GIOTTO
565
GIOTTO
and permanence of colour. Giorgione introduced into
Venice the fashion of painting the fronts of houses in
fresco (in 1507-OS lie thus decorated, with Titian, the
magnificent Fondaco dei Tedeschi) ; and cussoni
(nuirriage-chests) and other pieces of furniture were
not too humble for his magic brush.
All his life was spent in Venice where his extraordi- nary personality started a School of Giorgione, and where his pictures, in great demand during his life- time, had a host of imitators and copyists. Very little of his work is authenticated, and only three paintings have never been called in question by any expert or critic. The first of these is the Castelfranco altar-piece, painted when he was twenty-seven years old for the church of his native town. Here are the Madonna and Chikl enthroned, with Sts. Liberale and Francis below, "one of the two most perfect pictures in exi.stence" (Ruskin); it is full of reverie, serenity, and religious sentiment, the very landscape-back- ground awakening devotional feelings. The other unquestioned works are the "Adrastus and Hypsi- pyle" (called for 350 years the "Giovanelli Figures" or the "Stormy Landscape with Soldier and Gypsy"), more sombre than the altar-piece but more romantic in treatment, and the ".Eneas, Evander, and Pallas" (the "Three Philosophers" or the "Chaldean Sages"), probably completed by Sebastiano del Piombo, Giorgione's pupil. The greatest rival authorities are agreed that four other works are undoubted Gior- giones: the "Knight of Malta", "Judgment of Solo- mon", the "Trial of Moses" (all in the UfEzi), and "Christ Bearing the Cross" in Mrs. Gardner's collec- tion (Boston, U. S. A.). Many great canvases are denied Giorgione by modern negative criticism simply because they do not quite attain the high standard of excellence arbitrarily set for this master by con- noisseurs. Tradition says his death was due to grief because his lady-love proved false; probably the plague — then raging in Venice — carried him off. He was buried on the Island of Poveglia. Other works attributed to Giorgione are: "The Concert", Pitti Gallery, Florence; "Venus", Dresden Gallery; "Fete Champetre", Louvre; "Madonna and Child", Prado.
Cook, Giorgione (London, 1900); Gronatj in Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1894); Idkm in Reperlorium ftir Kunstwissenschaft, Vol. XVIII. pt. IV; MoRELLi, Italian Painters, tr. Ffoulkes (London, 1892); Anonimo. Notes on Pictures .... in Italy, tr. Mussi, ed. Williamson.
Leigh Hunt.
Giotto di Bondone, a Florentine painter, and founder of the Italian School of painting, b. most probably, in 12G6 (not 1276), in the village of Vespi- gnano near Florence, in the valley of the Mugello; d. at Milan, 8 Jan., 1337. Very little is known of his early history. Vasari relates that Ciraabue, rambling one day in the neighbourhood of CoUe, saw a young shepherd lad drawing one of his sheep on a piece of smooth slate with a pointed stone, and that Cimabue thereupon took the lad with him and instructed him. The story is a pretty bit of fancy. There is no reason for believing that Giotto was ever a shepherd. It is possil)le that his father was a peasant; if so, he was in easy circumstances and certainly a freeholder. A document dated 1320 styles him vir prwclarus; such an epithet would not be applied to a man in straitened circumstances. As a matter of fact nothing is known of Giotto until he was thirty years old. This unfortu- nate gap in his personal history robs us of a story which would be of intense interest as showing the growth of his genius, and reduces us to the merest conjectures. However, without in any way detracting from Giot- to's pre-eminence in Italian art, it is impossible to accord him that quasi-miraculous, providential im- portance that Florentine nationalism soon rai.sed to a kind of dogma in the history of art. According to Vasari he arose in a barbarous age and straightway
revealed a fully developed art to a wondering world.
This is not credible. The thirtcendi century, the cen-
tury of the great cathedrals and nf (he French school of
carving whose numerous pupils uc re met with in all
parts of Christendom, cannot l>c called a barbarous
age. In Italy itself a widesjircad renaissance was
taking place. At Naples antl at Ucjme the admirable
school of the marinorarii of which the Cosmati are the
most illustrious, recalled to life much antique beauty
of form. The mosaic-workers, with Jacopo Torriti and
the artists who created the marvels of the Baptistery
of Florence, likewise the painters, with Pietro Caval-
lini whose fresco cycles in Santa Maria in Trastevere
(Rome) exhibit all Giotto's breadth of form, are satis-
factory proof of an earlier renewal of artistic spirit and
power. The " Rucellai Madonna " by Duccio dates
from 12S5. Twenty years earlier, perhaps the very
year of Giotto's birth, Nicolo Pisano had completed
the pulpit in the Baptistery of Pisa. That of Siena
followed in 1272. "The lovely fountain at Perugia
dates from 1278. Then came the works of Giovanni
Pisano, whose sympathetic genius is in more than one
way akin to that of Giotto. Amid this ricli and won-
drous development of art the young master grew up.
Though he was by no means its creator, it certainly
reached in him its highest expression.
As an artist Giotto is a true son of St. Francis. It is at Assisi that he is first found, in that very basilica which was the cradle of Italian painting, and which still enshrines the most perfect records of its early history. There every master of note in the peninsula might have been seen at work. Giunta of Pisa was decorating the lower church, while Cavallini or one of his pupils was painting scenes from the Old Testa- ment in the upper church. Cimabue was at the same time ornamenting the choir and the transept. It was doubtless in the train {brigata) of Cimabue that Giotto came to Assisi in 1294, and that he became acquainted with the works of the marmorarii, whose style so in- fluenced his own. In 1296 Cimabue set out for Rome, whereupon Giovanni da Muro, General of the Francis- cans (1296-1304), entrusted to Giotto the execution of the wonderful story of St. Francis which the painter accomplished in the famous twenty-eight scenes of the upper church. This is at once the source of Giotto's glory and the earliest example of the Italian School. In these scenes Giotto followed St. Bonaventure's life of St. Francis officially approved by the chapter of 1263 as the only official text. The first twenty-one frescoes are entirely by Giotto's hand; the remaining seven were finished from his designs by his pupils. All have suffered greatly from the humidity and from restorations. They are, nevertheless, incomparable monuments of art, and in many ways the very great- est for the history of modern painting. The intense impression created by St. Francis, the historical near- ness of his truly evangelical personality, and his like- ness to Jesus Christ borne out by the miracle of the stigmata, thenceforth influenced art to an incalculable degree. For the first time in centuries painters, until then limited to the repetition of consecrated themes, to an unvarying reproduction of hieratic patterns, were free to improvise and create. Painting was no longer an echo of tradition, but rose at once to all the dignity of invention. In the portrayal of the wonder- ful life-story of St. Francis, to his own age a real image of Jesus Christ, current events and the everyday life of the period were seized on and appropriated. Art no longer worked on conventional models, abstract and ideal; its models were to be the realities of nature, which the humblest intelligence is capable of appre- ciating. Representation of real life was to become the object of all painting. Henceforth there must always be a likeness between the painting and the object painted. The true portrait of St. Francis had to be given to the public, which must see his actions and the place where he lived, must also grasp all local
