The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries

IN PAINTING.

-Benoit. Nouvelle Edition), which forms one of the series of text books for instruction in art at L'Ecole Des Beaux-Arts-the famous French Government Art School in Paris. It may be said that this collection of art manuals is recognized as an authority on all matters treat

ed in confederations they were acting as independent rivals, brought to all enterprises, lay or religious foundations, commercial or educational institutions, a wonderful youthful activity and enterprise. The papacy allied with them favored this movement in its political as well as its educational aspects and strengthened the art movement of the time. Christianity under their guidance, by the powerful religious exaltation which it inspired in the hearts of all

s not only ready but anxious to employ the arts as a means of religious education and for the encouragement of piety. Their position in this matter had an enormous influence on art and on the painters of the time. The Dominicans, as became their more ambitious intellectual training and their purpose as preachers of the word, demanded encyclopedic and learned comp

that the world saw burst forth before the end of the century, the first grand flowers of that renewal of art which was to prove the beginning of modern art history. It is hard to understand what would have happened to the painters of the time without the spirit that was brought into the world by St. Francis' beautifully simple love for all and every phase of nature around him. This it was above all that encouraged the return to nat

hisello, of the early part of the century, Lapo who painted, in 1261, the facade of the Cathedral at Pistoia, and Fino di Tibaldi who painted a vast picture on the walls of the Municipal Palace about the middle of the century, but they are so much in the shadow of the later masters' work as to be scarcely known. Everywhere Nature began to reassert herself. The workers in Mosaic even, who were occupied in the famous baptistry at Florence

ble family, but of a character that was eager for work and with ambition to succeed in his chosen art as the mainspring of life. At his death, as the result of his influence, artists had acquired a much better social position than had been theirs before, and one that it was comparatively easy for his successors to maintain. His famous Madonna which was subsequently borne in triumph from his studio to the Church of {141} Santa Maria Novella, placed the seal of popular approval on the new art, and t

idity of preceding art, and there is besides an attractive suppleness about the attitude of the body which is far better proportioned than those of its predecessors. Above all there is a certain roseate freshness about the colors of the flesh which are pleasant substitutes for the pale and greenish tints of the Byzantines. It did not require more than this to exalt the imaginations

rt, while always respecting the tradition of the older art and preserving the solemn graces and the majestic style of monumental painting. The old frescoes of the upper church at Assisi which represent episodes in the life of St. Francis have al

s greatly influenced by the new ideas that had come into art. Greater than either of these well-known predecessors however, was Giotto the friend of Dante, whose work is still considered worthy of study by artists because of certain qualities in which it never has been surpassed nor qu

na and Duccio make up the Siena school and enable this other Tuscan city to dispute even with Florence the priority of the new influence in art. At Lucca Bonaventure Berlinghieri flourished and there is a famous St. Francis by him only recently found, which proves his right to a place among the great founders of modern art. Giunta of Pisa was one of t

rante) was born just at the beginning of the last quarter of the Thirteenth Century. According to a well-known legend he was guarding the sheep of his father one day and passing his time sketching a lamb upon a smooth stone with a soft pebble when Cimabue happened to be passing. The painter struck by the signs of genius in the work took the boy with him to Florence, where he made rapid progress in art and soon surpassed eve

iterary men have been so unstinted

as to the most primitive of the Middle Age; and they must only be accepted relatively, according to the notion entertained by each period of what constitutes truth and naturalness. And from the point of view of his age, Giotto's advance towards nature, considered relatively to his predecessors, was in truth enormous. What he sought was not me

. Alfred Woltmann, Professor at the Imperial University of Strasburg, and Karl Woertmann, Professor at

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of the mosaics and manuscripts grew supple under his fingers and the confusion disappeared. He simplified the gestures, varied the expression, rectified the proportions. Perhaps the best example of his work is that of the upper Church of Assisi, all accomplished before he was thirty. What he had to represent were scenes of life almost contemporary yet already raised to the realm of poet

with admirable clearness and inventive force. To be appreciated properly they must be seen and studied in situ. Many an artist has made the pilgrimage to Assisi and none has come away disappointed. Never before had an artist dared to introduce so many and such numerous figures, yet all were done with a variety and an ease of movement that is eminently pleasing and even now are thoroughly satisfying to the artistic mind. After his work at Assi

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IAGE WITH POVERTY

k and to say that it is no wonder that such a transcendent genius was recognized and appreciated and received his due reward. Such has not usually been the case in history, however. On the contrary, the more imposing the genius of an artist, or a scientist, or any other great innovator in things human, the more surely has he been the subject of neglect and even of misundersta

ature from the classic formalism of the early Nineteenth Century painters just as Giotto went back to nature from Byzantine conventionalism. The immediate rewards in the two cases were very different and the attitude of contemporaries strikingly contrasted. Poor Millet did his magnificent work in spite of the fact that his family nearly starved. Only that Madame Millet was sat

lightenment of the age. Men's minds were open and they were ready and willing to see things differently from what they had been accustomed to before. This constitutes after all the best possible guarantee of progress. It is, however, very probably the last thing that we would think of attributing to these generations of the Thirteenth Century, who are usually said very frankly to have been

t of Peter which was to adorn the Facade of St. Peter's. He was in Rome in 1300, the first jubilee year, arranging the decorations at St. John Lateran. The next year he was at Florence, working in the Palace of the Podesta. And so it went for full two score years. He was at Pisa,

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OF ST.

. CENTURY PU

r understanding of it by the men of our time and certainly prevent any deep sympathy. The pagan element in art which entered at the time of the Renaissance and which emphasized the joy of life itself and the pleasure of mere living for its own sake, is supposed to have modified this sadder aspect of things in the earlier art, so that now no one would care to go back to the pre-Renaissance day. There has be

ost cheery and lightsome buildings, that indeed they owe their character as creations of a new idea in architecture to the determined purpose of their builders to get admission for all possible light in the dreary Northern climates. The contradiction of the idea that Gothic art in its essence was gloomy will at once be manifest from this. Quite apart from this, howe

st period, the Thirteenth Century, never represented any sufferings save those of the damned. The Virgins are smiling and gracious, never grief stricken. There is not a single Gothic rendering of the Virgin weeping at the foot of the cross. The words and music of the Stabat Mater, which are sometimes instanced as the highest expr

VISITATIO

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