AS PREACHER. 59 
 
 ful, sweet, clear, and resonant." What, how- 
 ever, struck everyone was the winningness of 
 his personality, which appealed alike to the 
 individual, and the crowd. Men who came 
 in contact with him liked to stay near him, 
 and wanted to place themselves under his 
 orders. 
 
 As a preacher he was natural, rich in illus- 
 tration, apt narrative, and simile. He said 
 what came to him at the moment. Once only 
 do we hear of his carefully preparing a sermon 
 and committing it to memory. It was when 
 he was to preach before Pope and Cardinals, 
 and the welfare of his order required that he 
 should produce a good impression on them. 
 His patron, Ugolino, Bishop of Ostia (after- 
 ward the Pope Gregory IX., by whom Francis 
 was canonised), had arranged the meeting. 
 I quote the account of what happened from 
 Miss Lina Duff Gordon's excellent book on 
 Assisi : " When the slight, grey figure, the dust 
 of the Umbrian roads still clinging to his 
 sandals, stood up in the spacious hall of the 
 Lateran before Honorius and the venerable
 
 60 FRANCIS OF ASSIST. 
 
 cardinals, Ugolino watched with anxious eyes 
 the course of events. In mortal fear ' he 
 supplicated God with all his being that the 
 simplicity of the holy man should not become 
 an object of ridicule/ and resigning himself to 
 Providence he waited. There was a moment 
 of suspense, of awful silence, for Francis had 
 completely forgotten the sermon he had so 
 carefully learned by heart. But his humility 
 befriended him ; stepping forward a few paces 
 with a gesture of regret he quietly confessed 
 what had happened, and then, as if indeed 
 inspired, he broke forth into one of his most 
 eloquent sermons. ' He preached with such 
 fervour,' says Celano, ' that being unable to 
 contain himself for joy whilst proclaiming the 
 Word of God, he moved even his feet in the 
 manner of one dancing, not for play, but 
 driven thereto by the strength of the Divine 
 love that burnt within him ; therefore he 
 incited none to laughter, but drew tears of 
 sorrow from all.' ' 
 
 Francis' love of nature, and animals, of the 
 " whole creation," brings him very close to
 
 HIS LOVE OF NATURE. 61 
 
 the modern heart. Wild animals were not 
 afraid of him. Birds fluttered close about 
 him, as they did about Georges Sand, settling 
 on her pen as she sat writing out of doors. 
 Who does not know the tale of the falcon who 
 used to sit " tamely by him," and to awaken 
 him early to prayer ? or of the terrible wolf 
 of Agobio, who " came gently as a lamb and 
 lay him down at the feet of St. Francis," and 
 " with movements of body, tail and eyes, and 
 by bending of his head, gave sign of his assent 
 to what St. Francis said " ? or of the wild turtle- 
 doves that were being carried to market, which 
 Francis liberated, saying, " O my sisters, 
 simple-minded turtle - doves, innocent and 
 chaste, why have ye let yourselves be caught ? 
 Now would I fain deliver you from death and 
 make you nests, that ye may be fruitful and 
 multiply, according to the commandments of 
 your Creator." 
 
 Who does not remember that charming 
 story of how St. Francis once, going on his 
 way in happy mood, beheld a number of 
 birds in a tree, whereat he bade his com-
 
 62 FRANCIS OF ASSISL 
 
 panions wait while he went aside and preached 
 " to his little sisters, the birds." They flut- 
 tered down around him while he is reported 
 to have spoken in this wise : " My little sisters, 
 much bounden are ye unto God, your Creator, 
 and alway in every place ought ye to praise 
 Him, for that He hath given you liberty to 
 fly about everywhere, and hath also given 
 
 you double and triple rayment 
 
 Still more are ye beholden to Him for the 
 element of the air which He hath appointed 
 for you ; beyond all this, you sow not, neither 
 do you reap, and God feedeth you, and 
 giveth you the streams and fountains for your 
 drink, the mountains and the valleys for your 
 refuge, and the high trees whereon to make 
 your nests ; and because you know not how 
 to spin or sew, God clotheth you, you and 
 your children ; wherefore your Creator loveth 
 you much, seeing that He hath bestowed on 
 you so many benefits ; and therefore, my 
 little sisters, beware of the sin of ingratitude 
 and study always to give praises unto God." 
 It was, I think, love of wild nature as much
 
 THE "LAUDS OF THE SUN." 63 
 
 as desire of privacy that impelled Francis 
 from time to time to betake himself to remote 
 solitudes in the hills, or uninhabited islands in 
 the midst of a lake. There he abode awhile 
 and communed with God and his own heart. 
 Many beautiful spots, well worth seeking out, 
 are thus associated with his memory. Most 
 beautiful of all his recorded utterances, as 
 showing the intimacy of his affection for all 
 the works of God, are his " Lauds of the Sun," 
 wherein he speaks of " Brother Sun, my lord, 
 that doth illumine us with the dawning of the 
 day. Fair is he and bright, and the brightness 
 of his glory doth signify Thee, O Thou most 
 highest ; of sister Moon and the stars that 
 Thou hast shapen in the heavens, bright and 
 precious and comely ; of brother Wind and 
 the Air, and of the Clouds and the blue Sky, 
 and of all the times of the sky whereby Thou 
 dost make provision for Thy creatures ; of 
 sister Water, for manifold is her use, and 
 humble is she and precious and chaste ; of 
 brother Fire, by whom Thou dost lighten our 
 darkness : Fair is he and jocund and most
 
 64 FRANCIS OF ASSIST. 
 
 robust and strong ; of sister Earth our 
 mother that doth cherish us and hath us in 
 keeping, and doth bring forth fruit in abund- 
 ance and flowers of many colours and grass ; " 
 and finally even of " Sister Death " upon all 
 of whom he calls to praise the Lord. 
 
 In these and many similar utterances there 
 speaks a new voice, the voice of the modern 
 world. The poetry of Francis differed widely 
 from that of the court poets of the day. They 
 sang of love ; and, if of spring too, it was of 
 spring as the happy time for lovers. Francis 
 sang the love of God and praised all times 
 and seasons as appropriate to that. Other 
 Franciscan poets followed him, Fra Pacifico, 
 for instance, who was troubadour before he 
 became friar ; Thomas of Celano, too, probable 
 author of the famous hymn, thoroughly Fran- 
 ciscan in spirit, ' Dies irae, dies ilia " ; 
 Giacomino da Verona also ; and, more impor- 
 tant than all in literary history, Giacopone 
 da Todi. 
 
 As a preacher, Francis was likewise original. 
 He brought nature into his sermons. He was
 
 HIS PREACHING. 65 
 
 dramatic. He told the story of Christ Jesus, 
 and made its incidents visible and credible as 
 actual facts to his hearers. The Byzantine 
 Christ had been a heavenly King far aloof 
 from men. Christ, as Francis spoke of him, 
 became a man, the Virgin a woman. This 
 Franciscan method of exposition is well ex- 
 hibited in the beautiful M editationes Vita 
 Christi, which are ascribed, though perhaps 
 incorrectly, to Saint Bonaventura. We shall 
 presently see how powerful an effect upon Art 
 was wrought by the Franciscan school of 
 preachers. 
 
 One of the crying needs of the day was 
 preaching. Francis and his followers supplied 
 that need. What they had to say was what 
 the multitude wanted to hear. The time was 
 ripe for a society of preachers. Wherever 
 Francis went, crowds gathered to hear him. 
 It was the same with his great follower, 
 Anthony of Padua. A congregation estimated 
 at thirty thousand in number assembled to 
 listen to him outside the walls of Padua. Less 
 eloquent Franciscans gathered doubtless 
 
 5
 
 66 FRANCIS OF ASSIST. 
 
 smaller audiences, but all over Italy they 
 preached and were listened to, especially by 
 the common people of the towns. The nobles 
 seem to have been less impressed. At 
 Perugia, for instance, Brother Leo relates that 
 once, when Francis was preaching in the 
 Piazza, the knights careered through it on 
 their horses, and played with their arms, to 
 the hindering of his preaching, nor would 
 they desist when asked. Thereupon Francis 
 addressing them said : 
 
 ' The Lord hath exalted you above all your 
 neighbours, and therefore ought you the more 
 willingly to acknowledge your Creator by 
 humbling you, not unto God alone, but like- 
 wise unto your neighbours. But your heart 
 is lifted up in pride, and you do waste your 
 neighbours, and slay many ; wherefore I say 
 unto you that, save you be quickly converted 
 unto God and do make satisfaction of those 
 things wherein you have offended, the Lord 
 which leaveth nought unpunished, to sorer 
 vengeance upon you and to your punishment 
 and to your shame, shall make you rise up
 
 THE NEW IDEAL. 67 
 
 one against another ; and in the sedition that 
 shall be raised and in civil war, so great tribu- 
 lation shall you suffer as never could your 
 neighbours wreak upon you." 
 
 This utterance is significant, expressing as 
 it does the conscious divergence between the 
 old knightly ideal and those of the new indus- 
 trial class. The Franciscan order and the 
 industrial class were of one mind. In Francis 
 and his followers, the new tendencies found a 
 voice. The industrial class and the Franciscan 
 order grew up together. Before Francis had 
 been dead twenty years there was hardly a 
 city in Italy without a Franciscan convent. 
 So rapidly did they increase in size, moreover, 
 that several of them had to be rebuilt or en- 
 larged more than once before the end of the 
 thirteenth century. You never hear of a 
 Franciscan convent in the country ; all are in 
 towns. The Minorite Friars were essentially 
 a town order. Their work was in towns. 
 Their numbers were chiefly recruited from 
 town-folk. It was the towns that supplied, 
 by multitudes of small subscriptions, the money 
 
 r*
 
 68 FRANCIS OF ASSIST. 
 
 requisite to the building and support of their 
 churches and convents. Francis himself had 
 wished that his followers should devote them- 
 selves absolutely to poverty. Neither indivi- 
 dually nor collectively were they to own 
 property. Their convents were to consist of 
 a number of little mud and wood huts, built 
 on a patch of ground, lent or rented for that 
 purpose. Their churches were to be mean 
 and destitute of decoration. In fact, church 
 and convent were to resemble St. Mary's of 
 the Little Plot near Assisi, such as it was 
 when Francis died there in 1226. 
 
 In this and many other respects, however, 
 Francis' wishes were not attended to. When 
 he died the order came under the control of 
 the masterful, capable, and ambitious Brother 
 Elias, who recognised that so ideal an institu- 
 tion could not long last. In the hands of 
 Elias and a group of similarly minded men, 
 the simple life of Francis became enshrined 
 in a series of miraculous legends, culminating 
 in that of the Stigmata. His body was buried 
 in a great church built and splendidly deco-
 
 A POPULAR MOVEMENT. 69 
 
 rated in his honour. His simple order of 
 poor unlearned preachers became possessed 
 of a number of splendid convents and great 
 churches, not only throughout Italy, but all 
 over Europe. The fact that money was forth- 
 coming for all this work, and to support the 
 crowd of Franciscans that so rapidly increased 
 in number, is proof that the order thus 
 modified met some real needs of the day. 
 
 When we come to consider these Fran- 
 ciscan churches, we shall find the Church of 
 Santa Croce at Florence to be typical of them. 
 It was not a mere coincidence that, in the 
 year 1250, the merchants and tradesmen of 
 Florence, before marching to the palace of the 
 Podesta to upset the old aristocratic govern- 
 ment of their city and establish a new popular, 
 or rather commercial government, assembled 
 in the square of Sta. Croce. Amongst the many 
 broils and tumults of medieval Italian cities, 
 one revolution reads rather like another. 
 But this Florentine revolution of 1250 was a 
 turning point in the city's history. It marked 
 the coming to power of the new men the
 
 70 FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 
 
 industrial class. It marked the close of the 
 purely aristocratic epoch. It presently in- 
 volved an artistic revolution also. With the 
 new governing class came a new spirit, pro- 
 ducing a new artistic ideal. How far the 
 Franciscans of Florence were instrumental 
 in stirring up the revolution we cannot say. 
 That they must have sympathised with it is 
 certain. Churchmen before Francis' time had 
 been allied to the old gentry and had sprung 
 from their caste. The new friars were of the 
 people and soon found themselves in opposi- 
 tion to the old clergy. The people deserted 
 the cathedrals and parish churches for the 
 churches of the friars. Naturally , the estab- 
 lished clergy did not like it ; they suffered, 
 not merely in prestige, but in purse. The 
 Papacy, by good luck or profound foresight, 
 had attached the friars to itself. A political 
 fact of more importance for the time can scarcely 
 be indicated. The results of the alliance were 
 far reaching and of long continuance. Thus 
 it came about that the Guelphs, the party of 
 the Pope, were likewise the popular party.
 
 GUELPHS AND GHIBELLINES. 71 
 
 The Ghibellines, the party of the Emperor, 
 were the aristocratic party. The Guelphs were 
 political reformers, the Ghibellines conser- 
 vatives. We shall find the distinction mani- 
 fested in the arts of the time. Where the 
 Guelphs controlled the Art-Fund we shall find 
 the new style of Art preferred ; where the Art- 
 Fund is controlled by the Ghibellines we shall 
 find the transition more gradual. 
 
 Bear in mind that neither Florence nor any 
 city of Italy took the lead in the new political 
 development. It was in the North of Europe, 
 in France and England, that the commercial 
 classes first obtained control of the towns. It 
 was also in France (and soon afterwards in 
 England) that the new artistic tendencies took 
 form, and were soonest and best expressed, in 
 the style we call Gothic. You will everywhere, 
 I think, find Gothic architecture (in its early 
 stages) to be the indication of the coming of 
 the new popular commercial class to a position 
 of power, or at least influence. The introduc- 
 tion of Gothic Art into Italy was, at all events, 
 synchronous with the popular movement.
 
 72 FRANCIS OF ASSISL 
 
 Modern times afford an analogy, which, how- 
 ever, must not be pressed too far. The French 
 revolutionary movement affected a large part 
 of Europe and was warmly approved in the 
 United States. England stood outside of it. 
 Where the French armies reached, or where 
 French ideas obtained acceptance, the French 
 style of architecture and many other French 
 fashions and methods spread. Those who 
 looked up to Paris as leading the world were 
 ready to imitate the ways and fashions of 
 Paris. A comparison between the domestic 
 and street architecture of London and New 
 York to-day manifests the different tendencies 
 of the people of the two cities in this respect. 
 Of course, nowadays other forces are in the 
 ascendant ; I am speaking of the effect pro- 
 duced by work done and traditions estab- 
 lished up to half a century ago. 
 
 Nothing was more natural than that the 
 new popular mendicant orders and guild- 
 governments in Italy should look to France 
 for fashions in Art, as well as for political in- 
 fluences. France in return welcomed the Fran-
 
 THE CHURCHES AT ASSISI. 73 
 
 ciscans. It seems clear that St. Louis was of 
 a Franciscan cast of mind. Legend says that 
 he and Francis met in a romantic fashion. 
 They may have done so ; at all events, their 
 ideas were of similar quality. It is thus not 
 surprising that most of the early Franciscan 
 churches were built in the foreign Gothic style, 
 more or less weakly apprehended by local 
 architects. 
 
 The first erected Franciscan church of im- 
 portance that still exists was built to contain 
 the body, enshrine the memory, and proclaim 
 the glory of St. Francis himself. The first 
 stone of it was laid two years after Francis' 
 death, by Pope Gregory IX., who had been 
 his friend, and who came to Assisi to pronounce 
 his canonization. Owing to the accident of 
 the site on which it is built, it is an exceptional 
 edifice, consisting of two churches, one exactly 
 on the top of the other a two-storeyed church. 
 The lower is round-arched and vaulted ; the 
 upper is in the pointed style. We need not 
 pause over this architecture of Franciscan 
 Assisi, because it is in no sense first-rate.
 
 74 FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 
 
 Lovers of Art go to Assisi not to study archi- 
 tecture but painting, and to that we shall 
 presently return. 
 
 The Franciscan churches in the large towns 
 had a different purpose from the Church of 
 St. Francis at Assisi. That was a monument 
 and place of pilgrimage. They were churches 
 of daily resort, places for the assembly of large 
 congregations, primarily preaching places. At 
 first, therefore, the mendicant friars, both 
 Franciscan and Dominican, did not need 
 splendid churches, but large ones, unencum- 
 bered by massive pillars, so that a crowded 
 congregation might see and hear in them. The 
 friars' churches, therefore, were generally built 
 of brick, where brick was cheapest. They were 
 often roofed with wood rather than vaulted with 
 stone. The old Romanesque style was not 
 suited to them ; the new Gothic was easy of 
 adaptation to the requirements of their plan. 
 
 The right which the mendicant orders ob- 
 tained to bury the dead within their convents 
 has to be remembered. It enabled the friars 
 to grant to the families of their wealthy sup-
 
 THE NEW TYPE OF CHURCH. 75 
 
 porters permission to erect family chapels in 
 their churches. The long row of chapels at 
 the east end of Santa Croce and around its 
 transepts is thus accounted for. They are 
 not popularly known as the chapel of this or 
 the other saint, but of such and such a family 
 the Bardi, the Peruzzi, and so forth. The 
 owners of these chapels hastened to decorate 
 them with painting or sculpture, perhaps not 
 unmoved by rivalry one with another ; or 
 they set up fine altars and altar-pieces within 
 them. The communities of friars were not 
 backward in raising funds for the decoration 
 of the body of the church and the chief halls 
 and cloisters of the convent. 
 
 Bear in mind that the buildings themselves 
 were for' the most part of brick, and lacked 
 structural magnificence. Compare the interior 
 of Santa Croce with that, say, of the Cathedral 
 of Pisa the difference is immediately mani- 
 fest. The decoration of a plain building must 
 be applied decoration. It might have con- 
 sisted of mosaics and fine marbles, as in the 
 interior of St. Mark's, but that would have been
 
 76 FRANCIS OF A SSI SI. 
 
 too slow and costly a process. Moreover, the 
 old style of design associated with mosaic was 
 not popular. Something more direct, more 
 readily understandable, was needed. The day 
 for Byzantine symbolism was done. Francis 
 and his followers had supplanted symbolism by 
 fact. What their congregations were inter- 
 ested in were the New Testament story and 
 the lives of the saints. They wanted to see 
 pictures of the life of Christ, the doings, adven- 
 tures, and martyrdoms of the saints. They 
 wanted pictures, pictures they could under- 
 stand, and plenty of them. Thus a great 
 demand for anecdotal fresco painting arose. 
 It matched the taste of the day and the oppor- 
 tunity afforded by these many large new 
 buildings. How that demand was supplied 
 and the effect it produced upon Italian Art is 
 a subject to which our attention must presently 
 be turned. 
 
 But first let us briefly consider the progress 
 of the contemporary school of Tuscan sculpture 
 during this interesting transitional period. We 
 have already studied the pulpit which Niccolo
 
 A NEW STYLE IN SCULPTURE. 77 
 
 Pisano made for the Pisan Baptistery in 1260, 
 ten years after the Florentine revolution and 
 thirty-four years after the death of Francis. 
 We saw that it was a work done under the 
 control of the aristocratic ideal in the old 
 classical style. It is remarkable, indeed, as 
 indicative of the popularity of preaching, that 
 this and other pulpits should have been made 
 with so much elaboration about this period. 
 But I doubt whether Niccolo's pulpit was 
 placed at the disposal of a Franciscan friar 
 for many years after its erection. It is far 
 better suited to be the platform of a formal 
 episcopal communication than of an impas- 
 sioned popular orator. 
 
 After the completion of this pulpit Niccolo 
 may have worked for the Dominican friars 
 at Bologna. He was then commissioned to 
 make a pulpit for the Cathedral of Siena, 
 with the assistance of his son Giovanni, and 
 his pupils Arnolfo di Cambio, Donate, and 
 Lapo. This pulpit is believed to have been 
 finished in about three years ; if so, it must 
 have been the work of many hands. An ex-
 
 78 FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 
 
 amination of the work, as it now stands in the 
 Cathedral, shows a great change in style from 
 that of the pulpit in the Pisan Baptistery. 
 We find no more Juno-Madonnas or imperious 
 angels ; no more prominent imitation of clas- 
 sical, still less of Byzantine models. The 
 spirits that animate the whole are Gothic- 
 French and of the new naturalism. We may 
 hunt through the contemporary Italian paint- 
 ings and find no such change yet for some 
 years. It was sculpture that, next after archi- 
 tecture, felt the new influences and yielded to 
 them. 
 
 The Siena pulpit is larger, more elaborate, 
 and less beautiful than the Pisan. Artistically 
 it does not show development but decadence. 
 Yet it manifests the presence of new qualities 
 destined one day to produce fine results. At 
 present the new element was mainly active as 
 a destroying agency, driving the old style out. 
 We notice at once the overcrowding of the 
 panels with figures, and the relative fussiness 
 of the whole design. Yet in the details there 
 is much to rouse interest and admiration.
 
 
 
 rt 
 U 
 
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 u 
 o 
 
 O 
 
 s
 
 NIC COLO'S SIENA PULPIT. 79 
 
 Faces and figures are studied from nature. 
 They are fuller of expression and character. 
 Subtle emotions are displayed. The expres- 
 sion of Elizabeth's face in the Visitation, the 
 grief of the mothers in the Massacre of the 
 Innocents, the weeping friends at the foot of 
 the Cross all are well rendered ; whilst, 
 among the blessed and damned that throng 
 the Last Judgment panels, types of many 
 characters and emotions are skilfully imagined 
 and portrayed. In details of architecture 
 introduced into the backgrounds we find 
 examples of the Gothic style, as indeed we 
 find it, though there mixed with Romanesque, 
 in the reliefs over the left door in the West 
 fagade of the Cathedral of Lucca, which may 
 be of about this date. 
 
 The new spirit which Niccolo in his old 
 age thus brought into Tuscan Sculpture 
 found further expression in the work of 
 his pupil, Arnolfo di Cambio (b. circa 1232, 
 d. 1310), and of his own son, Giovanni Pisano 
 (b. circa 1245, d. 1320). Arnolfo designed 
 the Church of Santa Croce which now exists,
 
 So FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 
 
 replacing an older edifice. He likewise 
 designed the Cathedral of Florence, both 
 in the Tuscan Gothic style. His most 
 important independent work of sculpture 
 was the monument of Cardinal de Braye in 
 the Church of S. Domenico at Orvieto, dated 
 1280. That likewise is completely Gothic. 
 This monument was imitated by many sculp- 
 tors ; its design may be found repeated with 
 various modifications all over Europe.* A 
 broad base supports a sarcophagus on which 
 lies the full-length figure of the dead. Two 
 angels draw aside curtains from before it. 
 A high canopy covers the whole. Figures of 
 the Virgin and Child and of the Cardinal, 
 
 * The following monuments, having angels drawing curtains, may be 
 mentioned : 
 
 Bishop of Mende (ob. 1296), by J. Cosmas, in S. M. supra Minerva, 
 Rome. 
 
 Cardinal Roderigo Gonsalvo (ob. 1299), by J. Cosmas, in S. M. 
 Maggiore, Rome. 
 
 Pope Benedict XI. (1305), by Giovanni Pisano, in S. Domenico, Perugia. 
 
 S. Margaret, in S. Margaret's at Cortona. 
 
 Bishop Guido Tarlati, in the Duomo at Arezzo. 
 
 A Bishop (XIV. Cent.) in the Cathedral at Limoges. 
 
 Several tombs in the churches of the Frari and SS. John and Paul at 
 Venice. 
 
 Several tombs at Verona. 
 
 In England and Germany other examples might be quoted.
 
 A NEW TYPE OF MONUMENT. 81 
 
 being presented to them by his patron saint, 
 occupy niches in the wall over the sarcophagus. 
 The whole is beautifully proportioned, and 
 embellished with charming decorative mosaic, 
 torse columns, and delicate carving, without 
 superfluity or extravagance. 
 
 Amongst sepulchral monuments those of 
 this type occupy an almost central position. 
 Earlier Christian sculptors scarcely indicated 
 
 many of them were unable to indicate 
 whether the effigy represented a man alive or 
 dead. The men of the best period sculpture 
 the dead as in a deep sleep. When the deca- 
 dence sets in, every kind of extravagance 
 appears, yet varying between two extremes 
 
 in one the dead is exhibited ghastly with 
 the horrors of decay ; in the other he swaggers 
 in his best clothes, sleek, periwigged, and 
 pompous. Arnolfo's tomb and Giovanni 
 Pisano's at Perugia hold the just mean between 
 these two extremes. There is no horror of 
 death about the dead, but " after life's fitful 
 fever he sleeps well " ; no hope or fear of his 
 
 awakening. Every curve and fold of the 
 
 6
 
 82 FRANCIS OF ASSIST. 
 
 drooping garments expresses the idea of repose. 
 The thought is as temperate, as measured and 
 reserved, as is the simple architecture and 
 sculpture that fitly expresses it. 
 
 The chief charm in Italian Gothic is usually 
 to be found in the sculpture rather than the 
 architecture. Niccolo Pisano, Arnolfo, and 
 Giovanni Pisano were all architects, yet it is 
 as sculptors that they are best remembered. 
 Giovanni, in some of his works, such as a 
 Madonna in the Campo Santo at Pisa (if, in- 
 deed, it be by him), shows himself mastered 
 by French Gothic forms. His single Madonna 
 figures are usually of the French type, imi- 
 tated perhaps from some French ivory carving. 
 There is no reason to suppose that he was ever 
 in France. The new style was spreading 
 everywhere, and it would have been difficult 
 for him to escape its influence. 
 
 Giovanni, like his father, was employed to 
 make stately pulpits, one for Pistoja (in 1301), 
 a larger one for the Cathedral of Pisa (1302 
 1311). This latter was his most elaborate 
 work in sculpture. It has been removed from
 
 ; 
 
 Alinari, Photo. 
 
 Giovanni Pisano. 
 
 CATHEDRAL PULPIT. 
 
 Pisa. 
 
 pacing page 83.
 
 GIOVANNI PISANOS PULPIT. 83 
 
 its place and dismembered, but there are hopes 
 that it will soon be put together again in the 
 Pisa Museum. At present it can be studied 
 best in the cast of it at South Kensington. A 
 glance shows that this pulpit and Niccolo's 
 first belong to different epochs of art. In 
 Niccolo's the architecture rules ; the decoration 
 is subordinate. In Giovanni's the sculpture 
 is everything, the architecture unimportant. 
 The central column on which the body of 
 the pulpit rests is formed of the three Chris- 
 tian Graces ; they stand on a base panelled 
 with the seven Liberal Arts. Two of the other 
 six columns are plain, resting on lions. Of the 
 remaining four, two are replaced by figures of 
 Christ and the town of Pisa, suckling her 
 young and guarded by an eagle ; the other 
 two by symbolical representations of the 
 spiritual and physical natures, under the guise 
 of the Archangel Michael and Hercules. Pisa 
 stands on the Four Cardinal Virtues. Over 
 the capitals are the Sybils ; in the spandrils of 
 the arches are the Prophets ; round the breast- 
 work are panels telling the story of the birth 
 
 6*
 
 84 FRANCIS Of ASSISI. 
 
 and death of Christ. In fact, every part is 
 carved. Figures, instead of columns, support 
 the capitals ; there are groups of figures for 
 bases. The architecture is smothered in sculp- 
 ture. . We have come into an anecdotic and a 
 preaching age. Every feature must now tell 
 a tale or utter a sermon. From the point 
 of view of Art the result is disastrous. There 
 are plentiful suggestions of fair thought- 
 ideas enough ; but grace, dignity, repose, are 
 
 sacrificed to them. 
 
 
 
 Compare the panel representing the Adora- 
 tion of the Magi with the corresponding panel 
 on Niccolo's first pulpit. The newer work is 
 more intelligible and less decorative than the 
 old. The figures are of a new type, not clothed 
 in classical robes. They make no attempt to 
 look dignified ; they are simply human. In 
 Niccolo's the forms are simple, the attitudes 
 dignified, the figures noble. The Virgin is up- 
 right and queenly, the Kings courteous and 
 royal, the horses fine as the sculptor could 
 make them. In Giovanni's there is neither 
 nobility of form nor grace of arrangement.
 
 Alinari, Photo 
 
 N. Pisano. NATIVITY. 
 
 Baptistery Pulpit, Pisa. 
 
 Alinari, Photo. 
 
 G. Pisano. NATIVITY. 
 
 Cathedral Pulpit, Pisa.
 
 NARRATIVE SCULPTURE. 85 
 
 The figures are patched together rather than 
 grouped ; yet they tell their story with a novel 
 lucidity. All that Niccolo has to say is that 
 three kings dismounted from their chargers 
 and knelt before an Empress and her child. 
 Giovanni has a whole history to recount. He 
 takes you first into a cave where the Magi are 
 asleep and an angel appears to them and smites 
 them with wonder. He shows you their 
 cavalcade of camels, horses, and dogs. He 
 shows you how glad they are when they 
 reach their goal a mere cave though it be, 
 and no queen awaiting them in courtly splen- 
 dour, but only a very slim woman with the 
 tiniest of babies. Then you see how the 
 Kings dismount, and one runs eagerly in, 
 and, falling upon his knees, kisses just the very 
 tip of the toe of the babe ; and another king 
 is so overcome with awe that he dare not enter 
 till an angel presses him forward and gives him 
 courage. Giovanni thus subordinated form to 
 fact. He abandoned traditional treatment in 
 the endeavour to make his work vital. Lovers 
 of Art will prefer the older method ; lovers of
 
 86 FRANCIS OF ASS1SI. 
 
 the Christian story will prefer the new. Francis 
 had made the people of the last part of the 
 thirteenth century lovers of the Christian story ; 
 they therefore delighted in the new treatment. 
 Thenceforward artists had to abandon the old 
 when they were working for the new men. 
 
 At Orvieto both Arnolfo and other archi- 
 tects and sculptors of the Pisan school were 
 successively employed on the new Cathedral 
 building there. Let us, in conclusion, turn 
 our attention for a moment to some of the 
 sculpture belonging to the Pisan school with 
 which the fagade is decorated. On one pier 
 is a notable representation of the Last Judg- 
 ment, probably designed by Arnolfo, but doubt- 
 less modernized in execution, a quarter of a 
 century later. It shows the final dominance 
 of the new style. Here a sermon is preached 
 with power indeed. It would be hard to find 
 the terror of damnation and the awfulness of 
 despair more vividly depicted. In their agony 
 the condemned tear their hair and dig their 
 nails into their cheeks. They make no effort 
 to escape or resist. Satan and the fiends have
 
 SCULPTURE AT OR VIE TO. 87 
 
 got them. The angel of God drives them 
 pitilessly away with his scourge of leaded cord. 
 The place to which they must go is a flaming 
 hollow, where serpents glide and sting and hiss 
 among slimy flames, and devils grin upon their 
 agony. 
 
 The date of this sculpture is perhaps already 
 as late as 1320. Compare it with the superb 
 sculptured tympanum of the North Transept 
 Portal of Rheims, made almost a century 
 earlier. Evidently Italian sculptors had not 
 yet caught up with the French. But the spirit 
 of the French work is now completely assimi- 
 lated by the Italians, though they have much 
 to learn before they can attain the beauty of 
 the North, if indeed they will ever attain it. 
 
 We hear much of early Italian sculpture, 
 and relatively little of French Gothic sculp- 
 ture, but the French was far the finer. No 
 sculpture made in Italy till the coming of 
 Donatello, that is to say, till the Italian Gothic 
 period was approaching its end, can compare 
 for excellence with the contemporary sculp- 
 ture on French Cathedrals ; yet the names
 
 88 FRANCIS OF ASSISL 
 
 of early Italian sculptors are known and 
 honoured ; those of French Gothic sculptors 
 have been forgotten. Bear in mind, however, 
 that throughout the Gothic period it was 
 France, as I have said, that led the way. Italy, 
 during the time of the popular upheaval, 
 followed in the wake of France, and borrowed 
 from the French far more than is generally 
 admitted. Whether Italy was helped' or 
 retarded by the Gothic movement is a ques- 
 tion not easily answered. Architecturally I 
 think Italy was retarded. Gothic architecture 
 never took firm root in Italian soil. It was 
 a foreign growth, fundamentally unsuited to 
 the Italian mind, the Italian climate, and 
 Italian building materials. Italy is a country 
 of marble ; France of softer and coarser 
 stone. If France had possessed in some 
 central position the marble quarries of Carrara, 
 French architecture would have been different 
 from what it was, for an architectural style is 
 the product of a number of factors uniting at 
 a given time and place. 
 
 If Italian artists had been enabled to con-
 
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 35 
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 M 
 
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 THE FAILURE OF ITALIAN GOTHIC. 89 
 
 tinue the development of their style without 
 break from the architecture of San Miniato 
 at Florence, from the sculpture of Niccolo's 
 first pulpit, from the painting of Cimabue's 
 great Madonnas, it seems probable that they 
 would sooner and more directly have attained 
 to the noble and complete power for which they 
 had to wait two centuries. When they did 
 attain it, they did so by abandoning the Gothic 
 tradition, and returning to study and imita- 
 tion of the very same models that Niccolo had 
 employed. Then, before many decades had 
 passed, they formed a style of their own and 
 produced works full of the national spirit, 
 which in their turn far surpassed the works of 
 Northern artists. Thenceforward they were 
 not the pupils, but the teachers of the French. 
 Had the Italians, at the end of the thirteenth 
 century, been true to themselves and to their 
 own national traditions, the second and great 
 Renaissance might have arisen two centuries 
 sooner than it did. 
 
 The student of history can hardly help 
 making such imaginary pictures of what might
 
 go FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 
 
 have been. But the thing that actually was 
 never happened by chance. Art, at any rate, 
 is not the expression of any accidental whim 
 of a personality. It expresses the tone of a 
 society. The Art of any day is what it is 
 because the national or local life of the day is 
 what it is. A finer Art might conceivably 
 have existed at a given date, if the forces of 
 civilization had been different : but different 
 they could not be. The civilization of a 
 moment is the resultant of all the human and 
 external forces then acting. Francis did not 
 change the face of Italy. He was himself the 
 product of the forces that were operating to 
 effect that change. He was the voice of the 
 day. He expressed its aspirations and ideals. 
 We behold in him the feelings and tendencies 
 that existed in the contemporary multitude. 
 He was great in the eyes of men because of 
 the exactness with which he matched his day. 
 Coming at another time he would have been 
 equally great, but might have lived and died 
 unrecognized. 
 
 The unrecognized great of any age who
 
 ART AND THE TIME. 91 
 
 shall say how many they are, or how pathetic 
 is their silent lot the men with ideals out- 
 worn or too advanced for their own day ? 
 Is it good fortune that produces the man to 
 match his time ? Is it merely the operation 
 of the law of averages ? To this question 
 History, alas ! supplies no answer, and Science 
 has not discovered one. It is the mysteri- 
 ous unsolved problem of Great Men.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 GIOTTO. 
 
 IN previous chapters we have seen what was 
 the character of Italian Art at the beginning 
 of the thirteenth century, and we have ob- 
 served the effect of the great popular move- 
 ment, associated with the name of Francis of 
 Assisi, in altering the national ideal, and con- 
 sequently the style of Central Italian Archi- 
 tecture and Sculpture. We have now to study 
 the effect produced upon Painting by the same 
 movement. We have seen that the first im- 
 portant building in the new style was the 
 church and convent of St. Francis at Assisi, 
 founded in the year 1228. It was not till 
 some forty years later that the new tendencies 
 found expression in sculpture. We have to 
 wait almost another quarter of a century
 
 THE CALL FOR PAINTING. 93 
 
 before they appear in painting. This slowness 
 of reaction in painting is easily explained 
 when we observe how much more strongly 
 under the dominion of Byzantine and classical 
 traditions, was that and the kindred art of 
 Mosaic, than either Architecture or Sculpture. 
 
 The interiors of the churches of St. Francis 
 at Assisi were incomplete until they had been 
 entirely covered with coloured decoration. 
 They were designed to be so decorated. The. 
 Lower Church, with its dim light and cavernous 
 vaulting is better suited for mosaic than fresco, 
 but mosaic was too costly and slow a system. 
 The Upper Church was obviously intended 
 from the first to be frescoed. At the present 
 day the whole of both these churches is over- 
 laid with colour from end to end and in every 
 part. The frescoes it contains form a series 
 completely illustrating the history of Italian 
 painting for one hundred years. 
 
 The principal dates connected with the 
 church are these : It was founded in 1228. 
 The Lower Church was completed and the 
 body of the Saint translated into it in 1230.
 
 94 GIOTTO. 
 
 The Upper Church was roofed in, with its 
 stone vault, in 1236, and finished in 1253. 
 So long as costly building operations were in 
 progress it is unlikely that much money was 
 spent on paintings. We know, indeed, that 
 in 1236 Giunta of Pisa painted a crucifix for 
 the Friars, which used to hang in the Upper 
 Church, but is now lost. Tradition says that 
 he likewise painted frescoes. Though we 
 cannot identify them, we know well enough 
 that they must have been works in the old- 
 fashioned style. The Friars had no choice 
 but to employ such artists as the day afforded. 
 They may have dimly felt that they wanted 
 a new type of picture, but they could not paint 
 for themselves, and the existing painters were 
 wedded to the old style. 
 
 Perhaps the whole of the Lower Church 
 was painted over before the Upper was taken 
 in hand. Only fragments of the decoration 
 survive in the nave. The transept, if painted 
 then at all, was afterwards repainted, as we 
 now see it, with Cimabue's Madonna spared 
 and all the other pictures replaced by new.
 
 THE FIRST PAINTINGS AT ASSISI. 95 
 
 The nave originally consisted of a single aisle 
 with no side chapels. Some time towards the 
 end of the thirteenth century, its massive 
 walls were tunnelled through and side chapels 
 were added between the flying buttresses, 
 themselves an addition to the original design. 
 By this tunnelling process large parts of the 
 nave-frescoes were cut away and the remainder 
 damaged. Time has also dealt hardly with 
 them, so that now, in the dim light which is 
 all that ever reaches them on the brightest 
 day, it is difficult to do more than just discern 
 the fact of their existence. By long and 
 patient study one can discover, on the one 
 side, scenes from the life of Christ, and, on the 
 other, incidents in the Francis legend. They 
 seem to have been well painted for their time, 
 but I was unable to trace in them any evi- 
 dence of a new artistic tendency. The inter- 
 
 j 
 
 esting point to observe is that already, in what 
 may have been the earliest series of wall pic- 
 tures ordered by the Franciscans, the life of 
 Francis, as parallel to and equally important 
 with the life of Christ, found place.
 
 96 GIOTTO. 
 
 These, however, were not the first represen- 
 tations of the Francis legend ever painted. 
 There exist pictures, ascribed to Margeritone 
 of Arezzo and the like artists, professing to be 
 portraits of Saint Francis, surrounded or 
 accompanied by incidents from his legend 
 depicted in small compartments. Such pic- 
 tures demanded fresh invention on the part of 
 the painters, yet we find no new spirit in the 
 work. They seem to me altogether similar 
 in style to other legendary series of the day. 
 Still it is remarkable that from the very be- 
 ginning Franciscanism should have sought 
 pictorial illustration. 
 
 We can go even further back than this. 
 Such was the personal and vital effect of 
 Francis upon his followers that, during his 
 own lifetime, they desired to have portraits of 
 him. In the year 1212, when Francis was at 
 Florence, the Count of Monte Acuto instructed 
 Melormus, who is described as the most famous 
 Greek painter of those days, to watch the holy 
 man when absorbed in prayer, and paint a 
 picture of him. Copies _^of this picture are
 
 MELORMUS* PORTRAIT OF FRANCIS. 97 
 
 now in the gallery at Pisa and elsewhere. One 
 is in my own possession. Melormus' portrait 
 appears to have been frequently copied, both 
 at that time and later, and it agrees well 
 enough with Thomas of Celano's written 
 description of Francis. 
 
 Celano says that " he was of a cheerful 
 countenance and kindly expression, neither 
 shy nor bold. He was rather below middle 
 height, his head of medium size and round ; 
 the face at once long and projecting ; the 
 forehead small and flat ; the eyes of medium 
 size, black, and candid ; the hair black ; the 
 eyebrows straight ; the nose thin, sym- 
 metrical, and straight ; the ears small and pro- 
 truding ; the temples flat. His speech was 
 kindly, yet ardent and incisive ; his voice 
 strong, sweet, clear, and resonant ; his teeth 
 close, regular, and white ; lips well-formed 
 and fine ; beard black and straggly ; neck 
 thin ; shoulders straight ; arms short ; hands 
 delicate ; fingers long, with nails projecting ; 
 legs thin ; feet small ; skin delicate ; and very 
 little flesh." 
 
 7
 
 98 GIOTTO. 
 
 From this description we perceive how much 
 more sensitive to the new requirements of 
 truthful description was Literature than Paint- 
 ing. The spirit, which was ultimately to revo- 
 lutionize pictorial art, was fully alive in the 
 days of Francis himself ; but more than half-a- 
 century had to pass, before it began to produce 
 effect upon the most conservative of crafts- 
 men at that time. 
 
 Mounting to the Upper Church, we are 
 surrounded by a long series of most puzzling 
 pictures. The walls of choir and transept, 
 the whole roof, and the upper parts of the walls 
 of the nave, were once occupied by a number 
 of fresco paintings, now in a terribly decayed 
 condition. Some have wholly fallen from the 
 wall ; some have lost all trace of colour and 
 retain only their outlines sunk into the plaster 
 when it was soft ; in some the colours have 
 gone black ; whilst only a very few, and those 
 high up in positions difficult for study, remain 
 in tolerable preservation. 
 
 It seems likely that the painters who worked 
 in the transepts, where the frescoes have most
 
 X 
 
 u 
 
 OS 
 3 
 X 
 
 U 
 
 OS 
 
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 a 
 
 -
 
 CIMABUE'S PREDECESSORS. 99 
 
 lost colour, were less skilled in the technical 
 process of fresco than those who worked on 
 the walls and roof of the nave, and may there- 
 fore belong to an earlier generation. Where 
 the plaster on which the nave frescoes were 
 painted has not bodily fallen from the wall, a 
 catastrophe for which the painters as painters 
 cannot be held responsible, the frescoes have 
 survived in remarkable freshness. This great 
 body of old work has formed subject of study 
 for many of the best art historians, notably of 
 Professors Cavalcasella and Thode, and recently 
 of Messrs. Berenson and Roger Fry. When 
 the condition of the works to be examined is 
 borne in mind, we need not be surprised that 
 these and other authorities are by no means 
 always in agreement as to the authorship of 
 particular frescoes. W T e shall not be far wrong 
 if we confine ourselves to the general conclusion 
 that the frescoes in the north or right transept 
 are older than those in the south or left, and 
 that it is among the latter that the work of 
 Cimabue is to be sought. 
 
 Of the nave frescoes, those on the north side, 
 
 7*
 
 ioo GIOTTO. 
 
 representing Old Testament subjects, and some 
 of those in the roof, were painted by artists 
 who affected the old Roman classical tradition ; 
 whilst the remaining parts of the roof and the 
 New Testament subjects on the south wall 
 may be ascribed to followers of Cimabue, or 
 painters impregnated with Byzantine in- 
 fluences. With the best will in the world I 
 can see in none of them any sign of the change 
 that was at hand. There are fine examples of 
 the ancient dignity, as in the majestic angels 
 in the transept-gallery. There are noble com- 
 positions among the Old Testament groups ; 
 whilst the great Crucifixion, ascribed to 
 Cimabue, in the south transept, may have pos- 
 sessed all the merits that have been claimed for 
 it. In spirit, however, all these works belong 
 to the old school. My eyes could find no trace 
 in any of them of the Gothic Ideal that was 
 at hand. 
 
 If the reader were now standing by me in 
 the nave of the Upper Church, having filled 
 his eyes and memory with all that he could 
 perceive and learn of these older pictures, I
 
 THE GIOTTESQUE REVOLUTION. 101 
 
 would bid him direct his vision to the lowest 
 series of frescoes that completely surround the 
 nave, and have not thus far been mentioned. 
 There he would behold at a glance the new 
 spirit completely expressed, for this series of 
 pictures of the Francis legend was painted 
 by or under the direction of Giotto, and these 
 are, in my opinion, the earliest works we possess 
 from his hand. 
 
 This revolutionizing painter was the son of 
 a simple sheep-farmer. His grandfather and his 
 brother were blacksmiths. He was born in 1266 
 at his father's house at Colle, in the Commune 
 of Vespignano, near Florence. A fourteenth 
 century anonymous commentator on Dante 
 states that the boy was apprenticed by his 
 father to a Florentine wool-stapler ; but that, 
 having shown some talent for drawing, he 
 was transferred to Cimabue's studio. With 
 Cimabue, perhaps before 1280, he may have 
 gone to Assisi and worked as his apprentice 
 and afterwards as his assistant. Having shown 
 talent and won the confidence of those direct- 
 ing the works, he appears to have been put in
 
 102 GIOTTO. 
 
 charge of them, when Cimabue returned to 
 Florence somewhere about 1290 and there 
 painted frescoes in San Spirito and Santa 
 Croce. I conclude, therefore, that it was 
 during the nineties that Giotto and his assis- 
 tants painted the Francis frescoes. 
 
 From 1298 to 1300 Giotto worked in Rome ; 
 here he met Dante. Then he probably re- 
 turned to Assisi for two or three years and 
 painted the four great allegories in the vault- 
 ing over the high altar of the Lower Church. 
 About 1303 he went to Padua to fresco the 
 interior of the Arena Chapel, the building of 
 which was finished in that year. In 1306 he 
 was still at Padua and again met Dante. I 
 think he paid a third visit to Assisi after leaving 
 Padua, and then executed the frescoes in the 
 transept of the Lower Church, which seem to 
 me obviously later than the pictures of the same 
 subjects in the Arena Chapel. His beautiful 
 frescoes in the Chapel of Santa Croce in Flor- 
 ence are yet more mature. Giotto was a great 
 wanderer, and painted in several other Italian 
 cities. In 1334 he was appointed Master of
 
 GIOTTO'S LIFE. 103 
 
 the Works of the cathedral at Florence, for 
 which he designed and commenced building 
 the renowned Campanile. At Florence, in 
 January, 1337, he died. 
 
 If it were not recorded that Giotto was 
 Cimabue's pupil we should never have guessed 
 it from the works of the two painters. Indeed, 
 a comparison between the older work and the 
 pictures of the Francis legend reveals con- 
 trasts rather than similarities. To sum up in 
 a word the group of new characteristics, we 
 may say that the new work is distinguished 
 by its greater sincerity from the old. So long 
 as the function of painters was to depict a series 
 of symbolical figures, in stately independence 
 one of another, such as we see in the Mosaic 
 decoration of St. Mark's at Venice, or in some 
 of the paintings in the choir at Assisi, the old 
 style was admirably suited for the purpose. 
 In the great angels of the gallery we feel no 
 necessary element lacking. They are admir- 
 able works of their kind. The dignified By- 
 zantine Madonnas, the commanding figures of 
 Apostles or Prophets ranged in rows, the
 
 io 4 GIOTTO, 
 
 stately Saints in these, and the like of these, 
 the symbolic element predominated. It is 
 right that they seem aloof from ordinary 
 human life, superhuman if it were possible. 
 But when we come to the representation of 
 events, wherein the human interest, the fact 
 that men and women were engaged, is the 
 chief subject of interest, the old style is in- 
 adequate. Byzantine painters treated events, 
 as they did single figures, symbolically ; or 
 if they did not they failed, except in so far 
 as their designs were decorative. 
 
 Franciscan communities may have desired 
 decoration, but they wanted veracity more. 
 They wanted pictures of sacred events cor- 
 responding in character to the kind of descrip- 
 tion of those events that would find place in a 
 Franciscan sermon. This was what they did 
 not get from painters till Giotto and his fol- 
 lowers supplied it. The Old and New Testa- 
 ment illustrations of the upper parts of the 
 nave-walls manifest very little attempt on the 
 painters' part to conceive a subject as an event 
 that actually took place. For all the violent
 
 Giotts. ST. FRANCIS PREACHING BEFORE POPE HONORIUS III. 
 Fresco in the Upper Church, Assisi. 
 
 Facing page 105.
 
 FRANCISCAN INFLUENCE. 105 
 
 movement with which some of the figures are 
 endowed, the compositions are lacking in dra- 
 matic force. The pictures of the Francis 
 legend, on the contrary, are dramatically con- 
 ceived. Over and over again the technical 
 resources at the artist's disposal have been 
 insufficient to accomplish a visible embodi- 
 ment of his conception. But the very failures 
 manifest the effort that was made. 
 
 Take, for example, the picture of Francis 
 preaching before Pope Honorius III. and his 
 Cardinals, the occasion when, as we know, 
 Francis danced about with excitement. The 
 artist's endeavour to endow his figure of the 
 Saint with earnestness is obvious, as much as 
 in the bad drawing and awkwardness of the 
 right hand as in anything. He succeeds, 
 however, in conveying an intelligible rendering 
 of the scene. The Pope is there in the midst, 
 visibly a Pope, earnest, attentive, intellec- 
 tual. His court has to be represented by six 
 men, all posed in simple attitudes, and ob- 
 viously affected by the speaker's words. It is 
 a simple composition, but as articulate as one
 
 106 GIOTTO. 
 
 could desire. Observe further that it is not 
 a mere assemblage of figures illustrating a tale, 
 but that it is a good picture, too, a pleasant 
 thing to look at, entirely apart from its mean- 
 ing. If we knew nothing about Pope, Car- 
 dinals, or Francis, we might still look at it 
 with pleasure ; for the figures are charming 
 in themselves and well-grouped, the colour- 
 harmony is delightful, and the decorative 
 accessories of arches, vaulting, and the like 
 are prettily invented and disposed. More- 
 over, the composition is complete in itself and 
 forms a single whole. You could not remove 
 a figure or cut off a part without spoiling the 
 rest. 
 
 Such pictorial unity was not attained by 
 Giotto without effort. The older painters had 
 attained unity of decorative effect ; yet their 
 compositions, regarded as pictures, were often 
 not properly compositions at all, but mere 
 agglomerations of figures. The problem, there- 
 fore, which Giotto had to solve for himself, 
 was how at one and the same time to conceive 
 his subject as an event that actually happened,
 
 HIS DRAMATIC STYLE. 107 
 
 and on the other hand to make his rendering 
 of it a picture. It was herein that he mani- 
 fested his sincerity. He almost always suc- 
 ceeds in drawing the dramatic heart out of the 
 situation, by reducing it to its simplest possible 
 form. He concentrates attention on the chief 
 actors and divides the action skilfully among 
 them, making each contribute his share. But 
 in representing the event he never forgets that 
 it is a picture he is painting, and, while satis- 
 fying those who merely desired to obtain a set 
 of illustrations of Bonaventura's " Life of St. 
 Francis," his harder effort evidently was to 
 satisfy himself as creator of a work of art. 
 
 The two best pictures of the whole series of 
 twenty-eight are those that occupy prominent 
 positions on the end wall of the nave on either 
 side of the great door. They represent the 
 Thirst of Francis' Ass-driver, and St. Francis 
 Preaching to the Birds. In the former the 
 vigorous drinking of the poor man has been 
 praised by Vasari and other writers, though 
 his posture is far from being well drawn. In 
 the latter the composition resembles that of
 
 io8 GIOTTO. 
 
 earlier pictures of the same subject, as in the 
 nave downstairs ; but the sweet sentiment of 
 the legend is here embodied for the first time. 
 Both pictures are, however, specially remark- 
 able for their charming effect as paintings. 
 They are almost monochromes in grey. They 
 are composed with absolute simplicity. There 
 is no striking element in them ; yet when the 
 eye falls upon them it rests, mildly pleased and 
 comforted by an agreeable distribution of 
 masses and arrangement of simple forms. 
 This mild pleasure of the eye tends to raise a 
 mental mood, in which the legend might be 
 recalled, by one who knows it, and spiritually 
 enjoyed. The picture does not by itself con- 
 vey spiritual sustenance, but it harmonises, as 
 soft music might, with a mood of mystical 
 reverie. 
 
 Giotto was not a preacher, using Art for his 
 medium of exposition, as Fra Angelico was. 
 We fortunately know enough about Giotto as 
 a man amongst men from almost contem- 
 porary accounts, to be able to form a tolerably 
 full mental image of him. He appears to have
 
 A PRACTICAL MAN. 109 
 
 been what we call " a character." He had an 
 original way with him. He was devoid of all 
 humbug, a hater of pretence. In his dealings 
 and sayings he was direct and something of a 
 humorist. He was more than a mere crafts- 
 man, or Dante would not have found his society 
 delightful. Obviously he was original in 
 thought as in Art. He looked at the world 
 for himself, not as he was told to look at it. 
 If a painting illustrative of Poverty, one of 
 the Franciscan trinity of virtues, was demanded 
 of him, he painted it to the best of his ability ; 
 but that did not prevent him from writing a 
 common-sense rhyme in dispraise of that same 
 misfortune. 
 
 The works of art that he has left us are in 
 full accord with his practical character, as it 
 has been recorded. One of his chief artistic 
 qualities was economy. He produced his 
 effects with economy of means. Not only did 
 he introduce the smallest number of necessary 
 figures into his compositions, and only those 
 accessories that the story needed for illustra- 
 tion and the space for suitable filling, but he
 
 no . GIOTTO. 
 
 painted each figure as simply as possible. 
 This is the more remarkable when the works 
 of his masters are examined. They did not 
 teach him this monumental simplicity. A 
 draped Byzantine figure is generally covered 
 over with a perfect labyrinth of decorative 
 folds. Cast an eye aloft at Assisi and you will 
 find that simplicity is a rare thing in the 
 drapery of the old frescoes. 
 
 In this connection it is interesting to compare 
 the Madonnas of Cimabue and Giotto, which 
 hang together in the Academy at Florence. 
 Giotto's Madonna is more archaic than his 
 historical pictures because it had to be. People 
 were not ready to accept the emblem of the 
 divinity modernised and humanised too 
 rapidly. We are a long way yet from the 
 Madonnas of Botticelli. Still, Giotto's Virgin 
 is more human than Cimabue' s and less digni- 
 fied and benign. What, however, I want you 
 chiefly to notice is the difference in the treat- 
 ment of details. The drapery of Cimabue' s 
 Madonna is broken up into a multitude of 
 complex folds made to have their edges gilded
 
 CONTRAST WITH CIMADUE. in 
 
 for the sake of a brilliant decorative effect. 
 The drapery of Giotto's Virgin is broad and 
 plain, its only decoration a narrow embroidered 
 hem. The same is true of the drapery of the 
 angels. The Rucellai Madonna in Santa Maria 
 Novella, which some now insist to be by Duccio 
 and not Cimabue, is an even more elaborately 
 decorated picture. Every inch of it is 
 wrought out with the fineness of a Greek 
 miniature. There are patterns and em- 
 bossings and engravings of gold surfaces where- 
 ever place can be found for them. Giotto 
 sacrificed all such aids to popular applause 
 and contented himself with the best composi- 
 tion, the best simple forms, and the directest 
 expression of his subject that he could 
 attain. 
 
 We need not doubt that he was thus enabled 
 to paint pictures more cheaply than his pre- 
 decessors. Giotto's Madonna in the Academy 
 probably cost less than had Cimabue's. It 
 is nonsense to object that cost is not an ele- 
 ment worth consideration in Art-history. It 
 is always an important element. I have little
 
 ii2 GIOTTO. 
 
 doubt that Giotto's series of pictures of the 
 Francis legend at Assisi were painted in less 
 time per square foot than those of his pre- 
 decessors. Obviously he painted fast or he 
 could not have covered the area of wall with 
 fresco which we know him to have covered in 
 different parts of Italy. 
 
 Another interesting fact to observe is that 
 Giotto was a great master of other men. It 
 is not to be supposed that the whole Francis 
 legend was painted by Giotto's own hand. 
 Yet all the frescoes, except a few at the end of 
 the series, bear the obvious impress of his mind. 
 He may have been called away to Rome before 
 the work was finished, so that the last pictures 
 had to be both designed and painted by an 
 able follower, whose name is unfortunately 
 unrecorded. Where an artist has designed, or 
 superintended the design and painting of a 
 picture or set of pictures, it is right to credit 
 them to him. Modern criticism is always 
 trying to disentangle from the list of a master's 
 works this and the other picture as done 
 merely in his bottega. In my opinion a picture
 
 GIOTTO'S FOLLOWERS. 113 
 
 that a painter sold as his is to be regarded as 
 his, whether he actually painted it or not. 
 Some masters are able to infuse so much of 
 their own personality into works done mainly 
 by assistants under their supervision, that 
 those works are almost as much theirs as if 
 they had been painted by their own hands. 
 Thus it was with Raphael. Compare the 
 works admittedly executed by his pupils under 
 his direction, with works done by the same 
 men, even following Raphael's own designs, 
 but after his death. The former were to all 
 intents and purposes by Raphael. A glance 
 shows that the latter were not. 
 
 Thus it was with Giotto and his assistants at 
 Assisi the work of the assistants is the 
 master's work. How powerful an effect Giotto 
 produced on the next generation of painters 
 is apparent when we come to consider the pic- 
 tures produced during the next century, not 
 in Florence only, but in many parts of Italy. 
 I suggest, though with fear and trembling for 
 the possible misrepresentation to which I lay 
 
 myself open, that the cheapening of the 
 
 8
 
 ii4 GIOTTO. 
 
 painting-process which Giotto effected had 
 something to do with the rapid and wide- 
 spreading of his style, and the complete dis- 
 appearance of Greek mural painters thence- 
 forward from Italy. 
 
 Without lingering over work done by Giotto 
 in Rome, let me remind you again that he 
 probably met Dante there. On his return to 
 Assisi (according to my reckoning) he painted 
 the four Allegories over the high altar of the 
 Lower Church. Am I bold in hazarding the 
 suggestion that in these Allegories we may 
 trace an effect of the influence of the poet upon 
 the painter ? If Franciscanism abolished the 
 old Byzantine symbolism, whereby each 
 figure or group depicted stood as a kind of 
 spiritual ideograph, or sacred decorative short- 
 hand symbol, Franciscanism in return intro- 
 duced Allegory into Italian Art. This also 
 was in fact another borrowing from the north, 
 for the sculptured portals of the great French 
 Cathedrals, notably Chartres, Amiens, and 
 Rheims, were filled with allegorical and em- 
 blematic sculptures at a time when Francis
 
 THE ALLEGORIES. 115 
 
 was still alive, and before his influence had 
 spread far afield. 
 
 As allegories, Giotto's four Assisi frescoes are 
 most interesting, but I reserve for the present 
 what I have to say about them. The point 
 important to be observed now is that, as 
 pictures, they show a marked advance upon 
 those of the Francis legend. They can only 
 be judged on the spot, for no reproductions 
 give the least idea of them. Even their forms 
 (painted on a curved surface) are of necessity 
 distorted by photography. As compositions 
 they carry out the promise of the earlier works, 
 while with their greater elaboration and more 
 multitudinous figures they surpass them in 
 difficulties triumphantly overcome. Not only 
 is each picture well-composed, but the four 
 compositions harmonize together and counter- 
 balance each other. It is their colour-scheme, 
 however, with its fairer harmony and sweeter 
 concord, that raises them on to a higher plane 
 than the pictures of the Francis legend. They 
 admirably decorate the space given to them. 
 
 By the nature of their position, right over the 
 
 8*
 
 n6 GIOTTO. 
 
 spectator's head, they are hard to gaze at ; it 
 is therefore right that they should please at 
 first glance. No doubt but they do so. Before 
 the mind has ascertained their meaning the 
 eye is satisfied. Presently individual faces and 
 figures are noticed as beautiful. Last of all 
 the originality and fine quality of the thought 
 that inspires the whole is perceived, and com- 
 pletes the spectator's satisfaction. 
 
 Giotto's next great set of frescoes were 
 painted in the Arena Chapel at Padua. They 
 form the subject of Ruskin's well-known and 
 suggestive volume, which every student of 
 Giotto's work should read. I may therefore 
 dismiss them with a few general observations. 
 They consist mainly of a series of pictures of 
 the life of the Virgin and the life of Christ. 
 Here Giotto was not free, as he had been with 
 the Francis legend. Almost every subject he 
 had now to treat had been treated countless 
 times before by all sorts and generations of 
 artists of many lands. It was inevitable that 
 Giotto should adhere to the general traditional 
 arrangement of the subject. He did so, yet
 
 THE ARENA CHAPEL. 117 
 
 without slavish obedience. Compare his pic- 
 ture of the Raising of Lazarus with a good 
 Byzantine representation of the same subject. 
 You will see at once how Giotto availed to 
 infuse his own new ideas into the old forms, 
 and create powerfully dramatic pictures with- 
 out departing from the traditional composition. 
 The same lesson may be learnt by comparing 
 the Crucifixion at Padua with Cimabue's Cruci- 
 fixion (if it be his) in the Upper Church at 
 Assisi. Here, if anywhere, we should look to 
 find Giotto in the bondage of tradition, yet he 
 escapes with apparent ease. The momentous 
 nature of the event is better suggested by the 
 older master, and even by his predecessor in 
 the same church, but Giotto, confining himself 
 to the actual Gospel narrative and the mere 
 historical facts, tells the tale with a new pathos. 
 Sweep his passionately grieving cherubs from 
 the sky and all supernatural elements dis- 
 appear ; yet the human interest remains 
 the grief of the women, the varied emotions of 
 the men. It is a remarkable fact that you can 
 examine this whole Paduan series of pictures
 
 n8 GIOTTO. 
 
 from beginning to end without finding one 
 figure of doubtful meaning. As illustra- 
 tions of a known tale these pictures are 
 perfectly lucid. That is their first con- 
 spicuous merit. 
 
 We saw how the church of St. Francis at 
 Assisi was designed to be a field for painted 
 decoration ; indeed the frescoes there are some- 
 thing more than mere decoration. They may 
 be said to exist for their own sake. The 
 Arena Chapel is little more than a roof and 
 frame for pictures. Its architecture is entirely 
 subordinate to the painting. It is no longer 
 possible to regard the pictures as decoration. 
 They are the purpose for which the chapel 
 was built. In fact, with Giotto we enter a 
 pictorial age. Before the Franciscan popular 
 movement, architecture was the dominant art. 
 Twelfth century symbolic mosaics were pri- 
 marily decorative. They embellished, com- 
 pleted and dignified the building to which 
 they were attached, just as the contemporary 
 sculpture did. Perhaps nine persons out of 
 ten who frequented one of the old cathedrals
 
 DECORATIVE PAINTING. 119 
 
 never examined the decorations at all in detail. 
 When we come to the later Renaissance to 
 interiors decorated by Perugino (such as the 
 Cambio at Perugia), by Pinturicchio (the 
 Apartimento Borgia), and by Raphael (the 
 Vatican Loggie), we shall find painted decora- 
 tion again subordinated to general effect ; 
 but from the time of Giotto to Masaccio, 
 painters took their own line. They were con- 
 cerned to make their pictures intelligible illus- 
 trations of histories and legends ; if they 
 attained that result they and their employers 
 were satisfied. Giotto's Arena Chapel frescoes 
 in their rectangular succession, might as well 
 have been a series of framed paintings hung 
 upon a blank wall. Being all painted in one 
 scheme of colour and designed by one artist, 
 they produce an effect, harmonious and plea- 
 sant ; but if decorative, it is so accidentally 
 rather than intentionally. 
 
 Giotto must have spent a long time in Padua, 
 for, besides his work in the Arena Chapel, he 
 painted a series of frescoes in the chapter- 
 house of the Franciscan convent of St.
 
 i2o GIOTTO. 
 
 Anthony, which no longer exist, and other 
 now vanished works. It seems likely that he 
 was afterwards again employed at Assisi where 
 he painted a beautiful group of frescoes in the 
 north transept of the Lower Church and in an 
 adjacent chapel. In the transept he repeated 
 some of his Padua compositions, adding to 
 their charm without diminishing their lucidity. 
 The pictures of the Visitation and Nativity 
 are indeed amongst the most delightful of 
 his works, pleasant in colour, excellent in bal- 
 ance, and inspired by a happy fancy as well as 
 a serene imagination. Whether it is a flight 
 of fluttering angels that he is painting, or a 
 flock of sheep, he sheds over them the same 
 pictorial charm ; while the sweetness of his 
 human nature expressed itself in the tenderness 
 of the enraptured mother, the helplessness of 
 the little baby, and the fussy activities of the 
 nurses. 
 
 At Florence he has left us invaluable, 
 though now much restored, examples of his 
 mature powers in the famous frescoes of the 
 Francis legend, painted after 1317 in the Bardi
 
 o 
 u 
 
 
 
 
 X 
 
 H 
 = 
 H 
 
 W 
 M 
 
 
 5 -~
 
 Anderson, Photo. 
 
 Giotto. 
 
 ST. FRANCIS BEFORE THE SULTAN. 
 Upper Church, Assisi. 
 
 Between pages 120, 121, and facing the other print.
 
 SULTAN EL-KAMIL. 121 
 
 Chapel of Santa Croce, and no less excellent 
 frescoes of incidents in the lives of John Baptist 
 and John Evangelist in the neighbouring 
 Peruzzi chapel. A comparison of the Francis 
 pictures with the corresponding subjects 
 painted at Assisi manifests the steady deve- 
 lopment of the artist's powers in the inter- 
 vening years. The two pictures of St. Francis 
 before Sultan el-Kamil (eldest son and suc- 
 cessor of Saladin) are remarkable for their 
 similarities, and their contrasts. Surprise has 
 sometimes been expressed at the dignity with 
 which the artist endowed the infidel king. 
 El-Kamil, however, was not a mere name to 
 the people of those days ; he was a well-known 
 personality. It was this enlightened monarch 
 and the equally enlightened Emperor Frederick 
 II. who, to the disgust of Popes and Church- 
 men, made a statesmanlike and tolerant treaty 
 in 1229, " the most remarkable that was ever 
 signed between a Christian and a Moham- 
 medan power before the days of European 
 engagements with the Turkish Empire." El- 
 Kamil is described as " prudent and firm in
 
 122 GIOTTO. 
 
 counsel, an energetic and capable adminis- 
 trator, who managed his kingdom alone, 
 ensured the safety of travellers, and, like 
 most of his family, loved learning and the 
 society of scholars."* Thus it was wrong to 
 assume that the Sultan of Giotto's picture 
 was a mere typical infidel monarch. This 
 particular Sultan's character and reputation 
 must have been well known, and, it seems not 
 improbable that Giotto, with his strong com- 
 mon sense, may have admired him. In the 
 Assisi picture Giotto makes Francis the central 
 figure ; but at Florence he gives that posi- 
 tion to the Sultan, besides raising him higher 
 aloft, and making him in all respects the 
 finest and most striking personage in the 
 composition. It is not necessary, though it 
 would be easy, to suggest another than a 
 merely artistic reason for the change. The 
 artistic reason however suffices . A compari- 
 son between the two works gives instruc- 
 tive proof of the painter's development. The 
 older picture is perhaps as lucid an illus- 
 
 * Stanley Lane Poole.
 
 HIS CAMPANILE. 123 
 
 tration of the legend as the later, but the 
 figures are less well drawn, the drapery is 
 more poorly cast, the lines of the composi- 
 tion are less noble, and the grouping is more 
 archaic. It is, however, in the architec- 
 tural accessories and their distribution that 
 the improvement is most apparent. In Assisi 
 they are of an ill-proportioned Romanesque 
 character, badly contrasting with one another 
 and awkwardly drawn. At Florence the cen- 
 tral throne is of charming design and good 
 proportions, whilst the surrounding wall and 
 hangings simply and beautifully enclose the 
 figures and account for their grouping. 
 
 In 1334 Giotto was appointed architect of 
 the Florentine cathedral.* In 1336 he is known 
 to have been at Milan ; and he died at Flor- 
 ence on January 8th, 1337. He did not there- 
 fore remain long in charge of the building 
 operations. His important contribution was 
 the design of the beautiful Campanile. 
 What is by some believed to be the 
 actual drawing on a sheet of parchment is 
 
 * Gaye, Carteggio inedito, I. 483.
 
 1 24 GIOTTO. 
 
 preserved at Siena to the present day.* The 
 Campanile was founded in 1334 with much 
 ceremony, and the bottom storey was built by 
 Giotto. Orcagna, who was Andrea Pisano's 
 pupil, and so ought to have known, says that 
 Giotto himself modelled some of the beautiful 
 little hexagonal bas-reliefs on this storey. The 
 remainder, with the exception of five hexagons 
 added later by Luca della Robbia, obviously 
 from other designs, were the work of Andrea 
 Pisano. That artist succeeded Giotto as archi- 
 tect (1337 1343) and built the next storey, 
 which has four statues in niches on each face. 
 Taddeo Guddi, who was architect from 1343 
 to 1351, built the storeys with the double 
 windows. Finally Francesco Talenti, in 1351, 
 and the year or years immediately following, 
 built the top storey, with its beautiful triple 
 window on each face. All these artists adhered 
 in the main to Giotto's original design. 
 
 The belt of sculptures round the base are 
 deservedly admired. They have been de- 
 
 * See for the history of the building C. Guasti : S. M. del Fiore ; 
 Florence, 1887, 8vo.
 
 THE BAS-RELIEFS. 125 
 
 scribed and praised by Ruskin, and stand in no 
 need of recommendation from me. We have 
 reason to believe that at least the first seven 
 of the series of octagonal reliefs were carved 
 from Giotto's models. He may have designed 
 the whole series. If Orcagna's direct state- 
 ment had not been recorded, no one, perhaps, 
 would have thought of ascribing the designs 
 to Giotto, for the simple reason that we possess 
 no other known works of his in the same kind 
 with which to compare them. They do not 
 resemble either his panel or his fresco pictures, 
 nor is it to be expected that they should. 
 
 The conspicuous merit of these little sculp- 
 tures is the admirable way in which they are 
 adapted to the spaces they have to fill. It is 
 a merit possessed by all Giotto's paintings and 
 by Andrea Pisano's reliefs. Whether Andrea 
 derived it from Giotto we cannot say. He 
 certainly did not derive it from his master in 
 sculpture, Giovanni Pisano, whose works lack 
 that particular quality. The hexagonal reliefs 
 of the lower tier are more finely finished and 
 more elaborate in design, as being nearer the
 
 126 GIOTTO. 
 
 spectator's eye than are the figures in lozenges 
 higher up. Those are relieved against a 
 coloured background. It is curious that com- 
 paratively little attention has been paid to 
 them, and yet, in their place and for their pur- 
 pose, they are no wise inferior to the hexagons. 
 They consist of a series of allegorical figures, 
 representing the Seven Virtues, Seven Liberal 
 Arts, Seven Sacraments, and so forth. To 
 quote only one example, the Sacrament of the 
 Mass is an admirable design beautifully carried 
 out. Its simplicity and lucidity are as re- 
 markable as the charm of the design and the 
 excellence of the execution, at once bold 
 enough to be effective at a distance, and yet 
 to suggest delicacy when beheld from the in- 
 tended stand-point of a spectator. 
 
 If it were necessary to select one of the lower 
 series of hexagons to stand as representative 
 of all, my choice would be the Jabal, " father 
 of such as dwell in tents and of such as have 
 cattle." He sits upon the ground and, opening 
 the door of his tent, looks forth serenely upon 
 his flock (I suppose), his little dog being just
 
 THE BAS-RELIEFS. 127 
 
 outside. This seems to me the most Giottesque 
 panel. I suppose Giotto never dwelt in tents. 
 If he had done so, he would have experienced 
 the delight of sitting in his tent door, amongst 
 his small possessions, and gazing forth upon 
 the great outside world, especially at sunset. 
 The tent itself is beautifully sculptured, the 
 droop and hang of it rendered with skill, and 
 the whole designed to fit perfectly into the 
 given space and, with its large and dignified 
 surfaces, to surround and set off the face and 
 figure of the worthy patriarch. 
 
 Anyone who will intimately examine these 
 Campanile reliefs, both of the lower and the 
 upper ring, and will devote equal attention to 
 the allegorical figures painted in the Arena 
 Chapel at Padua, will find both series, I think, 
 inspired by the same spirit. This does not 
 prove that both were designed by Giotto. 
 The spirit may have been the spirit of the day. 
 The community of sentiment, however, is 
 confirmatory, so far as it goes, of Orcagna's 
 direct statement ; it harmonises with the 
 known fact that Giotto designed the Campanile
 
 128 GTOTTO. 
 
 and built its lower storey, and with the con- 
 sequent probability that he did not leave its 
 most important feature to be entirely supplied 
 by another artist, however skilful. That was 
 not the way architects conceived their functions 
 to be limited then, any more than it is now. 
 At Orvieto there exists the original design of 
 the Cathedral fagade, probably by Arnolfo. 
 The facade, as built, varies from the design, 
 and varies for the worse, but it is noteworthy 
 that the sculptured decoration of the piers was 
 provided for by the original architect. 
 
 We cannot be wrong in concluding that 
 Andrea Pisano derived no small advantage 
 from contact with Giotto, though Giotto 
 perhaps learned more from contemporary 
 sculptors than they did from him. Possessing 
 as he did the technical traditions and skill of 
 the Pisan school of sculpture, which, as we have 
 seen, inherited both classical and Byzantine 
 methods, he used them to give sculptured 
 form to those same new ideals which Giotto 
 expressed in the domain of painting. He 
 had, indeed, already shown himself fit compeer
 
 Andrea Pisatio. BURIAL OF JOHN BAPTIST. 
 
 Gates of the Baptistery, Florence 
 
 Facing page 129.
 
 ANDREA PIS A NO'S GATES. 129 
 
 with Giotto, in the beautiful bronze gates which 
 he designed in 1330, before the Campanile's 
 foundations were laid. As decorated doors 
 they are finer than Ghiberti's and more severe ; 
 but their good qualities are of a less popular 
 sort. If a visitor to Florence will stand at a 
 point equi-distant from Andrea's and Ghi- 
 berti's doors, whence he can see both, he will 
 quickly perceive how superior the old ones 
 are in decorative effect. It is only when you 
 come close up to Ghiberti's that the grace of 
 the figures reveals its exquisite charm. Yet 
 the panels of Andrea's doors are not really 
 less beautiful, even in form, whilst they are 
 more truly sculpturesque, and far lovelier in 
 sentiment. 
 
 One might select a panel at random for 
 study, for all are excellent and all adapted to 
 their places, those below the line of sight being 
 simpler than those upon and above it. If I 
 ask you now to examine the panels repre- 
 senting John the Baptist's Disciples carrying 
 him to the Tomb, and burying him, it is not 
 because they are better than the rest, but 
 
 9
 
 1 3 o GIOTTO 
 
 because space compels us to make a selection. 
 In each instance you will note how beautifully 
 the artist fills the area at his disposal ; how 
 excellently he groups his masses and breaks 
 up his draperies to reflect the light with a 
 pleasing glitter ; and, finally, what sweetness 
 of sentiment he infuses into his figures. It is 
 all done so simply. There is no passion of 
 grief in the sorrowing disciples, yet who can 
 doubt their affection and sincerity ? I know 
 of no work of early Tuscan Art, not even by 
 Giotto himself, more serenely complete and 
 suited for its place than this ; none more 
 lovely. Its little details of decoration, alter- 
 nate nail-heads and flowers, with lion-heads at 
 the panel-corners, are perfect for their purpose. 
 The outside frame, added at a later day, by 
 Ghiberti and his pupils, however elaborate 
 and even beautiful in details, now mainly serves 
 by its relatively confused effect at a distance 
 to manifest the superior decorative quality of 
 the doors it was intended to enrich. 
 
 We have little space left to consider the 
 work of Giotto's pupils and followers in paint-
 
 GIOTTO'S FOLLOWERS. 131 
 
 ing. Truth to tell few of them need detain 
 us long. The best were the man called Giot- 
 tino and the unknown artist who painted the 
 last frescoes in the Francis series at Assisi and 
 a chapel in the Lower Church. To him also 
 is rightly ascribed an attractive picture in the 
 Uffizi at Florence. This unknown master 
 makes his figures far too long and gives them 
 impossibly small heads and feet ; yet he was 
 a true artist for all that. If he painted lanky 
 figures, it must have been because he liked 
 them lanky. He liked curious architecture, 
 .too, and was probably a somewhat fantastic 
 person. A tower in the background of one of 
 his pictures suggests that he had seen Trajan's 
 column and therefore been in Rome. Perhaps 
 he was one of Giotto's helpers there. We 
 really know nothing about him. 
 
 Giottino is a rather confused creation of 
 Vasari's, who mixed two, if not three men 
 together one Maso, another Giotto di Stefano. 
 The painter worth remembering is he who 
 made certain frescoes in Santa Croce and at 
 
 Assisi. He was not a pupil of Giotto, for he 
 
 9 *
 
 1 32 GIOTTO. 
 
 was only sixteen years old when Giotto died. 
 His most notable picture represents the miracles 
 of St. Silvestro, where the saint is shown exor- 
 cising the evil breath of a horse-headed dragon 
 and restoring to consciousness two men who 
 had been overpowered by it. Giottino sur- 
 rounds the scene with a weirdly romantic 
 background. His figures are grandly simple 
 as Giotto might have made them, but natural 
 in gesture and expression. His colouring is 
 remarkably rich and harmonious for the day, 
 but, except it be in colour, he made no advance 
 beyond that accomplished by his great pre- 
 decessor. 
 
 This statement is indeed true of the whole 
 mass of Florentine followers and imitators 
 of Giotto that is to say, of Florentine artists 
 generally throughout the remainder of the 
 fourteenth century. In their hands the pic- 
 torial art made no advance. On the contrary, 
 it retrograded. No advancing school of Art 
 can live by imitation. Instead of going to 
 Nature, painters went to Giotto, or worse still, 
 they copied one another. Some of Giotto's
 
 TAD DEO GADDL 133 
 
 immediate pupils, such as Taddeo Gaddi, occa- 
 sionally came very near the master in their 
 handling of particular subjects. Now and 
 again their panel pictures and altar-pieces are 
 of considerable decorative merit, but their 
 areas of fresco are a weariness to the eye. 
 Taddeo Gaddi's series in the Baroncelli Chapel 
 at Santa Croce are better than Giovanni da 
 Milano's in the Rinuccini Chapel, and those 
 in turn than Agnolo Gaddi's legend of the Holy 
 Cross in the choir-chapel. The pictures grow 
 larger, the figures more numerous, the composi- 
 tions worse. In one respect only do they 
 show a development ; they tell their stories 
 more completely. 
 
 Giotto had been satisfied to rend the heart 
 out of an incident and depict it in a few tren- 
 chant figures. This pleased the popular taste 
 at first, but ultimately only whetted their 
 appetite for more. What the public and the 
 Franciscans wanted was not Art but illustra- 
 tion. It mattered nothing to them whether 
 the pictures were good or bad ; they wanted 
 them to tell a well-known tale. They de-
 
 134 GIOTTO. 
 
 manded illustrated literature. That is what 
 the followers of Giotto gave them. As far as 
 painting is concerned, the fourteenth century 
 was in Florence a period of decline. It could 
 scarcely have been otherwise with the in- 
 fluences at work. In the twelfth and early 
 thirteenth centuries artists were employed to 
 work for a group of men who evidently appre- 
 ciated not the mere subjects handled, but the 
 manner in which they were handled that is 
 to say, the art of the artist. When the popular 
 party came into power, and the Franciscans 
 disposed of the bulk of the Art-Fund, it was 
 otherwise. The new men disliked the old 
 work and associated the old style with a state 
 of society distasteful to them. They wanted 
 a new set of subjects treated in a new way. 
 It was not beauty they were seeking, but 
 painted sermons of their own sort. Artists 
 had to give them what they wanted and Art 
 accordingly suffered. 
 
 After Arnolfo and Giotto, architecture like- 
 wise declined in Florence. The Campanile 
 marks the culmination of Tuscan Gothic.
 
 ORCAGNAS SHRINE. 135 
 
 Later buildings are heavier, less well pro- 
 portioned, less fanciful. The neighbouring 
 Cathedral shows the decline. No one, I 
 imagine, really likes any part of it except the 
 mass of the Dome. Its beautiful marble sur- 
 face gains nothing from the forms that break 
 it up. The side portals, for all their elaboration 
 and some beautiful details, are poor and in- 
 effectual. The Bigallo Loggia close by would 
 not attract much attention if it were not in 
 Florence. When we come to Orsanmichele, 
 if we were to blot out the niches with their 
 famous statuary in the walls (which belong to 
 a later epoch of Art), we should deprive the 
 building of its charm. Its windows are bad 
 in proportion and of clumsy and graceless 
 tracery for all its elaboration. Worst of all, to 
 my thinking, as a work of architecture, is the 
 famous shrine within, made by Orcagna. It is 
 oppressively heavy in general effect. Its 
 mouldings are ill-designed. It is overladen 
 with decoration producing no general decora- 
 tive effect. In venturing thus to judge this 
 famous work, I must, however, remind you
 
 i 3 6 GIOTTO. 
 
 that much of the sculpture that forms part of 
 this decoration is excellent. Many of the 
 panels are beautiful as sculptured panels. 
 Individual figures are fine. The railing is 
 good, and so are several other parts taken 
 alone. It is the whole, as an architectural 
 whole, especially when seen from close at hand, 
 that is unsuccessful, overladen, and in bad 
 taste. It was doubtless felt to be so, for its 
 style of architecture was replaced shortly after- 
 wards by that called Early Renaissance, a 
 style which many of us think as full of grace 
 and charm as the decadent Renaissance was 
 exaggerated and overladen. With the Renais- 
 sance of the fifteenth century, however, we 
 are not now concerned. What I wish to en- 
 force is the statement that the artistic move- 
 ment, which we may call in a broad sense 
 Franciscan, culminated, alike in architecture, 
 sculpture, and painting, as far as Florence 
 was concerned, about the end of the first 
 quarter of the fourteenth century. It began 
 in sculpture and architecture with Arnolfo di 
 Cambio. It culminated in architecture and
 
 GIOTTESQUE DECADENCE. 137 
 
 painting with Giotto, in sculpture with Andrea 
 Pisano. 
 
 Outside Florence there flourished during 
 this period of decline another school of paint- 
 ing, not Franciscan nor popular, with which 
 we have next to deal. We shall find that it 
 was not a school of narrative painting, but was 
 concerned with a different set of subjects. 
 This school likewise carried on some of the 
 Giottesque traditions. The school that de- 
 clined was the Franciscan narrative school, 
 the painters of illustrations, the preachers of 
 edifying tales. They confused, or -were made 
 to confuse, description with Art. The result 
 was calamitous from the artistic point of 
 view. The walls of Santa Croce, when Giotto's 
 followers had done with them, may have been 
 full of edification ; but, except where Cimabue, 
 Giotto, or Giottino, painted them, they did not 
 glow with beauty. 
 
 A school of Art that does not make beauty 
 its aim does not attain beauty. A tale may 
 be most edifying, but it does not follow that a 
 truthful telling of it in paint will be beautiful.
 
 138 GIOTTO. 
 
 The Seven Virtues were fine intellectual con- 
 ceptions, and some artists made beautiful 
 paintings and sculptures of figures emblematic 
 of them ; others made bad pictures, though 
 equally lucid as emblems. The confusion be- 
 ween good Art and good sermons is no modern 
 invention. It was, in fact, never made on so 
 colossal a scale as by artists in Franciscan 
 employ during the fourteenth century. An 
 equally common modern mistake is to read 
 some moral or religious sentiment into a beauti- 
 ful work of Art, merely because of its beauty. 
 When we come to consider the work of Fra 
 Angelico we shall see how a truly religious 
 mind manifests itself in painting. That is 
 quite a different matter. The character of 
 a sincere artist always shows itself in his work. 
 Giotto's practical good sense is as manifest in 
 his pictures as Fra Angelico' s sweet aspiring 
 nature is in his. It would have been so what- 
 ever subjects they had chosen for their pic- 
 tures. Both attained beauty in their work, 
 just as Rembrandt did in painting the carcase 
 of an ox, because their hearts loved beauty.
 
 THE SEARCH FOR BEAUTY. 139 
 
 They looked out upon the world and saw 
 beauty where others beheld only the sordid 
 fact ; they looked for beauty and found it 
 everywhere ; they conceived it in the silence 
 of their own hearts. The day was to come 
 when the search for beauty was to be the 
 quest of the whole school of Florentine painters 
 and sculptors ; but it did not come so long as 
 the Franciscan popular ideal reigned. The 
 Franciscan movement, though it stirred and 
 gave employment to the artists of Italy, rather 
 retarded than helped on the revival of Italian 
 Art. It had the good luck to find a Giotto 
 to be its minister. But it found him ; it did 
 not make him. When he died it was powerless 
 to produce an artist of equal, still less one of 
 greater rank to replace him.
 
 140 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE SIENESE SCHOOL. 
 
 A TRAVELLER is more likely to be struck by 
 contrasts than by similarities between the 
 cities of Florence and Siena. Florence lies 
 at the foot of hills, amidst gardens and level 
 fields by the Arno's bank a city open to 
 traffic, the centre of convergence for many 
 roads. Siena is raised upon a hill-top, and uses 
 the crater of an extinct volcano for her market- 
 place. Rolling mounds, clothed with rich red 
 soil, make tortuous the ways beneath her 
 precipitous walls to her fortress gateways. 
 All mediaeval cities were hives of industry, 
 but Florence was more obviously a city of 
 merchants and manufacturers than Siena. In 
 the thirteenth century most of the fortified 
 Florentine palaces were overthrown. Siena
 
 ARISTOCRATIC SIENA. 141 
 
 to the present day bears the seal of her 
 ancient aristocracy. Her streets and houses 
 are still admirably adapted for domestic fight- 
 ing, and retain the old adjustments for barri- 
 cades. In the fourteenth century the glory 
 of Florence was her guilds ; the glory of Siena 
 at the same period was her great families. 
 While Florence was ruled by her popular 
 party, the aristocracy controlled Siena. Flor- 
 ence, in fact, was Guelph ; Siena was Ghibelline. 
 The ancient centres of population in Tuscany 
 and Umbria were mostly hill-crowning cities. 
 Orvieto, Perugia, Assisi, Cortona, Arezzo, 
 Siena, Fiesole looked down from their barren 
 heights upon the lower slopes and alluvial 
 plains, where the work of agriculture was done. 
 When people began to build houses at the foot 
 of the hill of Fiesole, instead of on its top, 
 they took a step involving important conse- 
 quences to future generations. Florence 
 
 * owed to her situation on the flat ground much 
 of her suitability to become a centre of in- 
 dustry. Being a convenient city for work, 
 
 . workmen drifted into her, as they did, possibly
 
 1 42 THE SIENESE SCHOOL. 
 
 for a similar reason, into Lucca. The hill-top 
 cities were better places for fighting and de- 
 fence, so the fighting families stayed in them. 
 Perhaps some of the strength of Siena's 
 Ghibelline character came from mere political 
 induction. Neighbouring towns in those days 
 were liable to hate one another with a bitter 
 hatred. So it was with Perugia and Assisi, 
 and so with Florence and Siena. The fact 
 that Florence was Guelph would alone almost 
 have sufficed to make Siena and Pisa Ghi- 
 belline. Ghibelline, at all events, Siena was 
 to the heart's core. Her principles not only 
 dictated her policy and manifested themselves 
 in the mode of life of her citizens, but they 
 also inspired her Art. Her people were proud, 
 fond of show, luxurious, cultured, and (for 
 their day) refined. Dante wrote of them 
 (Inferno, XXIX. 121): 
 
 " Was ever folk 
 
 Vain as Siena's ? Even the French themselves 
 \ Are not so light. ' ' 
 
 Dante, you must remember, was a Ghibelline 
 and the voice of the Ghibellines. Save as a
 
 CHARACTER OF THE SIENESE. 143 
 
 patriotic Florentine, he was not likely to be 
 prejudiced against a Ghibelline city. When 
 exiled with his party from Florence, he resided 
 for a time at Siena, so that he knew from per- 
 sonal observation the people whose character 
 he thus outlined. 
 
 The history of Siena in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury is the history of a succession of oligarchies 
 and despotisms. Such popular insurrections 
 as occurred did not long interrupt the aris- 
 tocratic system of government. Nevertheless, 
 Siena prospered exceedingly, till the plague 
 ruined her. She gave employment to numer- 
 ous artists, who worked for and under the 
 direction of the aristocracy. The Sienese 
 School of Art, therefore, was affected, and 
 to a great degree directed, by forces different 
 from those that determined the character of 
 the Art of Florence. So long as Florence 
 was aristocratic, the styles of Florentine and 
 Sienese artists were similar, nor, as we have 
 seen, did the popular upheaval in Florence 
 immediately affect the character of her Art. 
 It merely established a new tendency, whose
 
 144 THE SIENESE SCHOOL. 
 
 effect became presently apparent. The works 
 of Florentine Cimabue and Sienese Duccio 
 express practically the same ideal in the same 
 style. But when we come to the next 
 generation of artists, a change is apparent. 
 ' Two surpassing painters have I known," 
 wrote Petrarch, " Giotto the Florentine, whose 
 fame is great amongst the moderns, and 
 Simone, the Sienese." This Simone, son of 
 Martino, born about the year 1283, may be 
 regarded as a typical artist of the Sienese 
 School, a typically Ghibelline painter, as Giotto 
 was typically Guelph. Let us immediately 
 examine an important example of his work, a 
 picture painted on the wall of the Palazzo 
 Publico at Siena, characteristic alike of the 
 Sienese School and of the Ghibelline ideal. 
 It is the portrait of Guidoriccio da Fogliano, 
 general of the Sienese forces and victor at 
 Montemassi and Sassoforte. This monu- 
 mental painting occupies a wall of the Cham- 
 ber of the Great Council, right opposite the 
 picture of the Virgin and Saints, which we 
 must presently examine. It is the Ghibel-
 
 GUIDORICCIO. 145 
 
 line ideal of a man. The general is seen 
 alone, mounted on his charger, with the 
 stockades of Montemassi in the background. 
 He is riding along, as majestically as the 
 painter could make him, holding his trun- 
 cheon of authority in his hand. Horse and 
 man are draped in splendid golden stuffs, 
 embroidered with the general's bearings, which 
 curve and flutter nobly. The ideal Florentine 
 of the day walked abroad " in leathern girdle 
 with a clasp of bone." For your Sienese 
 noble, on the contrary, no stuff was too gor- 
 geous. We cannot say whether it was mere 
 lack of skill, or whether it was lack of will 
 that prevented Simone from making the figures 
 of horse and man physically finer. Andrea 
 del Castagno and Paolo Uccelli, a century later, 
 mindful perhaps of this very picture, painted 
 similar monumental frescoes of mounted 
 knights in the Cathedral of Florence ; but 
 they gave prominence to the physical power 
 of horse and rnan. Simone hid both in fine 
 drapery, and applied all his skill to make his 
 
 subject splendid and dignified in aspect. 
 
 10
 
 146 THE SIENESE SCHOOL. 
 
 The earliest of Simone's known pictures 
 (painted in 1315) is one of the best examples 
 of what has been called his lyrical style. It 
 is the " Maesta," or fresco of the enthroned 
 Virgin and Child surrounded by saints, which 
 occupies the wall over against Guidoriccio in 
 the Chamber of the great Council in the 
 Palazzo Publico at Siena. It represents the 
 patron saints of the town interceding for Siena. 
 The Virgin sits on a fine Gothic throne ; the 
 Child stands upon her knee, blessing ; angels 
 with baskets of flowers kneel before her ; and 
 the gentle saints stand on either hand. Two 
 stanzas of verses written upon the picture 
 explain its meaning, and give the Virgin's 
 reply to the prayer of the Saints. " My be- 
 loved," she says, ' be assured that I will 
 accomplish your devout honourable petitions 
 according to your desire. But if the strong 
 molest the weak, oppressing them with outrage 
 or extortion, your prayers shall not avail for 
 them, nor for any traitor to my land. The 
 angels' flowers," she continues, " the lilies and 
 roses that deck the fields of heaven, are not
 
 THE VIRGIN OF SIENA. 147 
 
 more sweet to me than good counsels. But 
 if there be a man who scorneth me and be- 
 trayeth my land for his own profit, and who, 
 the worse he counselleth the more highly is 
 he praised, let him be damned with those that 
 praise him." 
 
 This Virgin, then, is Siena's heavenly Queen, 
 who was honestly believed to inspire councillors 
 with wisdom, to pity the poor and restrain the 
 mighty, and whose delight was the magnifi- 
 cence and prosperity of the city of her choice 
 Sena vetus civitas virginis. If Guidoriccio was 
 the Ghibelline ideal of a man, this was the 
 corresponding ideal of a woman ; how dif- 
 ferent from Giotto's massively human, ma- 
 tronly type ! High-breeding is this one's 
 first quality ; she is every inch a lady repose- 
 ful, graceful, benign a lineal descendant of 
 the Empresses of Byzantium through the 
 Madonnas of Cimabue and Duccio. She is as 
 full of charm as the painter could make her. 
 The pose of her head, the curvature of her 
 wrist, the folds of her drapery are alike grace- 
 ful. Her hair is light in colour, her skin most 
 
 10*
 
 148 THE SIENESE SCHOOL. 
 
 fair. Her clothes are in exquisite taste, orna- 
 ment confined to hems, clasps, and crown. 
 She wears nothing over-gorgeous, nothing of 
 extravagant form. Queenly indeed she is, 
 but her power is in her gentleness, not com- 
 manding, but drawing the hearts of men 
 unto her. 
 
 Among all the Madonnas of Italy we find 
 none like this, except those painted by Sienese 
 artists. The Virgins of earlier painters held 
 themselves more aloof ; those of later painters 
 became more familiar. This Madonna, and 
 others of the same school and period, ex- 
 pressed not so much the conception of an indi- 
 vidual as the faith of a community an 
 admirable faith to temper and ennoble an 
 aristocratic or despotic government that in 
 the unseen world there dwells a higher than 
 the highest earthly power, robed in gentle- 
 ness and crowned with pity, restraining the 
 tyranny of the strong and dominating the 
 counsels of the proud in fact, that there is 
 a God above and that " the hearts of Kings 
 are in His hand."
 
 SIM ONE MARTINI. 149 
 
 Vasari says that Simone was Giotto's pupil. 
 If it was so, the master left no more impression 
 on the pupil beyond such technical instruction 
 as he may have given him, than Cimabue did 
 on Giotto. Simone' s Art is a direct continua- 
 tion of Duccio's. Giotto broke with many 
 of the traditions of the past, and his Floren- 
 tine scholars followed him ; Simone and his 
 followers adhered to the old traditions but 
 gave them a new development. If Siena had 
 not been ruined by the plague in 1348 (when 
 80,000 of her citizens died), there is no knowing 
 what might not have been accomplished by 
 these conservative painters. Their panel-pic- 
 tures are no less meritorious than their wall- 
 paintings. We fortunately possess several, 
 painted by Simone himself. 
 
 One of the best is the Annunciation now in 
 the Uffizi Gallery at Florence, which Simone 
 painted in conjunction with his brother-in- 
 law, Lippo Memmi an enchanting picture. 
 In drawing it is archaic, as a comparison 
 between the angel's fluttering robe and a cor- 
 responding garment in the fresco of Abraham's
 
 150 THE SIENESE SCHOOL. 
 
 Sacrifice in the Upper Church at Assisi readily 
 proves. There is an archaic spirit through- 
 out it, but the whole is invested with a new 
 charm and with new beauties. Nothing can 
 exceed its decorative excellence. The gold 
 background and halos are invested with every 
 kind of sheen and glitter that gold can be 
 made to yield. The simple colours employed 
 are as pure as colours can be, and fascina- 
 tingly combined. No painter ever invested a 
 pot of lilies or a crown and branch of myrtle 
 with lovelier significance. Hands and eyes 
 may be faulty in drawing, perspective not 
 entirely perfect, yet these errors are lost in 
 the beauty of the picture as a whole. As 
 a pattern of colours and textures it is 
 beyond praise, whilst it embodies and ex- 
 presses as perfectly as any picture ever did 
 the mystic subject it was intended to re- 
 present. 
 
 Sienese artists must be admitted to have 
 excelled in the decorative employment of gold. 
 They were not afraid to cover large areas with 
 it. They also handled it with extreme dex-
 
 ITS DECORATIVE SKILL. 1-51 
 
 terity in the form of halos and marginal decora- 
 tions. They engraved and punched patterns 
 on the gesso surface of the panel, sometimes 
 before and sometimes after it was gilt. They 
 embossed architectural mouldings on to the 
 panel, made the frame an integral part of the 
 design, and carried the decoration of the 
 frame and the mouldings on to the panel itself 
 with punched or engraved details. The Flor- 
 entines did the same thing, but not with the 
 same skill, if we except Fra Angelico, who 
 was in some respects as much Sienese as Flor- 
 entine in his Art. Even second-rate Sienese 
 artists possessed an excellent decorative sense 
 and seldom failed to produce panel-pictures 
 which are a joy to behold. The merit be- 
 longed to the whole school and arose out of 
 the society for which the school worked. 
 Doubtless, if we could turn a time-reversing 
 telescope upon the Sienese of the first half of 
 the thirteenth century we should find that the 
 well-to-do classes were clothed in the same 
 good taste which all the pictures of the period 
 manifest.
 
 i 5 2 THE SIENESE SCHOOL. 
 
 It seems hardly necessary to say that we 
 need not look to Simone for dramatic de- 
 piction of events. Yet the friars of Assisi 
 did not fail to employ so fine an artist 
 to paint for them. His actual paymaster 
 was the Franciscan Cardinal Gentile de 
 Montefloris, who set him to fresco a chapel 
 in the Lower Church with incidents from the 
 legend of St. Martin of Tours. They are 
 amongst the most decorative, and to me they 
 are the most pleasing frescoes at Assisi. If 
 they lack the directness and force of Giotto, 
 they possess other charms no less delightful. 
 Technically they have many excellences. 
 Faces and hands have a peculiar ivory-like 
 texture, unusual in fresco. Draperies are 
 richly coloured ; in fact the whole chapel 
 glows and shimmers with fair colour in utter 
 perfection of tasteful harmony. Architectural 
 accessories are gracefully designed, and, of 
 course, well and elaborately decorated. But 
 beyond all this there is a sweetness of senti- 
 ment expressed which fascinates the careful 
 beholder. Once he has caught the charm, it
 
 SIM ONE AT ASSIST. 153 
 
 will hold him until his neck grows stiff with 
 upward gazing. 
 
 Above the entrance arch is a picture of St. 
 Martin receiving the donor, remarkable for 
 breadth of composition at its date such 
 sense of space and repose, of where to put 
 things and how much to put, and then such 
 admirable feeling in the two figures, devotion 
 on the one hand, kindness on the other. 
 Graceful line rules everywhere ; suavity, 
 balance of mass, harmony of pretty colours, 
 and all things sweet in character too, as shown 
 in drapery, pose, expression, grouping, and all 
 accessories. 
 
 Simone, moreover, has pretty thoughts 
 and fancies. One fresco, of course, shows 
 Martin cutting off half his cloak to give to a 
 beggar on a cold day. The next tells how, 
 one night when Martin was asleep in bed, 
 Christ came to him, wearing the very cloak 
 given to the beggar and accompanied by 
 beautiful angels, and how, standing by the 
 sleeper's bedside, Christ preached of Charity 
 to the angels, showing them Martin and the
 
 154 THE SIENESE SCHOOL. 
 
 cloak, and how glad they all were. The pic- 
 ture is an example of Simone's lyrical treat- 
 ment of a legendary incident. 
 
 Besides working at Assisi, Simone was em- 
 ployed at several other places, such as Naples 
 and Pisa. At the beginning of the year 1339 
 he was summoned to go with his wife and 
 brother to the Papal Court at Avignon, and he 
 spent the last five years of his life there. Un- 
 fortunately, little remains of the frescoes he 
 then painted in the plenitude of his powers. 
 By a strange chance, . however, there exists 
 in fair preservation in the Art Gallery at 
 Liverpool a panel-picture done at this time. 
 It represents an uncommon subject, the Re- 
 turn of the Child Jesus to His parents 
 from the Temple. In its decorative ad- 
 juncts it is as beautifully wrought as any 
 picture of the fourteenth century, but I 
 think a spectator standing before it will 
 be mainly impressed by the charm of senti- 
 ment in it. Simone does not adhere to 
 the Bible narrative. The Mother's anxiety 
 has kept her at home in prayer. The Father
 
 SIM ONE AT AVIGNON. 155 
 
 brings the boy and has evidently been solici- 
 tous for both. They are not angry with him, 
 nor is he apologetic, but evidently reserved. 
 No other painter would have treated the 
 subject thus. It is in such ways that Simone 
 reveals his own personality and endears him- 
 self to us even now. 
 
 During his residence at Avignon, Simone was 
 brought into intimate relation with Petrarch, 
 and painted for him the Portrait of Laura, 
 unfortunately now lost or destroyed. The 
 Poet sang its praises in three fine Sonnets 
 (56, 57 and 59). Simone, he said, must have 
 beheld and painted Laura in Paradise. So 
 gentle was her expression in the picture that 
 to look at it brought peace. If one spoke to 
 her she seemed to listen sweetly, as though 
 about to reply.* The only existing pictorial 
 monument of the friendship between poet 
 and painter is a miniature in a MS. of Virgil, 
 now in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. This 
 manuscript belonged to Petrarch, who, in a 
 
 * See E. Muntz, " Petrarque et Simone Martini," Gazette archeolo- 
 gique, 1887.
 
 156 THE SIENESE SCHOOL. 
 
 couple - of hexameters in his own handwriting, 
 states that the miniature was painted by 
 Simone, doubtless in accordance with his 
 directions. Petrarch writes of the painter 
 as " my Simone," and doubtless influenced 
 him as Dante influenced Giotto. The com- 
 bination was in both cases fortunate. If the 
 poet of the Divine Comedy and the painter 
 of the Life of St. Francis had much in common, 
 there was an even closer sympathy between 
 Petrarch and Simone, for in the art of both 
 the lyrical element predominated. 
 
 We never find Simone struggling to depict 
 an event as it happened. His frescoes and 
 his panel-pictures alike deal not with facts 
 but with dreams and fancies. His conceptions 
 were pictorial, not literary. He was not con- 
 cerned to tell stories, but to paint pictures. 
 We never find him endeavouring to express 
 by means of paint a subject that does not lend 
 itself to pictorial treatment. He saw what he 
 painted ; he did not read a description of an 
 event and then set to work to illustrate it. His 
 pictures of the St. Martin legend are self-ex-
 
 SIM ONE'S STYLE. 157 
 
 plicatory ; you don't need to know the legend 
 before you can understand them. Moreover, 
 as pictures should, they please the eye before 
 their meaning is approached, just as the 
 music and rhythm of poetry pleases apart from 
 the sense of the words. As in good poetry, 
 again, the form of the poem and music of the 
 words matches and helps to express the sub- 
 ject, being smooth and dainty where that is 
 sweet, gay and rippling where it is fanciful, 
 massive where that is severe, rugged where 
 it is stern, dignified where it is solemn ; so in 
 Simone's pictures, and in Sienese pictures 
 generally, the suave outlines, tender colouring, 
 and bright refined decoration are applied only 
 to the depicting of subjects with which such 
 forms and qualities harmonise. 
 
 At Avignon, in 1344, Simone Martini made 
 his will and died, seven years after the death 
 of Giotto. Though he had succeeded in resist- 
 ing the influence of the great Florentine's 
 dramatic style and in working out his own 
 simpler ideal by adhering rather closely to the 
 old traditions, other Sienese painters were
 
 158 THE SIENESE SCHOOL. 
 
 not so independent. Thus Pietro Loren- 
 zetti (1285-1348) and his younger brother 
 Ambrogio, approximately contemporaries of 
 Simone, both yielded to Giotto's influence 
 and thus gave to a branch of the Sienese school 
 a new direction. About Pietro we know little, 
 but Vasari has preserved a probably contem- 
 porary account of Ambrogio which is worth 
 quoting. 
 
 " Ambrogio," he says, " dwelt in honour 
 at Siena, not only because he was an excellent 
 master in painting, but also because in his 
 youth he so applied himself to letters that 
 they became his useful and sweet companions 
 in painting, and of such ornament to him all 
 his life that they, no less than his mastery of 
 painting, rendered him amiable and pleasing. 
 Wherefore, he not only held converse with men 
 of letters and virtue, but he was employed to 
 his great honour and advantage in the affairs 
 of his State. Ambrogio' s manners were praise- 
 worthy in all respects and rather those of a 
 gentleman and a philosopher than of a crafts- 
 man. . . . He bore with a temperate and
 
 THE LORENZETT1. 159 
 
 quiet mind the good and evil which fortune 
 sent him." In this man, therefore, it is clear 
 that we shall have to do with a very different 
 personality from either Giotto or Simone. Am- 
 brogio, in fact, belongs to the type of artist 
 which we meet with in perfection later, in 
 such men as Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht 
 Diirer. Besides being artists they were men 
 of science, philosophers, authors, and people 
 of all-round interests and activities. Their 
 Art consequently suffered. They were liable 
 to confuse science or literature with Art. 
 Ambrogio did not fail to suffer from a form of 
 that intellectual disease and has left a monu- 
 mental example of it in the frescoes he painted 
 on the walls of the Hall of the Nine in the 
 Palazzo Publico at Siena. I think it will be 
 worth our while to examine these pictures in 
 some detail. When we come to deal with the 
 frescoes in the Spanish Chapel at Florence we 
 shall find a connexion between them and these. 
 The Nine were the supreme council which 
 governed Siena. The walls of their meeting- 
 room were to be decorated, and Ambrogio was
 
 160 THE SIENESE SCHOOL. 
 
 employed to do the work (1337-1340). He 
 painted on them, doubtless in consultation 
 with the authorities, three frescoes represen- 
 ting Good and Bad Government and their 
 corresponding effects. As Sim one had painted 
 in the neighbouring hall the Ghibelline ideals 
 of Divine Protection and manly worth, so here 
 Ambrogio painted the Ghibelline ideal of 
 Government. What Dante's treatise De 
 Monarchia was in literature, that Ambrogio' s 
 frescoes were in paint. It was a bold and at 
 the time an original effort. Three walls of the 
 oblong room had to be covered. On the end 
 wall he painted Good Government ; on one of 
 the long walls he painted its results ; on the 
 other long wall he painted Bad Government 
 and its results together. 
 
 The fresco of Good Government consists of a 
 number of emblematic figures, not pictorially 
 but philosophically arranged. Briefly stated, 
 the arrangement is this. Wisdom hovers 
 over the head of Justice, who holds scales, 
 one of Distributive Justice (where an angel 
 metes out rewards and punishments), the other
 
 
 
 O 
 
 Q 
 O 
 
 o
 
 THE GOOD GOVERNMENT FRESCO. 161 
 
 of Commutative Justice (where another angel 
 settles a dispute). Cords, descending from 
 the scales, unite in the hand of Concord, who 
 passes them on through the hands of a body 
 of citizens to that of the colossal chief ruler, 
 sitting on a throne between the Virtues. Thus 
 the idea expressed is that Concord is at once 
 the source of a ruler's power and a people's 
 prosperity, and that Concord results from 
 Justice. ' Love Justice ye that are judges 
 of the earth " is the sentence written over the 
 head of the symbolic figure. Justice turns 
 her gaze upward upon Heavenly Wisdom, to 
 show that she must be divinely directed. Con- 
 cord results from Justice, because Justice not 
 only eliminates evil doers and promotes the 
 virtuous, but keeps men at peace with their 
 neighbours by settling disputes. Concord in 
 the picture with her rope arranges the pro- 
 cession of citizens one behind another, setting 
 each man in his place ; but she likewise holds 
 a plane to indicate that she makes all men 
 equal in the presence of Justice. Thus ordered 
 
 the citizens march to the throne of the Ruler 
 
 ii
 
 i6a THE SIENESE SCHOOL. 
 
 and tender up to him the rope that connects 
 them and comes ultimately from Justice. The 
 end of this rope is the sceptre in the Ruler's 
 hand. Over his head are the three Celestial 
 Virtues Faith, Hope fixing her eye upon the 
 face of Christ, and Charity with a flaming 
 heart. The temporal Virtues are ranged on 
 either hand of the Ruler, as councillors 
 on the bench. They are Prudence, who 
 is old and grave, pondering on things past, 
 present, and to come ; Magnanimity, pay- 
 ing the labourer and crowning the hero ; 
 Fortitude, with shield and mace, wearing 
 a thorny crown, for the law of her life 
 is anything but easy ; Temperance watch- 
 ing an hour-glass ; Peace, a fair figure de- 
 servedly admired she rests from warfare, 
 but in resting makes a pillow of her breast- 
 plate and a footstool of helmet and shield ; 
 she holds an olive-branch and is crowned 
 with olive to show that her rest has been won 
 by Victory ; finally Justice once more, this 
 time imperially crowned and holding sword 
 and crown for punishment or reward.
 
 THE GOOD GOVERNMENT FRESCO. 163 
 
 The artist has endeavoured to express in 
 the face and figure of the Ruler a man of high 
 intellectual force, calm, thoughtful, powerful, 
 and reserved. He holds no weapon of offence, 
 only the sceptre, whose power comes from the 
 citizens, and a shield to defend himself from 
 attack. He grips the sceptre firmly. The 
 arms of Siena are on his shield and the wolf, 
 the city's badge, lies by the wall which Mag- 
 nanimity's soldiers defend at his feet. At the 
 feet of Fortitude, Temperance and Justice are 
 the knights, for they should be brave, tem- 
 perate and just. The Councillors are at the 
 feet of Prudence. Finally, contrasted with the 
 orderly procession of townsfolk who hold the 
 cord of Justice on the one side, we find on the 
 other a batch of malefactors bound together 
 by another sort of cord and led up to the 
 Ruler for condemnation. 
 
 The results of Good Government are seen on 
 the neighbouring wall peace and security 
 within the city and the surrounding country 
 at all seasons of the year. The Seven Liberal 
 
 Arts flourish. The schoolmaster teaches the 
 
 n*
 
 1 64 THE S1ENESE SCHOOL. 
 
 young. Maidens dance in the market-place. 
 Workmen ply their tasks. Squires and dames 
 of high degree ride through the busy street, 
 and the country-folk arrive with their produce 
 for market. The country roads are safe, high- 
 waymen being duly hanged. So people may 
 ride a-hawking in the fields. Ploughmen, 
 sowers, reapers, and threshers do their work 
 in due season. Castles on the distant hills 
 indicate that the approaches of the town are 
 guarded. Not far away is a safe haven on the 
 sea whence journeying can be made into dis- 
 tant lands. 
 
 Lest the spectator should be unable to inter- 
 pret this mass of Allegorical figures, explana- 
 tory scrolls bearing stanzas of verses are 
 painted in, here and there. Thus of Concord 
 we read : ' Where this sacred Virtue reigns 
 she brings many minds into unity. When 
 men have thus come together they make the 
 Commonweal their Ruler. He determines, in 
 governing his State, never to divert his eyes 
 from the splendour of the faces of the Virtues 
 who surround him. So custom, tribute, and
 
 THE GOOD GOVERNMENT FRESCO. 165 
 
 lordship of the earth are gladly rendered unto 
 him, and all things useful, necessary and plea- 
 sant for the State are increased without war." 
 With reference to Justice a direct exhortation 
 is addressed to the Nine : ' Turn your eyes 
 upon this one, ye that are rulers. She that is 
 here figured is crowned for her excellency. 
 She rendereth unto every man his due. Be- 
 hold, how many good things proceed forth 
 from her, and how sweet is the life and repose 
 of that city where this virtue is cherished, who 
 is more resplendent than any other. She 
 guardeth and defendeth them that honour 
 her, and feedeth and nourisheth them. From 
 her light ariseth praise for those that work 
 well, but pains for the wicked." 
 
 The opposite picture of Tyranny (with 
 Avarice, Pride, and Vanity over his head, and 
 Deceit, Treason, Cruelty, Rage, Dissension and 
 War for companions) is a mere contrast to the 
 Good Government fresco and need not detain 
 us. Indeed, in a chapter on Art the descrip- 
 tion above given of the Good Government 
 frescoes is only in place for the purpose to
 
 1 66 THE SIENESE SCHOOL. 
 
 which I now propose to put it. You will 
 readily perceive from it how easy it would be 
 for a man with the soul of a preacher and the 
 power of a poet to make these pictures the 
 subject or occasion for a moving disquisition 
 upon the noble ideal of government herein 
 set forth. He might even claim for these 
 frescoes that they are the voice of Siena herself 
 in the days of her virtue and chivalry ; and he 
 might call upon you to admire the compre- 
 hensiveness of their ideal, its conformity with 
 the Christian spirit, and its contrast with many 
 visible defects in the popular systems of 
 government of our own day. All this, how- 
 ever, has nothing to do with the frescoes as 
 works of Art. Given the scheme, which 
 might have been drawn up by a blind philo- 
 sopher, it could be well painted or badly 
 painted without in anywise altering its char- 
 acter as an illustration of a theory of govern- 
 ment. As a matter of fact it is not very well 
 painted. There are good figures in the 
 frescoes ; some, such as the Peace, are really 
 beautiful. But the whole collection of figures
 
 BAD ART AND GOOD MORALS. 167 
 
 are not grouped into a fine pictorial whole. 
 The frescoes are not pleasing to the eye. 
 Interesting they may be ; beautiful they are 
 not. 
 
 The fact is that a picture one can describe 
 is not likely to be a good picture. If the 
 actual description of a picture makes interest- 
 ing reading, the picture itself is not likely to 
 please. Take any of the beautiful pictures 
 of the world and try to describe it, you will 
 find that your description, however well ex- 
 pressed, may contain everything except the 
 very qualities whereby the picture pleases. 
 If you are a poet you may write a poem on a 
 kindred subject to that treated by the painter, 
 but you cannot write it on the painter's sub- 
 ject, and even if you could your poem would 
 please, not as describing the picture but by its 
 own separate artistic qualities. The reason 
 why I have ventured to describe the Good 
 Government frescoes at such unconscionable 
 length is to demonstrate thereby the differ- 
 ence between good morals and good Art. 
 Whatever parts of the pictures can be thus
 
 1 68 THE SIENESE SCHOOL. 
 
 directly translated into words are no part of 
 their pictorial quality, of what makes them or 
 should make them works of Art. The moment 
 the eye is turned from all the cords and 
 emblems to the fair figure of Peace the differ- 
 ence becomes obvious. We may say that she 
 is fair and has a quantity of hair, that she is 
 leaning back and clothed in a simple robe, and 
 that such and such emblems are attached to 
 her, but a glance at the figure shows that her 
 charm is in none of these details, and depends 
 in no wise upon what she means, but is in such 
 beauty as the painter has availed to endow 
 her with. 
 
 Granted that the pictures are fine as pic- 
 tures, they are none the worse for carrying 
 any charge of symbolism they can be made 
 to carry ; but if they are bad as pictures they 
 are not redeemed by being laden with a pon- 
 derous moral, however admirable. The quality 
 fundamentally necessary to a picture is that 
 it be beautifully painted, lovely to look upon, 
 and that whatever message it has to bear it 
 shall carry pictorially. The sight of beauty
 
 BAD ART AND GOOD MORALS. 169 
 
 is itself enough for a painter to behold and 
 transmit. Who that has gazed at a sunset 
 can deny it ? The sunset behind Turner's 
 " Fighting Temeraire towed to her last moor- 
 ings " is proof enough. It may be symbolic- 
 ally introduced, but that does not make it 
 good. It is the beauty of the sunset and 
 its harmony with the other parts of the 
 picture that is its glory. The symbolism is 
 well enough in addition, but only in addi- 
 tion. The beauty, not the symbolism, is the 
 painter's subject. 
 
 In these reflections I speak as a modern man, 
 for we look at old pictures with modern 
 eyes. We must, however, remember that in 
 their day such pictures, whether good or bad 
 in themselves, had a real utility. Artists 
 then had neither the skill nor the experience 
 that came later. They had not discovered by 
 trial, as they presently did, what could be 
 painted and what could not. Some, like 
 Simone, instinctively felt the limitation of their 
 powers. Ambitious spirits were not so tem- 
 perate and had to learn byj^failure. To this
 
 170 THE SIENESE SCHOOL. 
 
 point we must return hereafter. The consider- 
 ation I have still to enforce is that such em- 
 blematic pictures were of use when they were 
 painted. The men of that day looked at pic- 
 tures much as children do now ; and we know 
 how children will find entertainment and 
 meanings in the worst pictures. An excel- 
 lent example of the effect of pictures upon men 
 of action is recorded by a fifteenth century 
 chronicler. He says that when Richard the 
 Second's uncles, the Dukes of Gloucester and 
 Lancaster, came to negotiate a peace between 
 England and France with the uncles of the 
 French King, the ambassadors " chose for 
 meeting-place a thatched chapel of poor ap- 
 pearance near the ruined village of Lelingen, 
 between Calais and Boulogne. ... To 
 hide the aged condition of the chapel walls the 
 Due de Berri had caused woollen tapestries to 
 be hung all round, representing divers ancient 
 battles. But after the first interview the Duke 
 of Lancaster caused them to be removed, 
 saying that men seeking for peace should not 
 have pictures of combats and the destruction
 
 THE OLD POINT-OF-VIEW. 171 
 
 of towns before their eyes. So these tapestries 
 were replaced by other gold embroideries 
 representing the chief incidents in the Passion 
 of our Lord Jesus, and the Duke much ap- 
 proved of the change." 
 
 It is difficult for us, nowadays, to imagine 
 the deliberations of, say, the Berlin Congress 
 affected by pictures on the walls of the Congress 
 Chamber. Men of the fifteenth, and still 
 more their predecessors of the fourteenth, 
 century must have taken the subjects of pic- 
 tures seriously to heart, if the removal of a set 
 of warlike tapestries from a Council Chamber 
 and the substitution of religious subjects was 
 matter worth an envoy's attention. It may 
 well have been the case, therefore, that frescoes, 
 such as the Good and Bad Government series 
 in the Hall of the Nine at Siena, had a practical 
 utility at the time they were painted, and were 
 calculated to affect the deliberations of the 
 Committee of Government that sat beneath 
 them. If it were so, the historical student 
 cannot afford to neglect other allegorical pic- 
 tures painted in prominent positions at the
 
 172 THE SIENESE SCHOOL. 
 
 time. Even if their subjects are not, properly 
 speaking, any part of Art, they are exponents 
 of the temper and ideals of the time by which 
 the development of Art was likewise con- 
 ditioned. 
 
 These large schemes of pictured allegory 
 did, however, in one way directly affect artists, 
 for they posed an entirely new problem to 
 them. As long as painters were only called 
 upon to depict incidents in the Sacred History 
 or the old legends, they were treading a well- 
 beaten path. The same was true with pictures 
 of the Madonna, the Saints, and other the like 
 normal subjects. Even if they were called 
 upon to depict a new legend, such as those of 
 St. Francis, St. Dominic, or St. Anthony of 
 Padua, the incidents to be represented were 
 not unlike in kind to those of older legends. 
 But when an artist was called upon for Alle- 
 gories, he was invited to launch forth upon an 
 untried sea. Giotto's Allegories of Poverty, 
 Chastity, and Obedience in the Lower Church 
 of Assisi were some of the first pictures of 
 importance of this character. In painting
 
 PICTURED ALLEGORIES. 173 
 
 them he manifested another kind of resource 
 from that which enabled him to triumph over 
 the difficulties of the Francis legend. At 
 Padua, again, his figures of the Virtues and 
 Vices give further proof of his imaginative 
 powers as applied to pictorial allegory. We 
 discover similar qualities in the allegorical 
 sculptures, designed by him or under his over- 
 sight, for the decoration of the Florentine 
 Campanile. 
 
 None of these works, however, were so com- 
 plex in idea as the Good and Bad Government 
 series. There the scheme was minutely deter- 
 mined, and its threads of thought, as it were, 
 plaited intricately together. It is impossible 
 not to praise the designer's skill or the nobility 
 of his conception. The trouble was that the 
 design was in its essence not pictorial but 
 literary. It was a stupendous task for an 
 artist to take such a complicated scheme and 
 express, or rather translate, it into pictorial 
 form. It is not surprising that the result was 
 not a complete success. The effort, however, 
 was good, not merely for the artist but for the
 
 174 THE SIENESE SCHOOL. 
 
 development of Art. Whilst at Florence the 
 followers of Giotto were painting their inter- 
 minable repetitions of legend-illustrations, 
 more or less in the style of their master, at 
 Siena we find a new problem posed, a new 
 inventiveness stimulated. 
 
 Sienese painters were the men at that time 
 most likely to arrive at the true solution. Only 
 by means of scrolls and emblems can a sym- 
 bolic picture be made to convey its recondite 
 meaning, unless indeed the symbolic figures 
 have so often been used and are of so well- 
 known an appearance that they have grown to 
 be ideographs. A painter called upon to depict 
 a new kind of allegory must fall back upon 
 inscriptions or their equivalent to indicate 
 his drift. That being the case his problem is 
 simplified. He has only to paint figures of 
 types that will be seen to harmonize with the 
 idea they are intended to express when the 
 spectator has been told their meaning. He 
 may group these figures as he. pleases, but he 
 must not demand too much power of riddle- 
 guessing from the spectator. The simpler the
 
 THE TEST OF EXCELLENCE. 175 
 
 grouping the better. In fact, the whole work 
 being symbolical the grouping may as well be 
 architectural. 
 
 We are thus led to the conclusion that for 
 artists of an early date,, disposing only of 
 small technical powers, a big allegorical 
 painting is likely to be most effective if archi- 
 tecturally treated. Its main artistic virtue 
 therefore must be decoration. What we have 
 first to enquire, as Art students, about such 
 paintings as Giotto's Allegories at Assisi, these 
 Government frescoes at Siena, the frescoes in 
 the Spanish Chapel at Florence, or those in 
 the Campo Santo at Pisa, is, are they decora- 
 tive ? Do they beautify the places where they 
 are painted ? If they do the artist has suc- 
 ceeded ; if they do not he has failed. As 
 moralists or social historians we may proceed 
 to enquire whether the paintings embody a 
 fine scheme of religious or philosophic thought. 
 We may discover that the pictures, though un- 
 decorative and bad as paintings, do embody 
 impressive dogma, and that in that respect 
 they are noteworthy. That, however, will
 
 176 THE SIENESE SCHOOL. 
 
 not make them good pictures.- Or we may 
 find that though decorative and charming to 
 look at their allegorical significance is feeble ; 
 that will not make them artistically poor. 
 
 Sienese painters, as we have seen, possessed 
 an excellent decorative tradition. Some of 
 them underwent Florentine influence and be- 
 came dramatic, but the school as a whole 
 remained primarily decorative. It was there- 
 fore better suited, as a school, than the Floren- 
 tine to deal with allegorical and symbolical 
 subjects. We shall hereafter see that the best 
 fourteenth century allegorical fresco was 
 painted in the Sienese style, but before ap- 
 proaching a consideration of that work we must 
 learn something of the society for which it 
 was painted the great Dominican Order.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE EFFECT OF THE DOMINICANS UPON ART IN 
 THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 THUS far, in sketching the movements that 
 determined the development of Italian Art 
 from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, 
 almost nothing has been said about the rise 
 and power of the Dominican Order of Preach- 
 ing Friars. We have taken the Franciscans 
 as special exponents, in religion, of the popular 
 movement of the thirteenth century. As 
 students of Art-History we could not do 
 otherwise. It was at Assisi that the new 
 tendencies in Art made their first notable 
 appearance in Italy. It was the personality 
 of Francis that attracted popular attention. 
 
 It was his words the folk remembered, his 
 
 12
 
 178 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 deeds they related, his spirit they admired. 
 The Franciscans popularised the new preach- 
 ing style which supplied Giotto and his 
 followers with the subjects of their pic- 
 tures. The legend of Francis himself was 
 essentially picturesque. Thus early fourteenth 
 century Art could not but receive the impress 
 of Franciscanism. 
 
 The Dominicans, whose business it was to 
 uphold orthodoxy of faith in a transitional age, 
 when so-called popular heresies were rife, actu- 
 ally fulfilled a useful function. That they did 
 so is proved both by their popularity and their 
 continued existence. They were no mush- 
 room organization, but a strong product of the 
 needs and tendencies of their day. They were 
 not a picturesque group like the Franciscans, 
 but they were useful, especially as educa- 
 tionalists. Being useful they grew in numbers 
 and wealth. The time came when they had 
 money to spare to spend on Art. Just as the 
 Franciscans, when they first wanted paint- 
 ings, had to employ the old classical and Greek 
 painters to make them ; so the Dominicans
 
 THE DOMINIC LEGEND, 179 
 
 in their turn had to employ the painters who 
 had been moulded by Franciscan influence. 
 The earliest Dominican paintings, therefore, 
 are of Franciscan character. 
 
 The first paintings required by a Franciscan 
 house were illustrations of the Bible History 
 and the Life of Francis, both rich in picturesque 
 subjects. There are indications in predellas of 
 Dominican altar-pieces and elsewhere that the 
 Dominicans tried to set up Dominic as a rival 
 to Francis in this respect also. Now Dominic 
 may have been a remarkable man, but he was 
 not a picturesque personality. He was poor 
 material for the legend makers. Legends as 
 naturally gathered about the memory of 
 Francis as butterflies gather upon flowers ; 
 but Dominic was a man of another sort. It 
 must have been hard work, even in a credulous 
 day, to make men swallow a miraculous 
 Dominic legend. The work, however, was done 
 as well as it could be. Dominic was provided 
 with a set of miracles to match those of 
 Francis. Did a Pope dream that he saw 
 Francis supporting the tottering edifice of the 
 
 12*
 
 i8o DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 Church ? A similar dream was related in 
 which the place of Francis was taken by 
 Dominic. It was hopeless to make Dominic 
 preach to birds or have seraphic visions, but 
 he could be credited with enough miracles of 
 the commonplace sort to make a decent show, 
 resuscitations of people apparently dead, 
 healings of sick, and the like. 
 
 Sets of pictures of the Dominican legend 
 were thus painted under Franciscan influence 
 and rivalry, but it seems clear that they 
 attained no popularity. They did not catch 
 on. By degrees even the figure of Dominic 
 receded into the background, and his place 
 was taken by Peter Martyr or Thomas 
 Aquinas. Peter Martyr was more pictur- 
 esque, Thomas Aquinas more splendid. The 
 figure of Dominic, as the eponymous Saint of 
 the Order, appeared in saintly assemblages, in 
 paradises, and on altar-pieces of the Virgin 
 and Saints as long as such pictures were 
 painted, but from the end of the first third of 
 the fourteenth century Dominic yields the 
 front pictorial position to Thomas Aquinas.
 
 THE GLORY OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. 181 
 
 What pictures of the Crucifixion were to 
 Christianity as a whole, that the representation 
 of St. Francis receiving the Stigmata was to the 
 Franciscans. It was the central Franciscan 
 emblem. The Dominicans could not adopt 
 any corresponding translation of the Crucifix- 
 ion into the language of their order. For a 
 long time they lacked such an emblem in any 
 form. At last they adopted one in the 
 " Glory of St. Thomas Aquinas." The repre- 
 sentation of the " Glory of St. Thomas 
 Aquinas " bore to the Transfiguration the 
 relation that "St. Francis receiving the 
 Stigmata " bore to the Crucifixion. It was a 
 Dominican reflexion of one of the chief appear- 
 ances upon earth of Christ as God. That the 
 resemblance was no mere chance similarity is 
 evident the moment we compare an early pic- 
 ture of the " Glory of St. Thomas Aquinas " 
 with a Byzantine representation of the Trans- 
 figuration, such as may be found on the beauti- 
 ful mosaic tablets now in the Cathedral 
 Museum at Florence. There Christ is raised 
 on high with Moses on one hand, Elias on the
 
 182 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 other, and the three disciples at His feet. 
 Bright rays unite Him to the two Prophets 
 and the three Apostles. Compare this with 
 Traini's picture of the " Glory of St. Thomas 
 Aquinas " (1345) in the Church of St. Catherine 
 at Pisa.* 
 
 In the midst, raised in the air and of colossal 
 size, sits the Angelic Doctor, surrounded by 
 circles of glory and with a nimbus about his 
 head. Christ is above, among the seraphs, 
 leaning over from the starry firmament 
 towards him. Three rays of inspiration 
 lumen naturale, lumen gratice, lumen gloria 
 proceed from the mouth of Christ and fall upon 
 St. Thomas' head. Others, falling upon the 
 heads of Moses and the Evangelists, are like- 
 wise reflected on to the head of Thomas from 
 the volumes of their writings held in their 
 hands. Aristotle and Plato stand on either 
 side of the Saint, but drawn on a smaller 
 scale ; they receive no rays of divine illumina- 
 tion but they cast rays, not towards the brow 
 
 * The same subject was painted in the cloister of St. Maria Novella at 
 Florence by Stefano Florentine ; only traces of the picture exist.
 
 TRAINPS ST. THOMAS. 183 
 
 but the mouth of the Doctor Aristotle from 
 the Ethics, Plato from the Timaeus. Aquinas 
 holds open upon his knees a volume of his 
 writings. We know it to be the Summa 
 contra gentiles, of which this picture may be 
 called an illustration or rather an emblem. 
 On the open pages of the book we read : 
 " My mouth shall speak truth and my lips 
 shall detest the impious man." The rest of 
 his books lie open upon his knees. Inspiring 
 rays strike downwards upon the heads of his 
 followers standing below on both sides. At 
 the bottom of the picture, in a vacant space 
 under the feet of the Saint, lies a turbaned 
 philosopher, puzzled and angry in coun- 
 tenance. A book, face downwards on the 
 ground, pierced by a ray from the book of 
 Aquinas, lies by his side. This is Averroes, 
 the impious man detested by the lips of the 
 Doctor, and his book is his famous Great 
 Commentary. 
 
 The " Glory of St. Thomas Aquinas " may 
 have been suggested by Giotto's Assisi fresco 
 of the " Glory of St. Francis." That, how-
 
 184 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 ever, merely depicts St. Francis on a throne in 
 heaven surrounded by angels, a picture of the 
 direct Franciscan sort. This of Aquinas is 
 conceived in a totally different, and, as we shall 
 see, a characteristically Dominican fashion. 
 It is throughout emblematic. It does not 
 pretend to depict an event but to symbolise 
 a system ot thought. The Franciscans may 
 have introduced allegory into Tuscan Art by 
 the agency of Giotto, but in Giotto's hands it 
 had a direct practical intention. The Allegories 
 of the Franciscan Virtues at Assisi Poverty, 
 Obedience, Chastity were intended to in- 
 fluence the friars to follow the example of 
 Francis in those respects. The figures of 
 the Virtues and Vices painted by Giotto at 
 Padua were meant to lead the spectator 
 to choose the one and eschew the other. 
 The allegorical sculptures at the base of 
 Giotto's Campanile were a brief form of 
 narrative statement, suggesting a moral. The 
 character of Dominican pictures was not 
 of this kind. They symbolised a scheme 
 of doctrine. It was their purpose to up-
 
 GLORY OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS 
 
 Pisa. 
 
 Pacing pag t 184.
 
 ORCAGNAS STROZZ1 ALTAR. 185 
 
 hold orthodoxy and rebuke heresy and in- 
 fidelity.* 
 
 Traini, who painted this picture, was a 
 kinsman of the famous Orcagna. In the year 
 1357 Orcagna painted an altar-piece for the 
 Strozzi Chapel in St. Maria Novella, the 
 walls of which he was decorating or had 
 already decorated with frescoes. In the 
 midst of the altar-piece Christ is enthroned 
 in a glory of seraph heads. With His 
 right hand He presents the Gospels to 
 St. Thomas Aquinas, with the left He pre- 
 sents the key to Peter. The Virgin, stand- 
 ing behind Aquinas, lays her hand on his 
 shoulder. John Baptist, Michael, Catherine, 
 Paul, and Lawrence are looking on. The 
 
 * The chief allegorical pictures of a Dominican character painted during 
 the middle of the fourteenth century are these : 
 
 1. The Allegories of Good and Bad Government, painted by Ambrogio 
 Lorenzetti in the Palazzo Publico at Siena (1337 1340). 
 
 2. Traini's picture of the "Glory of St. Thomas Aquinas " at Pisa 
 (1346). 
 
 3. The Quattuor Novissima in the Campo Santo at Pisa (c. 1345 1350). 
 
 4. The same subjects similarly treated by Orcagna in the cloister of St. 
 Croce at Florence (c. 1345 1355) now destroyed. 
 
 5. Frescoes in the Spanish Chapel of St. Maria Novella at Florence (c. 
 1350 ISM- 
 
 6. Orcagna's frescoes (c. 1355 1360) and altar-piece (1357) in the 
 Strozzi Chapel of the same church.
 
 i86 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 Dominicans have here raised their philosopher 
 to highest rank, giving him precedence even 
 over Peter. Aquinas is made to represent 
 the Church's doctrine as Peter stands for its 
 government. Traini made Aquinas more im- 
 portant than Moses and the Evangelists. 
 Orcagna gives him precedence to Peter. In 
 the window of this same chapel it is Aquinas, 
 not Dominic, that illuminates the image of 
 the Church. Henceforward in Dominican Art 
 he occupies the chief place. In honouring 
 him the Dominicans felt that they honoured 
 themselves. They settled upon St. Thomas 
 Aquinas to be the rival of St. Francis, and they 
 were wise in their choice. Dominic was 
 impossible for that purpose. 
 
 Let us now return to the picture of the 
 " Glory of St. Thomas Aquinas." Who was 
 this Averroes* who lies so uncomfortably 
 at the Saint's feet, and why was he so pro- 
 minently introduced ? An answer to this 
 question involves a somewhat long digression, 
 but we shall find it worth making, for we meet 
 
 * See Kenan's Averroes et F Averroism.
 
 AVERROES. 187 
 
 with Averroes frequently in Italian Art, and 
 where we find him we may be sure that 
 Dominican influence was operative. 
 
 The activity of Averroes (1126-1198), whose 
 true name was Ibn-Roshd, practically coin- 
 cided with the last half of the twelfth century. 
 He was the latest and most notable of those 
 Mussulman philosophers, living in Spain, who 
 cultivated the philosophy of the Greeks when 
 it had fallen into neglect everywhere else. 
 Averroes' great work was a commentary upon 
 Aristotle. He is known as the Great Commen- 
 tator. Mussulman philosophers had accepted 
 the Peripatetic system, such as it was known 
 about the seventh century. They commented 
 freely upon it and their commentaries prac- 
 tically developed into a new system. Averroes 
 resumed his predecessors' results in one great 
 work, the Great Commentary. After him 
 the Mussulman school perished, most of its 
 leaders were forgotten, but Averroes re- 
 mained its chief representative in the memory 
 of posterity.* 
 
 * See Kenan's Averroes et F Averroisin.
 
 1 88 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 His system involved two great principles, 
 briefly but inaccurately entitled the Eternity 
 of Matter and the Unity of Souls. All genera- 
 tion, said Averroes, is movement ; movement 
 implies a thing moved, Primitive Matter. 
 This is eternal. It is continually changing, 
 yet with it is neither before nor after. All 
 that is possible is in Eternity. Averroes held 
 the Intellect to be twofold : subjective, passive, 
 or potential and objective or active. The pas- 
 sive Intellect is individual and perishable. 
 The active intellect, resident in the sum of 
 things, is one and imperishable. On these 
 theories the Christian opponents of Averroes 
 based their ultimate misrepresentation of him 
 as " the standard-bearer of infidelity." Yet 
 he never attacked any religion. " The religion 
 of philosophers," he said, " is the study of what 
 is, for the most sublime worship that can be 
 rendered unto God is the knowledge of His 
 works, leading us, as it does, to know Him in 
 all His reality." 
 
 After the days of Averroes the study of 
 philosophy was mainly carried on by the
 
 A VERROES. 189 
 
 Jews, whose importance as an intellectual 
 force in the thirteenth century is often insuffi- 
 ciently remembered. Their international 
 relations and secluded lives were favourable 
 to study. They were the medium of literary 
 circulation at that time. By means of the 
 Jews a work written at Cairo was soon known 
 at Paris or in Spain. They congregated where 
 trade was most profitable, especially therefore 
 in Sicily and Spain, both centres of enlighten- 
 ment as well as wealth. From Spain Hebrew 
 translations of Averroes found their way to 
 many parts of Europe in the early years of 
 the thirteenth century. Those, as we know, 
 were years of intellectual awakening. The 
 universities were active. It was a time of 
 enquiry, a great age of so-called heresies. 
 The Jews were the booksellers. If men of 
 learning wanted to buy the books of foreign 
 lands they had to go to the Jews to find them. 
 Thus Latin translations of Hebrew transla- 
 tions of the Mussulman commentaries on 
 Greek philosophers began to appear. It waS 
 an important movement. " The introduction
 
 190 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 of Arabic texts into Western study/' writes 
 Renan, " divides the scientific and philo- 
 sophical history of the Middle Ages into two 
 perfectly distinct epochs. In the . first, Mar- 
 tianus Capella and the like were the meagre 
 foundation texts. In the second, ancient 
 science returned westward in the form of 
 Arabic commentaries." 
 
 Among the strange lights of this intellectual 
 dawn, Francis, Dominic, and Emperor 
 Frederick II., chiefly catch the eye. The 
 court of Frederick was the centre of the new 
 intellectual life. Men of learning of what- 
 ever race or religion were alike welcome 
 there. Under such protection the new philo- 
 sophy made rapid strides, but patronised by 
 the arch-enemy of the Pope it tended to fall 
 under the ban of the Church. Dominic's 
 followers, organized exponents of orthodoxy, 
 became its chief opponents ; yet they were 
 themselves a product of the same intellectual 
 awakening and their schools spread learning 
 throughout Europe. By degrees the philo- 
 sophers of Europe divided themselves clearly
 
 AVER ROES. 191 
 
 into two schools : Dominican and anti- 
 Dominican. The name of Thomas Aquinas 
 
 was the badge of the one, the name of Aver- 
 
 i 
 
 roes of the other. At first the opposition to 
 Averroes on the part of the Dominicans was 
 respectful and not embittered. In Dante's day 
 enlightened men viewed in Mahomet the 
 author of a schism, and in Islam an Arian 
 sect. Dante was strongly opposed to the 
 doctrines of Averroes, yet he placed him in 
 a region of peace and melancholy repose along 
 with Euclid, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, Galen, 
 Avicenna, and other great men, " Spiriti 
 magni, che di vederli in me stesso n'esalto." 
 Three Councils in the first quarter of the 
 thirteenth century incidentally condemned 
 Averroes' doctrines, but did not arrest their 
 advance. The Universities of Paris and 
 Oxford and a school of philosophers that 
 grew up within the Franciscan body became 
 their strongholds. The contest between the 
 rival schools grew more bitter as years 
 went by. 
 
 Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was at once
 
 1 92 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 the greatest disciple and the most powerful 
 antagonist of the system of Averroes. He 
 respected him as interpreter of Aristotle ; he 
 abhorred him as representative of materialism. 
 Yet it is clear that on the whole he esteemed 
 him as a wise Pagan worthy at least of pity. 
 By the end of the thirteenth centiiry, how- 
 ever, the name of Averroes had become to 
 the orthodox the badge of unorthodoxy. It 
 was presently employed as a mere symbol of 
 ignorant and perverse infidelity. Legend 
 gave form to slander. It was related that 
 Averroes wrote a book describing Moses, 
 Christ, and Mahomet as Three Impostors. 
 Thenceforward Thomas Aquinas became the 
 Dominican symbol for orthodoxy, the cham- 
 pion of the Christian faith ; Averroes became 
 the symbol of infidelity, and even of utter 
 Atheism. That is why in the picture of the 
 " Glory of St. Thomas Aquinas " we find 
 Averroes overthrown at his feet and the 
 Grand Commentary transfixed by a ray of 
 light from the Summa contra gentiles. In 
 other pictures of the same subject and they
 
 AVERROES IN HELL. 193 
 
 were once numerous we find Averroes asso- 
 ciated with other heretics, such as Arius or 
 Sabellius ; but Averroes is always the chief 
 the overthrown protagonist of Dominican 
 foes. When, therefore, in any picture of the 
 Last Judgment or of Hell, we find Averroes 
 selected for prominent condemnation, or 
 placed in the hottest circle of punishment, 
 we may be certain that the painter was work- 
 ing under Dominican supervision and ex- 
 pressing Dominican ideas. 
 
 We are now in a position to approach the 
 study of three important groups of frescoes, 
 surviving representatives of many more of the 
 same character that have been destroyed. 
 They are the frescoes in the Spanish Chapel 
 and the Strozzi Chapel in S. Maria Novella 
 at Florence, and those of the Quattuor Novis- 
 sima (Four Last Things, Death, Judgment, 
 Heaven, and Hell) in the Campo Santo at 
 Pisa. 
 
 The Strozzi Chapel frescoes were painted by 
 Orcagna ; we do not know for certain who 
 painted the others, nor is it material that we 
 
 13
 
 194 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 should. Most of them suggest Sienese hands. 
 It is worthy of general remark that as Giotto 
 and the early Florentines were characteristic- 
 ally Franciscan, so the early Sienese had a 
 Dominican tendency. The frescoes of Good 
 and Bad Government might well have been 
 included, perhaps ought to be included, among 
 the purely Dominican pictures. It has been 
 suggested that the painter of them and of part 
 of the Pisan Quattuor Novissima series was 
 one and the same. The fact is that subjects 
 of the Dominican type were well suited to be 
 handled by artists of the rather impersonal, 
 decorative, Sienese school, whilst narrative illus- 
 trations were correspondingly better adapted for 
 the dramatic Florentines who followed Giotto. 
 
 The decoration of the Spanish Chapel was 
 paid for by Buonamico di Lapo Guidalotti. 
 When he died in 1355 it was not finished. 
 Orcagna's Strozzi Chapel frescoes are believed 
 to have been complete in 1357 ; they were 
 therefore approximately contemporary with 
 the Spanish Chapel. The Pisan Quattuor 
 Novissima may be a little later ; the Goodfand
 
 THE SPANISH CHAPEL. 195 
 
 Bad Government frescoes were earlier. It is 
 safe to assign all four groups to between 1340 
 and 1360. The Spanish Chapel was the 
 Chapter-House of the great Florentine Domini- 
 can Convent. It was properly decorated with 
 pictures illustrative of the teaching of St. 
 Thomas Aquinas. The subjects are said to 
 have been chosen by Fra Jacopo Passavanti, 
 a learned Dominican. Of the two main walls, 
 that on the left illustrates the Summa theo- 
 logica, that on the right Aquinas' s commentary 
 on the Canticum Canticorum, called from its 
 opening words, " Sonet vox tua in auribus meis." 
 The Summa theologica fresco consists of a 
 " Glory of St. Thomas Aquinas " above, and 
 two rows of emblematic figures beneath. The 
 latter form the subject of a stimulating and 
 suggestive pamphlet by Ruskin, full of fair 
 thoughts and strong opinions finely expressed. 
 On the other hand Berenson finds them 
 '' empty " as allegories and " confused " as 
 compositions. " There is not," he says, " a 
 figure in either which has tactile values that 
 is to say, artistic existence." Now both 
 
 3*
 
 196 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 Ruskin and Berenson are to be reckoned as 
 important authorities upon Art, though 
 upon Art regarded from different points of 
 view. Each, I imagine, would be relatively 
 indifferent to the particular quality in a work 
 of Art which the other would regard as of 
 prime importance. Where two such men 
 disagree with a diametrical disagreement, the 
 one praising, the other blaming the same 
 work of Art, it is safe to assume that the one 
 praised it because of certain qualities he saw 
 in it to which the other was not sensitive. 
 We may expect to find those qualities. 
 Similarly the one who blamed found defects 
 to which the other was indifferent. We may 
 assume that the defects likewise exist. No 
 work of Art is without defects ; few lack 
 merit. A lover of Art must try to see the 
 merit and pardon the defects. 
 
 As already stated, the upper part of the 
 fresco contains a " Glory of St. Thomas 
 Aquinas." The saint is seated on a throne ; 
 he is posed and draped in perfect symmetry 
 to indicate his rectitude of character. On the
 
 THE SPANISH CHAPEL. 197 
 
 pages of an open book held upright in his 
 hands are written words from the Book of 
 Wisdom : " I willed and Sense was given me. 
 I prayed and the Spirit of Wisdom came upon 
 me, and I set her before Kingdoms and 
 Thrones." A little figure of Wisdom is in the 
 canopy above him. She holds a mirror for 
 self-inspection and a book. On either side 
 of the throne are seated the great writers of 
 Scripture, on whose books the Angelic Doctor 
 wrote commentaries. They are the Four 
 Evangelists, Paul, Moses, David, Isaiah, Job, 
 and Solomon. The three divine or theo- 
 logical virtues hover over the Saint's head. 
 Highest is Charity, with flaming brow and 
 hands. Faith bears a cross and a shield 
 bristling with the fiery darts it has quenched. 
 Hope stretches forth one hand to heaven and 
 holds a branch of evergreen in the other. 
 Lower down come the four Cardinal Virtues, 
 which according to St. Thomas are philo- 
 sophical and acquired (not like the three, 
 God-given). Prudence reads in a book ; 
 Temperance bridles a fish, emblem of lust
 
 198 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 (Why ?) ; Fortitude has sword and tower ; 
 Justice sword and crown. At the feet of 
 Aquinas are the three arch-heretics, against 
 whose doctrines his polemical treatises were 
 directed ; Arius on one side, Sabellius on the 
 other, the turbaned Averroes in the midst. 
 They are not overthrown, but seated on the 
 ground deep in thought confuted, perhaps, 
 but not convinced. 
 
 This part of the fresco is obviously a later 
 representation of the subject than Traini's 
 picture of 1345. It dispenses with the rays 
 of illumination. It is a better and a more 
 complete composition by a man who had seen 
 or at least heard of the other work. The 
 remainder of the fresco has been interpreted 
 repeatedly and its meaning is now well known. 
 Of the row of fourteen female figures seated 
 under canopies, the seven on the right are the 
 Liberal Arts, the seven on the left the Theo- 
 logical Arts. A historical personage, selected 
 as conspicuous for the particular quality, is 
 seated at the feet of each Art, and there is an 
 emblematic medallion in each canopy.
 
 THE SPANISH CHAPEL. 199 
 
 As has been stated, these fourteen figures 
 symbolically illustrate the Summa theologica 
 of St. Thomas, a kind of encyclopaedia of 
 doctrine. The author divides all knowledge 
 into two parts, Physical Science which belongs 
 to reason, and Theological Science which 
 belongs to faith. Seven of the fourteen sym- 
 bolical figures are the Arts of Reason, the 
 other Seven are the Arts of Faith. The Arts 
 of Reason are the customary Seven Liberal 
 Arts, servants, as the Summa (i, 2, 65, 2) calls 
 them, of heavenly science. To mark their 
 inferiority their seven exponents are all pagans. 
 
 First, on the extreme right, comes Grammar 
 with the Grammarian Donatus. She is in- 
 structing children and pointing to the Strait 
 Gate. Rhetoric is next, with Cicero not speak- 
 ing but meditating ; the medallion over her 
 head bears a figure engaged in self-inspection. 
 Dialectic is third, with Aristotle and, in the 
 medallion, a man writing. She is a very pretty 
 figure. A branching rod covered with leaves, 
 held in one hand, represents the Syllogism, 
 a scorpion in the other hand the Dilemma.
 
 200 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 Music, crowned with myrtle, plays an organ. 
 The " melodious blacksmith," Tubal Cain, at 
 her feet ; beats his music out energetically 
 enough. This figure is similar in idea to 
 that emblematic of Universal Harmony, last 
 of the series of hexagonal bas-reliefs at the 
 base of Giotto's Campanile. The fifth Art is 
 Astronomy, science of the seasons, indicated 
 as such by the husbandman with spade and 
 sickle in the medallion. She wears a golden 
 crown, holds an astrolabe, and raises her hand 
 in wonder. Oriental Ptolemy, beneath her, 
 gazes intently up to heaven, noblest in aspect 
 of all the great men here. His neighbour, 
 Euclid, sits at the feet of Geometry, which 
 science includes the art of fortification, and 
 therefore has an armed soldier in her medallion. 
 Last and highest of the Liberal Arts is Arith- 
 metic, with Pythagoras beneath her and a 
 king in her medallion, to show that she is the 
 science of order and government. She is the 
 sprightliest of all the seven, not a science of 
 gloomy calculation but of alert activity. 
 
 The Theological Sciences begin with Lex
 
 THE SPANISH CHAPEL. 201 
 
 Humana and Lex Sterna (Summa, 3, 91), the 
 former represented by Emperor Justinian, 
 whose code was the basis of mediaeval Justice, 
 the latter by Pope Clement V., by whom 
 the laws of the Church were collected together. 
 Civil law holds her naked sword perfectly 
 level in one hand and the orb of the world in 
 the other. Canon law holds the model of 
 a church. Practical and Speculative Theology 
 are the next pair, almost equivalent to Fran- 
 ciscanism and Dominicanism. Practical 
 Theology holds a picture of Christ preaching 
 the Sermon on the Mount and has almsgiving 
 depicted in her medallion. Speculative Theo- 
 logy (the Devotio of Summa 2, 2, 82) is accom- 
 panied by Contemplation in the person of the 
 meditative philosopher at her feet, and by inner 
 satisfaction (Icetitia) symbolised in the medal- 
 lion by a mother rejoicing over her babe. The 
 last three figures are Faith, Hope, and Charity 
 again ; not as above, the virtues of an indi- 
 vidual man, but the qualities of a doctrinal 
 system. Faith's three-pointed crown sym- 
 bolises the Trinity, she lifts her hand to
 
 202 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 heaven, and holds a vessel on her knee, 
 apparently a clumsy emblem of the supplies 
 she draws from spiritual fountains the only 
 clumsy piece of symbolism in the whole fresco, 
 unless my interpretation of it is wrong. Hope 
 is robed in white and wears a hawking glove, 
 a symbol as happy as it was novel. She 
 looks upwards and raises her hands expres- 
 sion and gesture charming and most apt. 
 Charity, accompanied by St. Augustine, is 
 clothed in seraphic red. She wears a close 
 red cap with a cross for crest, and carries a 
 bow and arrow, like any Cupid, an emblem of 
 obvious interpretation. This is the divine 
 love, whereof Plato speaks, " bestowed by 
 the beneficence of the Gods and acceding to 
 the minds of men through the inspiration of 
 celestial Cupid." 
 
 The division of the roof above this fresco is 
 fitly occupied by a fresco of Pentecost, in 
 accordance with the words of the Summa 
 (i, 2, 68, 2) : " Unless the Holy Spirit con- 
 tinually prompts and impels the reason, the 
 reason is not of itself sufficient to attain the
 
 THE SPANISH CHAPEL. 203 
 
 ultimate supernatural end, towards which it 
 tends, when in any degree and imperfectly 
 directed by the Theological Virtues." It is 
 worth notice that this vaulting fresco, repre- 
 senting as it does a purely historical subject, 
 is frankly Giottoesque and Florentine, in 
 contrast with the Sienese character of the 
 emblematic fresco beneath it. 
 
 As I have before remarked, that part of the 
 symbolism and subject of a picture which can 
 be translated into words is no part of its 
 pictorial quality of what makes it a work 
 of art. The fresco we are discussing un- 
 doubtedly is built upon a fine intellectual 
 idea ; what we are now interested to enquire 
 is whether it is a fine work of art, apart from 
 its symbolical and emblematic qualities. Mr. 
 Berenson has attacked it on what seem to me 
 false grounds. He says : "Is there a single 
 figure in the fresco representing the ' Triumph 
 of St. Thomas ' which incarnates the idea it 
 symbolises, which, without its labelling instru- 
 ment, would convey any meaning whatever ? 
 One pretty woman holds a globe and sword,
 
 204 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 and I am required to feel the majesty of 
 empire ; another has painted over her pretty 
 clothes a bow and arrow, which are supposed 
 to rouse me to a sense of the terrors of war ;* 
 a third has an organ on what was intended 
 to be her knee, and the sight of this instru- 
 ment must suffice to put me into ecstasies of 
 heavenly music ; still another pretty lady has 
 her arm akimbo, and if you want to know 
 what edification she can bring, you must read 
 her scroll. Below these pretty women sit a 
 number of men looking as worthy as clothes 
 and beards can make them ; one highly 
 dignified old gentleman gazes with all his 
 heart and all his soul f at the point of his 
 quill." 
 
 If I had not so high an opinion as I possess 
 
 * The bow and arrow are in the hands of Charity. 
 
 t The italics are mine. If the painter has succeeded in putting all a 
 man's heart and soul into a gaze he must indeed be a painter worth note. 
 As a matter of fact this attitude of a man in thought, gazing at his pen, is 
 an attempt at naturalism. The gesture is not original with this artist. It 
 will be found in an altar-piece (No. 24) in the Academy at Venice painted 
 by Michele di Matteo Lambertini, who, curiously enough, worked at Siena 
 about 1449 5- It i s & \ so found in early German pictures (one of the 
 Prague school at Vienna), and is, I think, an old traditional attitude, well 
 understood to suggest a thoughtful writer.
 
 ON ALLEGORICAL PAINTING. 205 
 
 of the .excellence and value of Mr. Berenson's 
 work I should not select this passage for refu- 
 tation. It is only a writer whose words justly 
 carry weight that needs to be opposed when 
 we differ from him. The gist of Mr. Beren- 
 son's attack on our fresco is that unless we 
 know what the figures are intended to repre- 
 sent we should not be able to guess. He 
 implies a contrast with Giotto's allegorical 
 figures of the Vices at Padua, which are self- 
 explaining to a certain degree. The contrast, 
 however, is between things dissimilar. The 
 Vices are human passions and therefore easily 
 prefigurable, because we carry the interpreta- 
 tion in ourselves. We know an angry man 
 when we see one ; we know the aspect of 
 Avarice. Yet no one, I think, would have 
 named Giotto's Inconstancy if he had met 
 with the picture alone and unlabelled. The 
 figure is an ugly illustration of the idea of 
 inconstancy, but the vice has to be named 
 before we can discover that the figure is 
 emblematic of it. The fact is that all em- 
 blematic pictures and other works of art
 
 206 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 presuppose in the spectator a knowledge of 
 the thing prefigured. It was so, for instance, 
 with the sculpture in the pediments of the 
 Parthenon. The figures held emblems and 
 were identified by them. If we knew no more 
 about Greek mythology than we do about 
 that of the Incas, we should no more be able 
 to guess what the Parthenon pediments mean 
 than we can guess at the meaning of Inca 
 pottery. As it is, there are some three dozen 
 or more different interpretations of this sculp- 
 ture, yet no one considers that fact an indica- 
 tion of artistic poverty. The Parthenon 
 sculptures are fine works of art, apart from 
 their meaning, and are immediately perceived 
 to be fine by anyone capable of appreciating 
 them, even if he has no shadow of an idea 
 what they are all about. 
 
 The painter of the Spanish Chapel fresco did 
 not mean the spectator of his work to feel 
 the majesty of empire when he looked at a 
 sword and crown, or to be inspired with 
 ecstasies of heavenly music by the sight of an 
 organ. He was not painting to please the
 
 DECORATIVE PAINTING. 207 
 
 modern man at all. He was addressing 
 Dominican friars of the fourteenth century, 
 men learned in the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas 
 and intensely proud of that philosopher as 
 one of themselves. Not a man amongst the 
 friars who assembled in the Chapter House of 
 St. Maria Novella but knew the Summa Theo- 
 logica well enough to grasp the meaning of the 
 fresco at a glance. All the painter had to do 
 from the intellectual side was to suggest the 
 scheme of the work by a series of emblematic 
 figures, obscure perhaps to us but of obvious 
 meaning to the friars of that day. As an 
 artist his main duty was to decorate a wall- 
 to cover it with pleasant forms and colours 
 nicely grouped together. That the forms and 
 colours of the fresco are petty Mr. Berenson 
 admits. As a scheme of decoration it seems 
 to me admirable. In fact, the Spanish Chapel 
 as a whole is the best example of an interior 
 decorated by fresco that the fourteenth cen- 
 tury has sent down to the twentieth, and the 
 wall we have been considering is the best part 
 of it. Mr. Berenson says that not a figure on
 
 208 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 it possesses " tactile values that is to say, 
 artistic existence " ; but if the whole be 
 decorative, the whole, and therefore the parts, 
 have artistic existence. The fresco might not 
 be decorative and yet it might have merits. 
 Michael Angelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling is not 
 decorative in its present condition, yet it is 
 a superb work of art. If, on the other hand, 
 this fresco is decorative we are dispensed 
 from further enquiry. Its prime duty was to 
 decorate. It accomplishes that duty. As a 
 matter of fact it accomplishes much more. 
 It incorporates an emblematic scheme with 
 great ingenuity. It translates into pictorial 
 form, or rather it finds truly pictorial equi- 
 valents for, a number of philosophical and 
 religious ideas. Fill your minds with the kind 
 of understanding about Thomas Aquinas and 
 his system which a Dominican friar of the 
 fourteenth century may be assumed to have 
 had, and then go and sit before the picture, 
 you will find it not merely suggestive, but you 
 will find that the painting itself, in its treat- 
 ment as well as its design, matches your
 
 THE FOUR LAST THINGS AT PISA. 209 
 
 Dominican mood, just as music suitably com- 
 posed accompanies the song for which it was 
 designed to be a setting. 
 
 As an allegorical painting this Spanish 
 Chapel fresco of St. Thomas and his doctrine 
 surpasses the frescoes of Good and Bad 
 Government ; but though probably later 
 in date it does not surpass the Quattuor 
 Novissima (c. 1340-1350) of the Pisan Campo 
 Santo, to which our attention must now be 
 turned. Copies of them, with some altera- 
 tions, are said to have been made by Orcagna 
 in the cloister of Santa Croce (c. 1345-1355), 
 but they no longer exist. It was probably 
 for this reason that the Pisan frescoes were 
 at one time wrongly ascribed to that painter. 
 Who actually painted them we do not know. 
 It is clear that he worked under Dominican 
 influence, for we find Averroes in the very 
 hottest corner of Hell along with Mahomet 
 and Antichrist. Moreover, the group of 
 people whom Death is about to mow down 
 are obviously designed by the same designer 
 who was responsible for the fresco on the 
 
 14
 
 210 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 right wall of the Spanish Chapel. Both groups 
 of frescoes, in fact, belong to the same school 
 of design. 
 
 Who that has ever beheld them does not 
 remember these Pisan frescoes, especially the 
 one popularly known as the Triumph of 
 Death ? Who does not recall that weird 
 irresistible figure clothed in a black gauze 
 garment and borne on large bat-like wings, 
 sweeping onward, over her prey, brandishing 
 a scythe broad of blade ? Her mouth is open 
 uttering " a great and bitter cry." Her long 
 white hair is like a raging flame. The points 
 of her fingers, toes, and wings are sharp claws. 
 Her cheeks are hollow ; her eyes large in the 
 sockets ; deep are the wrinkles in her power- 
 ful neck. Her skin is tawny ; her wings 
 dark green. Her expression is relentless, 
 but neither angry nor malicious. She appears 
 unconscious of the sorrow she causes ; prayers 
 do not affect her. She sweeps onward like a 
 hurricane, strewing ruin, and that nothing 
 avails to turn aside. Beneath her are the 
 princes, courtiers, knights, and judges she has
 
 THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH. 21 r 
 
 slain. Overhead, devils and angels fight for 
 their souls. Behind her are the cripples and 
 miserable of the earth who cry, " Fortune 
 has abandoned us ; come then Death, medi- 
 cine for every care, oh, come and give us the 
 last meal ! >: But she hears not, nor turns. 
 Her scythe is about to cut down a group of 
 courtiers, sitting under pomegranate trees with 
 their pet animals and their music. Next to 
 fall will be two lovers over whose heads 
 two cupids hover, grouped like the genii 
 holding scrolls carved upon so many Roman 
 sarcophagi. 
 
 An inscription tells the meaning of this 
 part of the picture : " Nought availeth wisdom 
 and riches, nobility and prowess for defence 
 against the blows of this one. Against her, 
 oh reader, was never yet argument found. 
 Wherefore be thou firmly minded to stand 
 ever so prepared that deadly sin bring thee 
 not under her yoke." 
 
 The left half of the fresco enforces the same 
 moral in a different way. It contrasts the 
 
 life of the courtier with the contemplative life 
 
 14*
 
 212 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 of hermits, dwelling in the country among 
 tame birds and beasts, where even the fawns 
 kneel to be milked. We are shown the weird 
 old tale of Macarius, which arose in France 
 in the thirteenth century and spread all over 
 Europe, so that pictures of it existed in almost 
 every town. As three kings and their cour- 
 tiers were riding out hawking they came upon 
 the open coffins of three dead kings. A voice 
 cried to them, " What ye are that were we ; 
 what we are that shall ye be." 
 
 As a work of Art the left half of the picture 
 is much inferior to the right. The right half 
 is symbolical, the left narrative, and no better 
 than the common run of narrative illustrations 
 that the Giottists produced in such mono- 
 tonous profusion. But the figure of Death is 
 very fine, probably the finest emblematic 
 figure painted in mediaeval Europe up to that 
 date. I have endeavoured to describe it, but 
 
 V 
 
 the figure transcends any description. It is a 
 painter's conception. It cannot be translated 
 into language, but must be seen. It requires 
 no emblem to explain it, beyond the living
 
 " DEATH" IN ART. 213 
 
 ahead and the dead beneath. It is the concep- 
 tion of a man who felt the horror of death 
 with true mediaeval emphasis. In the year 
 1348 the neighbouring city of Siena was 
 ravaged by plague. Eighty thousand citizens 
 are said to have died of it. It is more than 
 probable that this picture was painted about 
 that time and under the shadow of that 
 terror. The painter may himself have been a 
 Sienese. The people of those days conceived 
 of Death as a person. Even Durer, nearly 
 two centuries later, so thought of it. He 
 records that, standing by his mother's bedside, 
 he " beheld how Death smote her three great 
 strokes to the heart," and how " she closed 
 mouth and eyes and departed with pain." 
 In the year of the Pest at Nuremburg he drew 
 a figure of the King of Terrors, armed with a 
 scythe and wrote beneath it the words, 
 " Remember me." 
 
 This Death, the triumphant, therefore, was 
 not a mere emblem to the folk of those days. 
 It was the image of a mighty personal power, 
 very near at hand, very terrible. It took
 
 2i 4 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 this form in the painter's imagination. He 
 painted no laboriously constructed emblematic 
 figure, but a demon that he had beheld in his 
 mind's eye. Hence the vitality and power of 
 the picture, rising far beyond mere decoration 
 into the regions of positive creation. Tech- 
 nically, the whole picture has faults enough ; 
 they are not worth naming, for they do not 
 cloud the vivid impression which the work, as 
 a whole, produces even on a modern spec- 
 tator. What the painter conceived, so clearly 
 that he may be said to have beheld it, we also 
 behold in the presence of his picture. His 
 technical powers sufficed for that transference. 
 It is their ample justification. 
 
 We have left ourselves no time to deal with 
 the neighbouring frescoes of the Last Judg- 
 ment and Hell ; neither can we pause over 
 the corresponding works of Orcagna (c. 
 1355-1360) in the Strozzi Chapel. An ex- 
 amination of them would only confirm the 
 conclusions we have already reached. The 
 important historical facts to remember are 
 these. At the end of the thirteenth century
 
 A NEW IMPULSE. 215 
 
 artists, under the influence of the Franciscan 
 movement, or in accordance with the popular 
 feeling of which that movement was another 
 expression, looked at Nature in a new way 
 and introduced into Art the expression of a 
 new ideal. They painted dramatic pictures, 
 representations of life as vivid as their powers 
 enabled them to produce. The impulse to 
 further development of this kind of Art-pro- 
 duction failed shortly after the death of Giotto, 
 and was succeeded by an impulse of a different 
 kind. In response to the demands of com- 
 munities inspired by the Dominican ideal, 
 pictures were then painted of an allegorical 
 character, representing systems of thought. 
 In order to produce such pictures artists 
 were obliged to treat their subject in a new 
 way. The traditions of Giotto did not suffice. 
 New artistic problems required a new solution. 
 The effort thus called for gave an impulse to 
 artistic development. It was perceived that 
 such wall-paintings should be primarily 
 decorative. The first efforts in that direction 
 failed ; but ultimately in the Spanish and
 
 216 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 Strozzi chapels greater success was obtained. 
 Instead of dividing the wall into a number 
 of rectangular compartments, as Giotto and the 
 narrative painters naturally did, allegorical 
 pictures as naturally spread over the whole 
 area to be decorated. The Spanish Chapel 
 as a decorated interior far surpasses the Arena 
 Chapel at Padua. It is, in fact, the best 
 decorated interior produced after the decay 
 of the Byzantine and classical schools. All 
 later examples of well-decorated interiors, 
 such as the Cambio at Perugia, the Apparte- 
 mento Borgia at the Vatican, and the like, 
 descend from the Spanish Chapel. 
 
 Moreover, the new demands made upon 
 artists enlarged their horizon. A Giottist 
 illustrator of a narrative felt that when he 
 had told his story he had done enough. An 
 artist called upon to paint a figure of Music 
 soon realised that any figure holding a mu- 
 sical instrument was not as good as any other. 
 A pretty figure was essential. Hence, the 
 Spanish Chapel's allegorical figures are all 
 pretty ; the representative men dignified.
 
 THE TRUE AIM OF ART. 217 
 
 Allegory, in fact, introduced the demand for 
 formal beauty. That was its important con- 
 tribution to artistic development. It was a 
 new demand upon painters and sculptors, 
 and one that could not be fully supplied 
 till the technical resources of Art were much 
 enlarged. Artists were thus led to increase 
 their technical powers, to search for beauty 
 for its own sake. Once they were firmly set 
 upon that road the future of Italian Art was 
 sure. 
 
 For Beauty is the true aim of Art. Narra- 
 tive illustration, allegory, edification, what 
 you please, may be subordinate aims, but 
 cannot be principal if Art is to be great. Had 
 there been no popular movement in the thir- 
 teenth century, no change in the class for 
 whom artists worked ; had the aristocratic 
 and refined class alone remained the em- 
 ployers of artists, and the classical ideals 
 been adhered to and developed, it seems pro- 
 bable that beauty would sooner have been 
 realised as the artist's aim.^By a roundabout 
 route and in process of time the same result
 
 218 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 was ultimately arrived at, and with this advan- 
 tage, that in the meantime the taste of a much 
 larger public was educated to a keen appre- 
 ciation of beauty. In the full tide of the 
 Renaissance the cultured classes again ob- 
 tained control of the Art-Fund, but when they 
 did so the works that they caused to be made 
 were a joy not only to themselves but to the 
 great mass of the people of Central and 
 Northern Italy. Love of beauty thus entered 
 the heart of the Italians, where it resides to- 
 day. Will any corresponding movement ever 
 infuse into the mass of English-speaking men 
 and women a similar quality ? There is no 
 reason why it should not. All we can assert 
 is that our race as a whole has never yet passed 
 through the stage of popular artistic educa- 
 tion which the Italians experienced from the 
 fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, and 
 which has left an indelible impression upon 
 them.
 
 219 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 FRA ANGELICO. 
 
 THE paintings by the Dominican friar, 
 generally known as Fra Angelico, have been 
 found pleasing by men of many periods 
 and casts of thought ; and this, not for their 
 comprehensiveness of conception or splendour 
 of execution, but because through them, as 
 through transparent crystal, a singularly pure, 
 gentle, and holy personality may be clearly 
 perceived. Fra Angelico was born, the son of 
 of a certain Pietro, in the year 1387 at Vicchio 
 (between Dicomano and Borgo S. Lorenzo), 
 not far from Vespignano. His baptismal 
 name was Guido. He had a brother named 
 Benedetto, whether elder or younger we do 
 not know. In the year 1407 both brothers 
 entered the Dominican Convent on the Fiesole
 
 220 FRA ANGELICO. 
 
 hill, at which time Guido took the name of 
 Giovanni, and presently became known as Fra 
 Giovanni of Fiesole. 
 
 The brothers were sent to the novices' 
 training-house at Cortona. Owing to troubles 
 connected with the Papal schism they were 
 kept away from Florence, with the rest of the 
 Dominicans, for ten years. In 1418 they re- 
 turned to Fiesole, where Fra Angelico lived 
 till 1436. In that year he and his fellows 
 were transferred to the Convent of S. Marco 
 at Florence, which he was destined to make 
 famous, and where he resided till 1445. Then 
 he went to Rome to work for the Pope ; and 
 at Rome he died in 1455. His active life, 
 therefore, covers the first half of the fifteenth 
 century, and is naturally divisible into four 
 periods 1408-1418, ten years of novitiate 
 and wandering, in which he learnt his craft ; 
 1418-1436, eighteen years of life at Fiesole ; 
 1436-1445, nine years in Florence ; 1445- 
 1455, ten years at Rome. It might be shown 
 that the painter's style passed through four 
 stages of development, almost synchronous
 
 HIS CHARACTER. 221 
 
 with these periods ; but Fra Angelico is not 
 an artist whose works we study for the sake 
 of their artistic style. He founded no school ; 
 he had few imitators." He is remarkable as 
 the artist who gave to a certain group of 
 ideas their plainest and most lovely expres- 
 sion ; his works, therefore, may be considered 
 most profitably as a whole. 
 
 Vasari's life of him is one of the most charm- 
 ing of the biographies he has preserved for us. 
 It may have been written by some friar, who 
 knew the artist personally, or it may merely 
 incorporate the tradition handed down in the 
 Convent of San Marco. It contains the fol- 
 lowing well-known passage : 
 
 " Fra Giovanni was a simple man and most 
 holy in his walk. He shunned all things of 
 this world, lived a pure and saintly life, and 
 was such a friend to the poor that I think his 
 soul must now be in Heaven. He exercised 
 himself continually in painting, but would 
 depict none but sacred subjects. He might 
 have been, but cared not to be rich, saying
 
 222 FRA ANGELICO. 
 
 that true riches consist alone in being content 
 with a little. He might have commanded 
 many and would not, saying that it was less 
 wearisome and difficult to obey others. He 
 had choice of positions of dignity, both among 
 the Dominicans and elsewhere, yet he esteemed 
 them not, affirming that he sought no other 
 dignity save to escape Hell and draw nigh 
 unto Paradise. ... He was most humane 
 and sober, and by his virtuous life he freed 
 himself from the snares of the world. He 
 used oftentimes to say that one who is an 
 artist has need of quiet and of a life without 
 care, and that he who paints the things of 
 Christ with Christ should continually abide. 
 Amongst the friars he was never seen in 
 anger. . . . Quietly smiling he was wont 
 to admonish his friends. To anyone desiring 
 a work of him he used to answer, with wonder- 
 ful meekness, that he must first get the prior's 
 consent, and then if he came to him he would 
 not fail him. In fine this father, who cannot 
 be over-praised, was most humble and modest 
 in all his works and discourse and in his
 
 HIS CHARACTER. 223 
 
 painting both skilful and devout. The saints 
 which he painted have more the bearing and 
 similitude of saints than have those made 
 by anyone else. It was his custom never to 
 mend or retouch any painting of his, but to 
 leave it always as it came at the first attempt, 
 believing (as he used to say) that such was the 
 will of God. Some relate that Fra Giovanni 
 would not put hand to pencil without first 
 giving himself to prayer. He never painted 
 Christ on the Cross but his cheeks were bathed 
 in tears. So it came to pass that the warm 
 Christian faith of his great and sincere mind 
 was manifest in the faces and attitudes of the 
 figures he painted." 
 
 Upon this tender and devout personality 
 the Dominican system of thought was imposed 
 by education. The religious tendency of 
 Giovanni's mind must have been fixed in his 
 earliest youth. His works prove it. They 
 are the works of a man unacquainted with 
 vice and devoid of passion ; one whose heart 
 was by nature so pure that he scarcely ex-
 
 224 FR-A ANGELICO. 
 
 perienced the power of ordinary temptations. 
 There is no trace of a conflict to be discovered, 
 no sign of victory, no scar, no weariness, no 
 memory even of temporary repulse. From 
 childhood up to old age was one slow, con- 
 tinuous advance in character as in Art, along 
 an unwavering line. Arrived at the age of 
 twenty, when the tendencies of his nature 
 had declared themselves, it was to the Domini- 
 cans that he was drawn ; it was in that order 
 he looked to find pleasant companionship and 
 right direction. His mind, submissive by 
 nature, may have craved for strong govern- 
 ance, for an initiative power from without, 
 and for protection from a tumultuous world. 
 He fled to the Dominicans for shelter. Among 
 the rank and file of the friars there were 
 doubtless plenty of simple and devout men, 
 who lived their lives in quiet and seclusion, 
 and have left no mark on history. Of the 
 noisy and disreputable friars we hear enough ; 
 but if the Dominican body had consisted 
 mainly of such gentry it would not have 
 endured as long as it has done.
 
 HIS TEACHERS. 225 
 
 Where and from whom Fra Angelico learnt 
 his Art are questions of minor importance, 
 though of obvious interest. There seems 
 little doubt that his master was Don Lorenzo 
 Monaco, a painter of far less merit than his 
 follower, but somewhat similar spirit. It 
 may be assumed that Fra Angelico was 
 already acquainted with the rudiments of his 
 Art when, at the age of twenty, he joined the 
 Dominicans. All his life he remained a learner. 
 His pictures to the last show a continual in- 
 crease of technical knowledge. He was evi- 
 dently influenced by the great Masaccio, more 
 evidently by Masolino. If he prepared for 
 painting for prayer, he prepared also by study. 
 He did not neglect the opportunities of im- 
 provement that came in his way ; and they 
 were many at a time when Ghiberti was model- 
 ling and casting his great gates, when Brunel- 
 leschi was manifesting his genius in a new 
 style of architecture, and when Donatello was 
 revolutionising sculpture. But Fra Angelico 
 adopted only such qualities in the new style 
 as were suited to express his own ideal.
 
 226 FRA ANGELICO. 
 
 Where archaism was essential to the exposi- 
 tion of that ideal he remained archaic. 
 
 We may well believe that he likewise 
 nourished his soul with all the spiritual sus- 
 tenance that the day afforded. His was a 
 day of passionate life, resentful of religious 
 control, yet sometimes passionately yielding 
 to it. The religious orders underwent rapid 
 alternations of degradation and revival. The 
 Franciscans, for instance, had fallen away 
 from the freshness of their first enthusiasm, 
 and become to a great extent worldly and 
 corrupt. When Fra Angelico was still a young 
 man, Bernardino of Siena began his missionary 
 wanderings through Italy, wherein he rivalled 
 St. Francis himself in the popular fervour 
 he awakened. Doubtless the painter heard 
 him preach, perhaps at Florence in 1424. If 
 he did, he must have recognised in the Fran- 
 ciscan revivalist a man of like character to 
 himself. A similar spirit animates many of 
 the recorded sermons of St. Bernadino and 
 the pictures of Fra Angelico. Yet there will 
 be recognised a difference between them, the
 
 HIS DOMINICAN STYLE. 227 
 
 abiding difference between Franciscan and 
 Dominican. The Franciscan used legendary 
 subjects and historical incidents of holy 
 lives as an example. " Go thou and do like- 
 wise " was his moral. For the Dominican an 
 event was emblematic of a dogma. The 
 one preached Works, the other Faith. Fra 
 Angelico as a painter treated his subjects as a 
 Dominican preacher treated his texts, not as 
 a Franciscan. Herein lay the great difference 
 in point of view between him and Giotto. 
 
 Let us take as instance the great Cruci- 
 fixion fresco, painted by the friar on the 
 Chapter-house wall in that enchanting museum 
 of his works, the Convent of San Marco, where 
 he spent nine of the best years of his life. 
 We may compare it with Giotto's fresco of the 
 same subject, or rather called by the same 
 name, in the Lower Church at Assisi. 
 
 Fra Angelico depicts Christ on the Cross 
 between the Two Thieves, with the Virgin 
 below, fainting in the arms of John the Evan- 
 gelist and two of the Maries. These figures 
 are introduced in their historical grouping in 
 
 15*
 
 228 FRA ANGELICO. 
 
 order to recall, though not to depict, an 
 historic event. It is not the object of the 
 picture (as it was Giotto's object) to bring 
 the actual scene at Calvary before a spectator's 
 eye, What Fra Angelico desired to embody 
 is the spiritual significance of the event. He 
 meant to show that all the religious orders of 
 the day, and his own Convent amongst the 
 number, were branches of one Church, whose 
 life was drawn from the Divine Sacrifice, 
 symbolised by the Crucifixion of Christ. The 
 remaining figures in the fresco are not, there- 
 fore, for a moment to be imagined as physi- 
 cally present at Calvary ; they are merely 
 depicted as contemplating and accepting the 
 fundamental dogma of Christianity. Of the 
 figures on the left, John Baptist stands as 
 immediate forerunner of Christ and as patron 
 and representative of Florence. St. Mark is 
 there as immediate after-runner and historian 
 (therefore holding the book of his Gospel), and 
 as patron and representative of the Convent 
 (therefore kneeling). St. Laurence was a 
 favourite saint in the Medici family, and Saints
 
 THE CRUCIFIXION FRESCO. 229 
 
 Cosmo and Damiano were the patrons of 
 Cosmo de' Medici, who restored the Convent 
 and used to make retreats within its walls. 
 
 The double row of figures on the right in- 
 cludes the founders or leaders of the great 
 religious orders. They symbolise the Church 
 as a body of worshippers, because they were 
 chief amongst those men who professionally 
 consecrated their lives to worship. Foremost, 
 of course, is the kneeling Dominic, with smooth 
 open brow, passionless mouth, mild dark 
 eyes, and clothed in simplest but most ex- 
 pressive drapery. Peter Martyr, the Domini- 
 can who died for his faith, and Thomas 
 Aquinas, the Dominican who lived and wrote 
 for it, are likewise introduced into these repre- 
 sentative ranks. Then come Augustine, 
 Jerome, Benedict, Francis of Assisi, Anthony, 
 and so forth each as type of some different 
 class of men, yet all imbued with a common 
 spirit of devotion. There are no landscape 
 accessories, save the dark and bloodshot sky. 
 For a picture of this emblematic kind land- 
 scape accessories would have been superfluous.
 
 230 FRA ANGELICO. 
 
 It is not, let me repeat, a representation of an 
 historical event, but an emblem of the Redemp- 
 tion of the world and man's thankfulness 
 therefor. Had the hills of Judea or the walls 
 of Jerusalem been introduced they would 
 be out of place, as localising that which has 
 no locality but is of universal significance. 
 
 The ornamental border contributes its share 
 to the expressiveness of the whole. It is 
 broken here and there by little medallions. 
 The text, " I am become like a pelican in the 
 wilderness " is inscribed over Christ's head. 
 The medallion contains the mystical pelican, 
 an old Byzantine symbol of self-sacrifice, 
 because that bird was fabled to nourish her 
 young with flesh plucked from her own 
 breast. Eight medallions contain half-figures 
 of Old Testament prophets, foretellers of the 
 new dispensation. Of the remaining two 
 (the lowest on either hand), that on the right 
 contains the Erithrean Sibyl, who says, " He 
 shall die the death and sleep three days in the 
 tomb, then shall he rise again from the deep, 
 and, first of men, return unto the light." The
 
 THE CRUCIFIXION FRESCO. 231 
 
 mediaeval Sibyls, you must remember, were the 
 personification of the divine voice in Nature, 
 Christianised forms of Pagan divinities of 
 storm and lull, changed into prophetesses. 
 The man in the lowest medallion on the left 
 may be one of the Greek sages, who were ele- 
 vated by some mediaeval theologians on to 
 approximately the same platform as the 
 Hebrew prophets. The words on his scroll 
 are, " The God of Nature suffers." They seem 
 to enforce the same idea as was embodied in 
 the person of the Sibyl. They doubtless 
 refer to the darkening of the sky at the time 
 of the Crucifixion. 
 
 A Dominican tree occupies the frieze below 
 the picture. It is an adaptation of the common 
 type the so-called stem of Jesse where 
 Jesse lies on the ground with the tree spring- 
 ing out of his body, the branches encircling 
 and bearing as fruit the various ancestors of 
 Jesus, according to the gospel genealogy. A 
 well-known Stem of Jesse in England is the 
 one decoratively sculptured as a moulding 
 round the Chapter-house doorway of West-
 
 232 FRA ANGELICO. 
 
 minster Abbey. There the figures are arranged 
 one above another, seated asleep, the stem 
 winding in and out between them. The stem 
 of this Dominican tree, passing through the 
 hands of St. Dominic, separates into two 
 branches and winds away to right and left, 
 encircling a series of medallion portraits of 
 the Saint's spiritual descendants. All are 
 Dominicans, most Florentines. The names of 
 some have been tampered with since Fra 
 Angelico's day. As examples of portraits, 
 decoratively applied, they are excellent ; but 
 so apparently simple and entirely unpreten- 
 tious is the work that it attracts little attention 
 from the swift sightseer. 
 
 The difference between such a Crucifixion 
 as this and one painted by Giotto or his 
 followers is a difference of kind. Those who 
 see in Fra Angelico " the last of the Giottists " 
 wrongly estimate the place of this master. 
 Fra Angelico did not attempt to follow in 
 Giotto's steps. In his Madonnas he deliber- 
 ately turned away from the Giotto type and 
 reverted to the Byzantine model, into which
 
 "CHRIST BUFFETED:' 233 
 
 he infused his own peculiar sentiment. Giotto 
 had to attain skill in the expression of 
 character and emotion, for upon that the 
 meaning of his picture depends. Fra Angelico 
 neither possessed nor needed such skill. The 
 men he painted are usually of one character, 
 which is that of their creator. He could not 
 paint a bad man, nor a strong one. His devils 
 are absurd. What we call evil was foreign 
 to his nature ; his lack of sympathy for it was 
 at once his weakness and his strength. 
 
 The fresco of Christ Buffeted, on a wall of 
 one of the upstairs cells in San Marco, may be 
 selected as a conspicuous example of the con- 
 trast between Fra Angelico' s and Giotto's treat- 
 ment of an event in the sacred history. Giotto 
 would have painted it as though he had him- 
 self been standing by, and beheld the scoffing 
 and the blows. Mark now how the Dominican 
 artist approaches the subject. He makes no 
 effort, indeed he definitely refuses, to depict 
 the event. He raises the buffeted Christ high 
 on a throne and invests His form with all the 
 dignity his skill could attain. Serene and.
 
 234 FRA ANGELICO, 
 
 unmoved, He is intended to appear a super- 
 natural being, to whom all events are but the 
 passing of phantasms. The buffeters are 
 replaced by mere symbols a hand instead 
 of the striker, a head only for the scoffer. 
 The kerchief round Christ's eyes is transparent 
 and folded in perfect evenness. The volun- 
 tary and emblematic character of the suffering 
 is thus indicated. The Divine dignity is not 
 violated even in appearance. The instruments 
 of seeming scorn are mere symbols. Of course, 
 all this does not affect the artistic value of the 
 picture, which is good or bad apart from the 
 forms and details of the elements of the repre- 
 sentation. But the spirit that guided the 
 designer in his conception of the subject, 
 guided also the hand in the execution of the 
 work. 
 
 Sometimes, indeed, the formulating spirit 
 of Dominicanism was inconsistent with artistic 
 effect. Several examples might be cited from 
 a series of panels, covered with paintings, 
 which formed the doors of the sacristy-cup- 
 boards of San Marco. They are all in
 
 SACRISTY PANELS. 235 
 
 the Florentine Academy. Some may have 
 been painted by Fra Angelico himself ; for 
 all of them he was obviously responsible.* 
 It may be that they would reward care- 
 ful study by the light they might throw 
 on the Dominican mind of that day, but 
 some of them are bad pictures and even 
 poor decoration. Let it suffice to men- 
 tion a waved splash of inscribed scrolls con- 
 taining the Apostles' Creed, and an emblematic 
 representation of Sacred Writ, wherein the 
 Bible is suggested by a wheel within a wheel, 
 the spokes of the outer wheel being the Old 
 Testament Prophets, those of the inner wheel 
 the writers of the New Testament. Fra 
 Angelico seldom thus artistically sinned. It is 
 probable that he only did so in service of Holy 
 Obedience, and that the responsibility rests 
 upon the undiscoverable shoulders of some 
 learned and inartistic Doctor. 
 
 At unequal distances round the walls of the 
 
 * Mr. Langton Douglas shows reason for assigning three of them 
 (Baptism, Cana, and Transfiguration) to Alessio Baldovinetti. He 
 points out the important position in Art-History of the landscape in the 
 Baptism.
 
 236 FRA ANGELICO. 
 
 quiet cloister, which Fra Angelico used to 
 tread, are doorways giving access to the various 
 departments of the Convent. Over each 
 doorway is a piece of the friar's fresco. So 
 unpretentious are they, so quiet in forms 
 and tones, that it would be easy to pass them 
 unnoticed. I will cite one as an admirable 
 example of a story pictorially narrated in the 
 Dominican style. It is over the door that 
 admits to the guest-chamber. At first sight 
 it seems to represent and is intended to suggest 
 the Appearance of Christ to the Two Disciples 
 at Emmaus. It is, in fact, a sermon preached 
 by the painter to his fellow friars on that text. 
 Fra Angelico has transmuted the disciples 
 into Dominicans, and Christ into a pilgrim to 
 whom they are extending hospitality. Solemn, 
 yet kind of aspect, He puts Himself under 
 the friars' protection and looks to see whether 
 they will know Him. His garment is of 
 camel's hair ; there is a pilgrim's staff in His 
 hand. The hat has fallen over on to His back, 
 for it is evening and the heat of the day is 
 passed. The nearer of the two friars is eager,
 
 Fra Bartolommeo. CHRIST AND THE DISCIPLES AT EMMAUS. 
 
 San Marco, Florence. 
 
 Facing fa^t 237.
 
 FRA BARTOLOMMEO. 237 
 
 beholding more than a mere stranger in this 
 man. He grasps Christ's hand with one of 
 his own, places the other affectionately under 
 His arm, and gazes earnestly in His face. 
 The other friar is less emotional, but not less 
 kind. 
 
 In a cell on the upper floor, which used to 
 be occupied by Savonarola, Fra Bartolommeo, 
 in his turn likewise a friar in this Convent, 
 painted a little fresco, borrowing the idea for 
 it from this painting by his saintly pre- 
 decessor. It actually represents Christ and the 
 two disciples at Emmaus, Dominican sym- 
 bolism having evaporated during the period 
 that intervened. The front disciple, poor 
 man, looks somewhat of a fool, with his short 
 forehead stretching back so far. He takes 
 hold of Christ's hand and says, " Abide with 
 us." The other disciple is puzzled and seems 
 to say, ' We thought it should have been 
 He." Christ's face is full of sad but loving 
 reserve. You may search through all Fra 
 Bartolommeo' s pictures and you will find none 
 such as this. The powerful influence of
 
 238 FRA ANGELICO. 
 
 Michael Angelo carried him away, as it did so 
 many others. In spirit he was like Fra 
 Angelico, but he lacked his sweet inviola- 
 bility. 
 
 Fra Angelico in presence of the mighty 
 Masaccio preserved his individual style in- 
 tact, though enriching it continually by study 
 of whatever seemed to him estimable in the 
 work of his progressive contemporaries. He 
 took from the first masters of the Renais- 
 sance so much as was consistent with the clear 
 expression of his own ideals, but he took no 
 more. He never clouded his ideal by at- 
 tempts to render it in newer or more perfect 
 corporeal forms than he was able to endow 
 with his own full spiritual significance. Fra 
 Bartolommeo preserved no such artistic 
 chastity. In contact with the majesty of 
 Michael Angelo' s titanic forms, conscious of 
 their power, their surpassing magnificence, he 
 yielded to that influence. He thought by 
 imitating the forms to attain the grandeur 
 of the unapproachable master and he failed, 
 as all must fail who imitate forms without
 
 FRA SAVONAROLA. 239 
 
 absorbing and incorporating into themselves 
 the spirit that created the forms. Had Fra 
 Bartolommeo been conservative, as Fra 
 Angelico was before him, he would have left 
 us a number of lovely paintings, instead of 
 the half-dozen we can look upon with pleasure 
 and all the rest that fill us with regret. I 
 love, therefore, to look at this little fresco of 
 his, and to think how the spirit of the humble 
 Giovanni thus, even after his death, found 
 utterance once again in the work of another. 
 
 In Savonarola's cell there hangs a relic of 
 no small interest the handiwork of Fra 
 Angelico himself. It is stowed away in so 
 dark a corner that one can hardly see it. Eyes 
 accustomed to the gloom discover a small 
 picture of the Crucified Christ, painted on a 
 simple piece of white stuff. When the great 
 preacher mounted the pulpit, this banner 
 was borne before him. In those impassioned 
 appeals of his, that electrified for a time the 
 people of Florence, collected in crowded 
 silence within the vast area of the newly 
 finished Cathedral, it was to this very symbol
 
 2 40 FRA ANGELTCO. 
 
 of his faith that he was wont to point, 
 whereon are written the now faded words, 
 Nos predicamus Christum crucifixum. 
 
 Such a picture, let me even once again 
 impress upon you, was not intended nor 
 thought of as representing an historical event. 
 It was a symbol of Faith. In most of his 
 " Crucifixions " Fra Angelico indicates this 
 by introducing the figure of Dominic in devo- 
 tion at the foot of the Cross, as representative 
 of himself and all Dominicans. The friars' 
 cells contain many frescoes of this type, 
 painted by our artist or his assistants under 
 his direction, and therefore to be reckoned 
 as his work. The best fresco of the kind, 
 painted by the master's own hand, is in the 
 cloister facing the entrance. There are only 
 two figures Christ hanging dead upon the 
 Cross, and Dominic kneeling in tears at its 
 foot. The depth of feeling expressed in them 
 is beyond translation into words. I do not 
 mean that words cannot convey an equal 
 depth of feeling. Doubtless all the Arts may 
 be regarded as equally expressive, each in its
 
 ARTISTIC EXPRESSION. 241 
 
 own fashion. What I would say is that the 
 feeling expressed in this picture is pictorially 
 conceived and pictorially expressed. An equal 
 depth of feeling might be conceived and ex- 
 pressed poetically, but it would not be the 
 same in all respects. Life is bigger than any 
 Art. All that a work of Art can do is to image 
 forth one aspect of the beauty of life. The 
 aspects suited to different Arts are different. 
 Love is a passion that all men know. It is 
 expressed in Shakespeare in the language of 
 Romeo and Juliet, by Wagner in the music 
 of Tristan and Isolde. Both are expressions 
 of the same emotion ; but you cannot trans- 
 late the literary expression into music, though 
 you may set it to music ; you cannot trans- 
 late the musical expression into words, though 
 you may accompany it by words. The 
 emotion itself transcends all the expressions 
 it has ever found. 
 
 All the work in Fra Angelico's picture is 
 visible from seven or eight yards away. It 
 was intended to produce its effect at a dis- 
 tance. Fra Angelico did not labour after 
 
 16
 
 242 FRA ANGELICO. 
 
 detailed minuteness of finish in fresco. The 
 ideas he wished to embody were simple ; 
 when they were expressed he was satisfied. 
 Here he drew the outline of Christ's figure 
 with great care against the dark blue of the 
 sky. A line more expressively contrived and 
 more subtly drawn you will not easily discover. 
 He tenderly, but simply, modelled the form of 
 the body, not desiring to attract attention to 
 the form for its own sake, but anxious to make 
 visible the weariness that led to death. 
 " Was ever sorrow like unto my sorrow ? " 
 The lifeless head droops over towards the right 
 arm, beneath which Dominic kneels. In the 
 bending of the neck, though dead, there is 
 suggested somewhat of benignity towards the 
 sorrowing suppliant. The body preserves no 
 sign of agony, nor the face of pain. Weari- 
 ness, sadness, and now rest that is all. It is 
 not the face of an ascetic. The features are 
 well-formed, the brow fairly arched and finely 
 modelled ; the mouth is small, the thin lips 
 gently closed. A white cloth, girt about the 
 loins, floats in the breeze ; by his pictorial
 
 THE TRANSFIGURATION. 243 
 
 magic the artist has invested the curves of it 
 with the dreamy sadness that pervades the 
 picture. In the grief of the kneeling Dominic 
 there is no violence, but the more sincerity for 
 that reserve. His moistened eyes are fastened 
 upon Christ ; his forehead is wrinkled with 
 care ; his brows are drawn up at the corners ; 
 yet about the mouth there seems to linger 
 the faint trace of an habitual smile. 
 
 We have already noticed one of the frescoes 
 painted by Fra Angelico and his assistants 
 in the cells upstairs. All are worthy of study, 
 but time only permits us to consider one 
 more. Let it be the Transfiguration, in one 
 respect the most noteworthy of all, as mani- 
 festing qualities we should hardly look for in 
 the work of so mild an artist. Reverence, 
 humility, love we look for the expression of 
 them in Fra Angelico' s pictures, rather than 
 for dignity and majesty. Yet in this Trans- 
 figuration we shall discover a grandeur beyond 
 that attained by Raphael in his last picture. 
 Size is not indispensable for majesty ; there 
 
 exist gems engraved by Greek artists with the 
 
 16*
 
 244 FRA ANGELICO. 
 
 likeness of Zeus far more majestic than the 
 colossal Sphinx. Strength of body is not 
 essential, nor the aspect of commanding intel- 
 ligence. The clearest vision of Divine Glory 
 may be granted to the simple soul. " Blessed 
 are the pure in heart for they shall see 
 God." 
 
 The figure of Christ in this fresco is less 
 than life-size. It is lightly, almost sketchily, 
 painted in. It is drawn with no " boldness." 
 It is not the figure of a strong or highly intel- 
 lectual man. Not a muscle of the body is 
 visible. The pose, prophetic of the Cruci- 
 fixion to come, is altogether simple. Yet with 
 such economy of means, how grand a result is 
 obtained ! Michel Angelo's Christ the Judge, 
 with bared muscular chest and strong arms 
 darting thunderbolts upon the damned, is a 
 vulgar piece of bombast compared with this 
 transfigured Christ, in which every line is laid 
 in gentleness and every gesture posed in peace. 
 In its emblematic Dominican fashion, the 
 mystic event is perhaps as perfectly shadowed 
 forth as could be. Nothing is introduced that
 
 MYSTICISM. 245 
 
 is superfluous to the idea. There is no elabora- 
 tion of landscape, nothing to materialise the 
 dream or bring it down into the solid world 
 of every day. The hill is a mere symbolic 
 mound, with neither flower nor pebble upon it. 
 In the sky is never a useless cloud, nor in the 
 garments a needless fold. It is the rendering 
 in paint of a mystic subject, done by a mystic 
 painter in an atmosphere of mysticism a 
 picture that could only be produced just 
 when, where, and by whom it was produced ; 
 one that we can still enjoy, but which to-day 
 we could neither make nor imitate. 
 
 This, as I have before stated, is the value 
 of old works of Art to later generations. 
 Enshrining, as they do, bygone ideals they 
 are unique. They could only be made when 
 they were made. No one can imitate their 
 spirit now, or ever hereafter. Fra Angelico 
 could not exist in the twentieth century. 
 He was possible only when he lived. His pic- 
 tures then only could be produced. Their 
 defects are conditions of their merits. Both 
 were consequences of their time, products of
 
 246 FRA ANGELICO. 
 
 the same conditions as the ideals of that time. 
 But if we cannot hope, and indeed do not 
 desire, to imitate such works of the past, we 
 can still enjoy them with a keen delight. Their 
 very naivete is a part of their enchantment. 
 They transport our hearts to a younger day ; 
 they give us back the childhood of our faith. 
 Beside me, as I write, is a child's painting of 
 her doll " Juliet ! ' No one would recommend 
 grown artists to try and paint like that they 
 could not, however much they might try. 
 Yet the rude drawing has an unmistakable 
 childish charm. It takes the spectator back 
 to his own early days and bathes him for a 
 moment in the fountain of infancy. Somewhat 
 similar is the delightful effect that works of 
 developing, but still undeveloped, Art-schools of 
 the past produce upon modern spectators who 
 regard them sympathetically. 
 
 Before taking leave of Fra Angelico, there is 
 one more painting by him, of essentially 
 Dominican type, that calls for notice. It is 
 the beautiful and famous little altar-piece, 
 painted for the Florentine Church of the
 
 THE LAST JUDGMENT. 247 
 
 Angels, and now in the Academy at Florence. 
 The subject of it is the Last Judgment, with 
 Paradise on the one hand, Hell on the other. 
 We at once recognise in this picture the same 
 kind of design which we find in frescoes of the 
 same subjects in the Pisan Campo Santo and 
 the Strozzi Chapel in St. Maria Novella at 
 Florence. Christ is on high in the midst, 
 between the Virgin and John Baptist ; 
 Apostles and Prophets are on either hand. 
 Beneath are open graves in a double row, 
 separating the newly-risen Blessed from the 
 Damned. Hell is on the extreme right of the 
 panel, arranged in bolge, as in other Dominican 
 and Dantesque pictures. On the extreme left 
 is the gate of Heaven. Hell is only note- 
 worthy as showing Fra Angelico's incapacity 
 to deal with such a subject. It has been sug- 
 gested that he used to turn over his Hells and 
 devils to his assistants to paint. It is not 
 what we should expect of him. He was surely 
 the last person to shirk an unpleasant duty. 
 Besides, his devils and wicked people are so 
 badly done as to afford primd facie evidence
 
 248 FRA ANGELICO. 
 
 that he painted them himself. Any less 
 sweet-minded person would surely have 
 painted them better. Few Italians really 
 enjoyed painting devils and Hells. It is only 
 north of the Alps that we find men whose 
 imaginations revelled in such subjects- 
 painters like Jerome Bosch, for example, 
 whose ingenuity of diabolic invention rises 
 almost to genius. 
 
 There is no real horror in Fra Angelico's 
 horrified, no agony among the tortured, no 
 visible despair. His imagination could not 
 picture that kind of subject. In painting it 
 he painted what he had heard tell of, not what 
 he had seen. No good result is thus pictorially 
 accomplishable, for painting is the incorpora- 
 tion of a thing beheld. The right side of this 
 picture, therefore, is purely conventional and 
 artistically non-existent. The other side, 
 however, that of the Blessed, is an enchanting 
 work. For the Hell the painter had types 
 before him, which, though themselves poor, 
 he failed to equal. For the Paradise he like- 
 wise had types, and easily surpassed them all.
 
 THE DANCE OF THE BLESSED. 249 
 
 The wings of his angelic fancy carried him 
 away to regions of delight, which no painter 
 had previously explored. There he was at 
 home. They were the land of his daily 
 dreams ; their inhabitants were his friends, 
 the people with whom he was accustomed to 
 commune in the quiet of his own heart. He 
 knew how they looked and behaved. He 
 knew them by scores and hundreds whole 
 populations of them. He could have gone 
 on painting them for a life -time and not ex- 
 hausted the supply. He had only to shut his 
 eyes and they floated and danced before him. 
 The actual arrangement of this part of the 
 picture was doubtless suggested by a portion 
 of the Church Militant and Triumphant fresco 
 in the Spanish Chapel. In that also there is 
 a Gate of Paradise, towards which the souls 
 of the Blessed joyfully run, guided by 
 Dominican teachers. Fra Angelico borrowed 
 the idea, but invested it with a beauty wholly 
 his own. The newly-risen Saints stand or 
 kneel for a moment in joyful adoration of 
 their glorified Redeemer, now at last beheld.
 
 2 5 o FRA ANGELICO. 
 
 They stretch forth their hands towards Him 
 with exceeding joy. As they are thus em- 
 ployed their guardian angels find them out, 
 greet them, and then with glad converse 
 lead them towards the gate of their ever- 
 lasting home. Holding one another's hands 
 they dance with slow and graceful steps 
 upon the flower-bespangled sward, till, caught 
 up in a flood of golden light, they are borne 
 within the walls of Heaven and seen no more. 
 It was the joys of the celestial ante-chamber 
 only that the painter dared to depict. 
 
 Nothing more perfect of its kind was ever 
 painted than the Dance of the Blessed with the 
 Angels. The like was never attempted, so far 
 as we know, by another artist. Botticelli 
 painted dancing angels, but they were boys and 
 girls scarcely disguised. Fra Angelico's angels 
 were the very incarnation of celestial spirits 
 as pictured by mediaeval fancy. No wonder 
 people called him the angelic friar. He seemed 
 to his contemporaries to belong himself to the 
 angelic fellowship, and, in painting angels, to 
 paint his equals and his friends. In Fra
 
 HIS FIRM FAITH. 251 
 
 Angelico the mediaeval religious fancy ob- 
 tained final expression. He was almost the 
 last, if not the very last, Central Italian 
 religious painter. No one, for instance, ever 
 painted a Last Judgment again, as a thing 
 actually believed in. Michael Angelo and 
 Tintoret, in the Sistine Chapel at Rome and 
 the Church of the Madonna del Orto at Venice, 
 painted wonderful pictures on that theme, 
 but they painted them as splendid dramas, 
 not as representations of an event which 
 might be expected some day to happen so. 
 Those pictures were no more credible than a 
 scene from Paradise Lost is, or ever was, 
 credible. 
 
 Fra Angelico' s Last Judgment and his 
 paintings generally depict or suggest the 
 things in which he veritably believed to his 
 heart's core. He believed in Heaven and in 
 Saints and Angels, believed with all his soul 
 and without a shadow of doubt that they 
 existed, just as certainly as the folk of his own 
 day in Florence existed. His fancy depicted 
 what his faith comprehended, or so much of
 
 252 FRA ANGEL 1 'CO. 
 
 it as his nature could sympathise with. The 
 time was close at hand when such simplicity 
 of Faith was to be impossible to any man in 
 the front ranks of his day's intelligence. The 
 age of learning was already come. Less than 
 a century was to pass before the lore of 
 the past was to be reacquired, and students 
 and men of action were to launch forth into 
 new areas of knowledge and speculation, and 
 physically into new regions of the earth. Fra 
 Angelico had not been dead twenty years 
 when Columbus discovered America. He 
 over-lived the Ottoman conquest of Constan- 
 tinople, which produced so great an effect on 
 Western learning. The forces destined to 
 change the face not only of the fine Arts, but 
 of all the Arts of life were already visibly 
 operative in Fra Angelico' s life-time, though 
 their significance was not yet realised. The 
 printing-press was at work. The new day, the 
 day of the great European Renaissance, was 
 at hand. 
 
 As Cimabue and Duccio had been the 
 last, and perhaps the greatest, of the Italian
 
 THE GOTHIC STYLE. 253 
 
 Byzantine painters, so Fra Angelico was 
 the last and greatest of the Gothic painters 
 in Italy. The spirit of his work is the 
 spirit of the thirteenth century sculptors of 
 Amiens, Rheims, and Paris. They and he 
 would have understood one another per- 
 fectly. From the new spirit the spirit of 
 Masaccio, Michael Angelo, and Leonardo- 
 he was sundered at heart by a world-epoch. 
 He had no notable followers because he could 
 have none. There no longer existed any 
 environment in which they could thrive. 
 Half-a-century later Fra Angelico himself 
 might have starved for lack of employment 
 and appreciation. 
 
 Like the earth, humanity demands a change 
 of crops. It cannot for long continue to 
 produce the same kind of growth. Each day 
 has its own possibilities, just as to every indi- 
 vidual in the world some things are possible, 
 which are possible to no one else. Ideals 
 succeed one another, sometimes by slow ex- 
 change, sometimes by rapid revolution. It 
 was a revolution that was impending when
 
 254 FRA AN G ELI CO. 
 
 Fra Angelico died. There were men alive 
 then who were to outlive Raphael and behold 
 the triumphs of the mighty Michael Angelo. 
 
 But if the days that were to come were 
 great, great also was the epoch now passing 
 away the age of chivalry and of faith, the 
 heroic age of Western Europe. Great men 
 of action it had produced, great kings, great 
 prophets, great saints, great artists. Amongst 
 them are to be numbered some of the most 
 loveable human beings of whom we possess 
 historical record. Not one of them all not 
 St. Louis of France nor St. Francis of Assisi 
 surpasses for still discoverable, still appreciable 
 fascination of character the peasant's son of 
 Vicchio, the humble Dominican friar, Beato 
 Angelico of Fiesole. 
 
 When he died in Rome in 1455, they 
 buried him in the Dominican Church of 
 Santa Maria sopra Minerva, and laid a 
 monumental stone above him for memorial. 
 It is simple, like the man and his works. 
 He lies in his plain friar's habit, hands 
 crossed upon his breast never more to hold
 
 HIS DEATH. 255 
 
 brush or be folded in prayer ; sightless eyes 
 sunk deep in their sockets, but the trace 
 of a smile lingering about the mouth. His 
 name is modestly carved at his feet in the 
 abbreviated form " lo. de flor," and these 
 words are put in his mouth : 
 
 " Non mihi sit laudi quod eram velut alter Apelles 
 
 Sed quod lucra tuis omnia, Christe, dabam ; 
 Altera nam terris opera extant, altera caelo ; 
 Urbs me Johannem flos tulit Etrurise. " * 
 
 * " Be it not my boast that I was a second Apelles, but that I gave to 
 Thine, O Christ, all that I had to give. Some works find praise on earth, 
 others in Heaven. I, John, came of the flower of Tuscan towns." 
 
 NOTE. This chapter was- written before I met with Mr. Langton 
 Douglas' valuable book on Fra Angelico. I have left it unchanged, 
 but for the addition of a foot-note. Lovers of Fra Angelico's paintings 
 should read Mr. Douglas' book. 
 
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