Six Centuries of Painting

pil, Giotto, that we are accustomed to look for the first developments of its possibilities. Had Cimabue's successo

dawn which it heralded, and though containing the germ of the future development of the

some degree from his eulogies of Cimabue; but it is to the last sentence that our attention should be directed, which implies that in profiting by the master's example he succeeded in extending the possibilities of the new art beyond its first limits. Cimabue, we may believe, drew his Virgins and Saints from living models, whereas his predecessors had merely repe

t ten years old, tending his father's sheep, and was astonished to find that he was occupied in making a drawing of one of them upon a smooth piece of rock with a sharp stone. H

Giotto was not only a painter, but his name is also famous in the history of architecture: the wonderful Campanile adjoining the Duomo in Florence was designed by him, and the foundations laid and the building erected under hi

astity, and Obedience, and in the fourth the glorification of the saint. In the first, the Vow of Poverty, it is significant to find that he has taken his subject from Dante. Poverty appears as a woman whom Christ gives in marriage to S. Francis: she stands among thorns; in the foreground are two youths mocking her, and on either side a group of angels as witnesses of the holy union. On the left is a youth, attended by an angel, giving his cloak to a poor man; on the right are

my sea. According to the early Christian symbolisation the ship denoted the Church. In the foreground on the right the Saviour, walking on the waves, rescues Peter. Opposite sits a fisherman in tranqu

eight pictures, extending in three rows along the wall, is contained the life of the Virgin. The ground of the vaulting is blue studded with gold stars, among which appear the heads of Christ and the prophets, while above the arch of the choir is the Saviour in a glory of angels. Combined with these sacred scenes and persona

re introduced to complete the composition. In the Raising of Lazarus, too, the disciples behind the Saviour on the one side and the astonished multitude on the other form two choruses, an arrangement which is followed, but with considerable modification, in Ouwater's unique picture of the same subject now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin. This approach to dramatic reality sometimes assumes a character which, as Kugler pu

Giotto's highest merit consists especially in the number of new subjects which he introduced, in the life-like and spiritual expression with which he heightened all familiar occurrences and scenes, and in the choice of the moment of representation. In all these no earlier Christian painter can be compared with him. Another and scarcely less important quality he possessed is in the power of conveying truth of character. The faces introduced into some of his compositions bear an inward guarantee of their lively resemblance to some living model, and this characteristi

amples may be cited as typical of the progress he urged, such as the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa. This wonderful cloister, which measures four hundred feet in length and over a hundred in width-traditionally the dimensions of Noah's ark-was founded by the Ar

both in feeling and execution, beyond Giotto. The first is The Triumph of Death, in which the supernatural is tempered with representations of what is mortal to an extent that already shows that painting was not to be confined to religious uses alone. All the pleasures and sorrows of life are here represented, on the earth; it is only in the sky that we see the demons and angels. On one side is a festive company of ladies and cavaliers, with hawks and dogs, seated under orange trees, with rich carpets at their feet,

angel of death, swinging a scythe, and to her the unfortunate are stretching out their arms in supplication for an end to their sorrows. The second group, it will be seen, are tracing a path which leads to three open coffins

ta Maria Novella at Florence, painted by Andrea Orcagna in 1357, was formerly considered proof of the same authorship. They are now attribute

nd a number of hermits are seen on its banks still subjected to earthly occupations; they catch fish, hew wood, carry burdens to the city, etc. Higher up, in the mountains, they are more estranged from the world, but the Tempter follows them in various disguises, sometimes frightful, s

w! Two of these fragments are from his large fresco The Fall of the Rebellious Angels, painted for the church of S. Maria degli Angeli at Arezzo, which after being whitewashed over were rescued on the conversion of the church to secular uses. Vasari relates that when Spinello had finished this

series of paintings which were formerly attributed to Giotto himself, though

ted in 1372, are probably by Francesco da Volterra-not to be c

kmanship, while those on the north were the crowni