Six Centuries of Painting

e art of painting. Vasari's "Lives of the Painters" was first published in Florence in 1550, and with all its defects and all its inaccuracies, which have afforded so much food

rom accepting the outlines of his life of Cimabue as an embodiment of the tradition of the time in which he lived-two centuries and a quarter after Cimabue-and, until contradicted by positive evidence, as worthy of general credence. In the p

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believe that some of his most important works are by another hand, his influence on the history of art is beyond question

ella to study letters under a relation who was then master in grammar to the novices of that convent. But Cimabue, instead of devoting himself to letters, consumed

be noted, and very much the same as in the case of

sters at their work. His father, and the artists themselves, therefore concluded that he must be well endowed for painting, and thought that much might be expected from him if he devoted himself to it. Giovanni was accordingly, much to his delight, placed with these masters, whom he soon greatly surpassed both in design and colouring. For they, caring little for the progress of art, executed their works not in the excellent manner of the ancient Greeks, but in the rude modern style of their ow

catalogue of the Uffizi Gallery (where the picture was placed in 1841), in which it

tion the modern catalogue, though that is by no means the same thing as denying that Cimabue painted the picture which existed in the church of S. Cecilia in Vasari's time. Is it more likely, it may be asked, that Vasari, who is accused of unduly glorifying Cimabue, would attribute to him a work not worthy of his fame, or that during the three centuries since Vasari wrote a substitution was effected? The

so firmly established that it seems heartless to disturb it until final judgment is entered-of which the following examples of Cimabue's reputed work may be taken as types. The latest criticism seeks to deprive him of every single existing p

s to justify the high opinion already formed of him and showed greater powers of invention, especially in the attitude of the Virgin, whom he depicted with the child in

of life. In this work he departed more decidedly from the dry and formal manner of his instructors, giving more life and movement to the draperies, vestments and other accessories, and rendering all more flexible and natural than was common to the manner of those Greeks whose work were full of hard lines and sharp angles as well in mosaic as in painting. And

sed to be by the hand of Duccio of Siena. However doubtful the story may appear in the light of modern criticism, historical or artistic,

l method of modern times. Thus it happened that this work was an object of so much admiration to the people of that day-they having never seen anything better-that it was carried in solemn procession, with the sound of trumpets and other festal demonstration, from the house of Cimabue to the Church, he himself being highly rewarded and honoured for it. It is further reported, and may be read in certain records of old painters, that while Cima

one may? The Creation, the poems and plays of Shakespeare and the battle of Hastings are all of them historic facts, and neither science, nor literature, nor history is a penny the worse for the loose though perfectly understandable conditions under which these facts have been handed down to us. When we come down to times nearer to our own the accuracy of data is more easily ascertainable, though the confusion arising out of them often obscures th

earliest Fathers of the Church, was used by the faithful in the Eastern churches for purposes

at it came to be cultivated with much more regard; and from being merely a necessary or con

as accorded popu

eyes of beholders was its life-like representa

troyed, and the art of painting wholly lost for at least a thousand years, there could not be another picture produced which would not refer back through continuous tradition to one or every one of them. Fi

ually means. In Italy in the thirteenth century, as in Spain in the seventeenth, it meant the Church of Rome. In Germany of the sixteenth, as in England in the eighteenth, it meant something totally different. To put it a little differently, all painti

larly of the Paduan, Venetian, or Florentine. It is only when we hesitate to call our national treasure a Botticelli or a Bellini that we add the words "school of" to the name of the master who is fondly supposed to have inspi

bunch of grapes with such skill that the birds ignored the fruit and pecked at the picture. In later times we hear of Rembrandt being the butt of his pupils, who, knowing his love of money, used to paint coins on

without it. A man who has anything to say must have somebody to say it to; and though a painter may seem to be wasting the best part of his life in trying to make the people understand what he has to

is was in 1302, which is supposed to be the date of his death, though Vasari puts it two years earlier, at the time he