PAINTING
398
PAINTING
doubtless (iatinn from tlio .seventh century, wlueh
were Jiseovered. in 1S9S, at 8ta Maria Antiqua.
Under the influence of the great Abbot Desiderius, the school of Monte Cassino assumed the leadership in an artistic movement which was to extend as far as Cluny. Some eleventh-century monuments, such as the church of S. Angelo in Formis, have preserved frescoes which attest the importance of this Benedic- tine school; but its traces are to be found chiefly in miniatures, and especially in volumes of a particu- lar kind, such as the "Exultet-rolls" (see Exultet). This style spread throughout Italy in the twelfth cen- tury, hilt soon declined. In thechurches and museums of Tuscany arc to be found a great number of icons, madonnas' and crucifixes, such as the miraculoiis Christ preserved at St. Clare of Assisi, and which is said to have spoken to St. Francis. These works show to what a depth of barbarism the Byzantine school had fallen about 1200. Nevertheless, it was still cap- able of producing beautiful work. The Madonna of Guido of Siena, for instance, preserved in the Public Palace, and dated 1221 (not 1281, as according to Milanesi), proclaims a veritable renewal of the ancient formula, tempered by the grave and gentle Siennesc mysticism. This is still more obvious in the works of the great Duccio (see Duccio Di Buoninsegn.\), the Rucellai Madonna (1285) or the "Madonna Maesta" (1311).
Such was the persistency of the Byzantine move- ment at Siena, but a movement in another direction issued from Rome in the middle of the thirteenth cen- tury. Recent excavations have brought to light at S. Maria in Trastevere a cycle of very important frescoes of which Ghiberti, in his "Commentary", gives Pietro Cavallini as the author. The chief scene represents the Last Judgment. It is impossible to praise excessively the beauty of this composition, the nobility of the draperies, the majesty of the types. Ancient art undoubtedly exercised a powerful influ- ence on Cavallini, as on his contemporary, the sculptor Nicholas of Pisa. In the thirteenth century a revival took place at Rome which foreshadowed the Renais- sance of a later age. Unhappily, few of its monuments remain, but the mosaics of S. Maria in Trastevere, that of St. Mary Major, by Jacopo Torriti (1296), and the Genesis frescoes of St. Paul Without the Walls, known tlu-ough drawings in a MS. at the Vatican, reveal the importance of this ancient Roman school. The same compositions are also found in the upper church at Assisi, which was to be the cradle of Italian painting. It is now proved that these scenes were the work of Cavallini and liis school. There is nothing to prove that Cimabue did not work here, but he would have done so only as a pupil of the Roman school (see Ci.m-\bue).
This is also true of the great Giotto in his earliest dated works: the Navicella of St. Peter's (1298), the Stefaneschi retablo and the Jubilee fresco painted in 1300 at St. John Lateran. It was otherwise with his second sojourn in Rome, for his early Assisi frescoes, the 28 scenes of the " Life of St. Francis " (c. 1293) are wholly in the Roman manner. At Rome, therefore, in the thirteenth century was created the giottesco style, the dolce slil nuovo which was to charm Italy for a hundred years. (See Giotto di Bondoxe.) Giotto instilled into the painting of age the wonderful poetry of Franciscan Christianity. St. Francis has been called the Father of Italian art, and the saying is true if taken with a certain elasticity of meaning. Both he and St. Dominic rejuvenated and reanimated the Church. The history of religious art down to the Reformation and the Council of Trent could only be accurately written in the light of this great historic fact. All that Byzantine and early medieval art had represented as dogmas assumed the stirring character of life. To say that art became secularized would be to risk miscomprehension, but in truth, from being
intellectual and theological, it became democratic and
popular. Faith became visualized. The whole effort
of the painters, as well as iif the people, was to imagine
as vividly as ])ossible the life and sutTerings of Christ.
A multitude of dramatic elements develo))ed in Chris-
tianity, and originated a sort of rudimentary theatre.
(See Italy, Italian Litekatuhe; Jacopo.nk da
TODI.)
All these characteristics began to show themselves in painting also. At Padua, in 1306, Giotto outlined the earliest and best formulated of his school in the "Life of the Virgin", closeh' linked with the history of the Passion. The painter retained only the pathetic elements of Christianity. A number of new scenes appeared, while the old ones were enriched with countless new features. The picture is filled with figures, gestures are softened, expression grows tender and human. "Giotto", says Vasari, "was the first to put more kindness into his figures". During three centuries of development some scenes, such as the Nativity and the Epiphany, continued to grow in movement, expression, and picturesque effect. Sym- bolism and didactic intent are absent: painting ceases to have any object but to represent life. The teach- ing of Christ, the parables, and the sacraments dis- appear, to be replaced by scenes of sorrow and the drama of Calvary, every moment of which is minutely treated in detail. What primitive Christian art avoided with a sort of modesty or fear now became its chosen and persistent subject. The striking feature of these pictures is a wholly new impression of famil- iarity and warmth.
After the great frescoes of the Life of St. Francis at Assisi a host of local saints and contemporary beali were honoured in like manner. In painting these con- temporary lives, the artists had to create traditions; therefore they painted what they saw — faces, cos- tumes, assemblages of people. They became realists and observers, and these same tendencies appeared in their paintings of the Gospel. There was little need of invention : the theat re and its representations, the processions, and the tableaux vivants assisted their imagination (cf. Male, " Renouvellement de I'art par les my.steres" in "Gazette des Beaux-.\rts", Feb.- May, 1904). The following are some "Passions" of the Giottesque school, in chronological order: in the lower church of Assisi, by Pietro Lorenzetti (c. 1325); by Gerini, at S. Croce, Florence; by a Sienese master in the Neapolitan church of Donna Regina, or that by Andrea da Firenze (c. 1350) at the Spanish chapel; lastly the siilendid frescoes of Altichiero and Avanzi in the chapel of the Santo of Padua (1370).
But all this realism was never an end in itself: its object was to reach the emotions; and it made mani- fest the character of humanity in Christianity. Hence the many paintings of the Blessed Virgin, in which art incessantly sang to her the tenderest hymns of love. The Panagia of the Byzantines, the Virgin of the Middle Ages, Throne of God, Queen of Heaven, gave place to the Mother, the most beautiful, the sweetest, and the tenderest of women. After St. Bernard — il siwfedde Bernardo — St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Bonaventure, devotion to the Madonna be- came one of the chief Christian devotions. Schools competed as to which should paint the holiest and most exquisite Virgins, and none were more charming than those of Siena — Sena veins citritas Virginis.
The Madonnas of Simone di Martino, of the two Lorenzetti, of Lippo Memmi, and their successors, began the incomparable poem to which Raphael, Van Dyck, or Murillo added perfect strophes, without, however, obliterating the memory of their ancient predecessors.
The same inspiration is evident in the paintings which represent the moral, didactic, or philosophic painting of that time, such as the frescoes of "Good and Evil Government" at Siena by the Lorenzetti (c.
