Cimabue—Giotto

F OR the first comparison I invite you to study the two examples of The Madonna Enthroned —one by Cimabue, the other by his pupil Giotto. Both are painted on wooden panels in distemper—that is to say, with colors that have been mixed with some gelatinous medium, such as the white and the yolk of an egg beaten up together; for it was not until the fifteenth century that the use of oil as a medium was adopted. The colors used in Giotto's panel are tints of blue and rose and white; in Cimabue's the blues and reds are deep and dusky; the background in each case being golden.

We notice at once a general similarity between these two pictures, not only in choice of subject, but in the manner of presentation: Madonna, the queen of heaven, upon a throne; her mantle drawn over her head; her right hand resting on the knee of the infant Saviour, who has two fingers of his right hand raised in the act of blessing; kneeling angels at the foot, and figures in tiers above them; all the heads being surrounded by the nimbus, or circular cloud of light, symbolic of their sacred character.

The reason of this general similarity is, that the choice of subject and the manner of its presentation were fixed by tradition; and long before this thirteenth century the tradition of Greek art had been lost, and in place of it was the Byzantine tradition, interpreted and enforced by the Christian church.

Briefly, the cause of the change was this. Greek art and Greek religion were indissolubly connected. The gods and goddesses were represented as human beings of a higher order; physical perfection was the ideal alike of religion and art. Therefore Christianity, in waging war upon heathenism, could not help attacking its art. Moreover, as the morals of the Empire became baser and baser, Christianity was driven more and more toward asceticism; meeting the ideal of physical perfection with the spiritual ideal of mortifying the flesh. So that pagan art, which itself had grown grosser as morals declined, became an object of exceeding hatred to the church. But some form of pictorial representation was needed to bring the truths of religion before the eyes of the faithful, and the church found what it required in the art of Byzantium.

This city was the gateway between the eastern and the western world, and the original Greek character of its art was speedily influenced by artists from the Orient. Now the ideals of the East and West are very different. Briefly, the longing of the East is for the Ultimate and Universal, while the West loves to dwell on the Particular, and to dwell upon the means rather than the end. While the Greek artist carved or painted some particular form, striving to give it perfection of shape in every part, so that through a series of means he might express his ideal of physical and spiritual perfection, the artist of the East reached his ideal through the abstract perfection of beautiful lines, of beautiful patterns of form and color. Thus, the one art is represented most characteristically by the sculpture on the Parthenon, the other by a decorated porcelain vase.

The arrival therefore, at Byzantium, of this art, so far removed from the Greek and Roman study of the human form, so beautifully decorative, was hailed by the church, both for the decorating of its sacred buildings and for the illuminating of the sacred manuscripts; and it was as decorators and illuminators that the Byzantine artists did their finest work. But, as the study of the nude figure had been abandoned, the ignorance of the artists regarding the real character of the human form increased; their types of figure became less and less like nature, and more and more according to a convention established by the church. Asceticism was preached, so the figure must be thin and gaunt, the gestures angular, the expression of the emaciated faces one of painful ecstasy. Moreover, there were certain dogmas to be enforced, and the church gradually dictated the manner of their representation; so that in time all that was required of or permitted to a painter was to go on producing certain conventional subjects in a purely conventional way. The divorce of art from nature was complete, and the independence of the artist lost in the domination of the church.

The story of the Italian Renaissance, which commenced at the end of the thirteenth century, relates how the artist gradually emancipated himself and his art, giving new life to the latter by inoculating it with nature and with something of the classic spirit.

Now, therefore, we can understand why these two pictures of The Madonna Enthroned  by Cimabue and Giotto are so similar in arrangement. They followed the tradition prescribed by the church. Yet the Florentines of Cimabue's day found his picture so superior to anything they had seen before, so much more splendid in color, if not much nearer to the true representation of life, that when it was completed they carried it in a joyous procession from the artist's home through the streets of Florence, and deposited it with ceremony in the Cappella de' Rucellai in the Church of Santa Maria Novella. The English artist Lord Leighton, in his picture commemorating the event, has represented Cimabue walking in front of the Madonna, with his pupil Giotto at his side; and in the procession appears Dante, who left this mention of the two:

The story is that Cimabue had chanced upon the boy as, like David of old, he watched his flock upon the mountain; and he found him drawing the form of one of the goats upon a rock with a sharp piece of slate. The master must have found some hint of genius in the work, for he straightway asked the boy if he would like to be his pupil; and, having received a glad assent and the father's permission, carried him off to Florence to his bottegha.  This, the artist's studio of that period and for long after, was rather what we should call a workshop, in which the pupils ground and prepared the colors under the master's direction; and it was not until they had thoroughly mastered this branch of the work—a procedure which in Giotto's time was supposed to occupy about six years—that they were permitted to use the brushes. How often, as he worked in the gloom of the bottegha,  must the shepherd boy have peeped wistfully at the master standing in the shady garden, before a great glory of crimson drapery and golden background, and wondered if he should ever himself acquire such marvelous skill.

He was destined to accomplish greater things, for his young mind had not been tutored to traditions, nor his young eyes constrained to admire the conventional. In the free air of the mountains the boy's spirit had wandered where it listed, and the eager eyes had learned to love and study nature. It was the love of form that had set him to try and picture a goat upon the surface of the rock; it was the actual appearance of objects that he sought to render when, in due time, he learned to use the brush.

If you turn again to a comparison of his Madonna with that of Cimabue, you will see what strides he had already made toward natural truth. Observe how the figure of the Virgin is made real to us, notwithstanding that it is covered, as in Cimabue's, with drapery; and that, while the Christ-child in Cimabue's picture is partially nude, its form is not nearly so strong and firm and lifelike as in Giotto's, though his is enveloped in a garment. And if you examine the other figures in his picture you will find the same suggestion of substantial form that could be touched and grasped in the arms. Notice, further, how Giotto's feeling for truth has affected his arrangement of the forms. The throne actually occupies space of three dimensions—length, breadth, and thickness; so do all the figures, and they rest firmly upon the ground; the artist has called in the aid of perspective to enforce the reality of his group.

Now, how has he accomplished this appearance of reality? By the use of light and shade, and by making his lines functional—expressive, that is to say, of the structure and character of the object. Compare, for example, the figure of the infant Saviour in the two pictures. In Cimabue's the drapery is scored with lines which vaguely hint at folds and obscure the shape of the limbs beneath; but in Giotto's certain parts of the figure are made to project by the use of high lights, and others are correspondingly depressed by shade, while the lines of the drapery serve to indicate the shape of the form beneath.

This use of light and shade by Giotto, while it marks a distinct advance from the flat pattern-like painting of the Byzantine school, is still rudimentary; and, as if conscious of the fact, the artist has selected the most simple arrangements of drapery. Indeed, breadth and simplicity are characteristic of the whole picture. It was painted probably during the years of his apprenticeship to Cimabue, or, at any rate, under his influence, and shows much less freedom and assurance than the works of his maturity. These are to be found in frescoes upon the walls of the Upper and Lower Churches at Assisi; the Arena Chapel, Padua; the Bardi and Peruzzi Chapels, S. Croce; and the Chapel of the Bargello, Florence. Giotto was the first to introduce the faces of contemporaries into his pictures, and the Paradise  on the walls of the Bargello contains the famous portrait of Dante in his early manhood. It had remained covered with whitewash for two hundred years, until once more brought to light in 1840. All these paintings were executed in fresco—that is to say, on the plaster before it was dry, with water-colors mixed in a glutinous medium, so that as the surface hardened the colors became incorporated in it. While the technical knowledge displayed in them is rudimentary, they are so simple and unaffected, so earnest and large in feeling, and tell the story with such dramatic effect, that they command the interest and enthusiasm of the modern student.

In his own day Giotto's fame as a painter was supreme; he had numerous followers, and these Giotteschi, as they were styled, perpetuated his methods for nearly a hundred years. But, like all the great men of the Florentine school, he was a master of more than one craft. "Forget that they were painters," writes Mr. Berenson, "they remain great sculptors; forget that they were sculptors, and still they remain architects, poets, and even men of science." The beautiful Campanile, which stands beside the Cathedral in Florence, and represents a perfect union of strength and elegance, was designed by Giotto and partly erected in his lifetime. Moreover, the sculptured reliefs which decorate its lower part were all from his designs, though he lived to execute only two of them. Thus, architect, sculptor, painter, friend of Dante and of other great men of his day, Giotto was the worthy forerunner of that galaxy of brilliant men who thronged the later days of the Italian Renaissance.