VESTIBULE

“But at any rate I have loved the season Of Art’s spring birth so dim and dewy; My sculptor is Nicolo the Pisan; My painter—who but Cimabue?”

Here we are in the National Gallery. Oh these wonderful pictures! How beautiful they are, how soothing is their colour; we feel what the Americans call “good” in this lovely atmosphere. Now I am going to speak to you about these works of art—not about them all or nearly all—but about those that I think you would care for most and those that are important for you to know something about. I must not trouble too much to keep to the order of the rooms, although I will keep to it as far as possible; but there are so many changes in the hanging of the pictures that confusion ensues when we look for them in the rooms. I shall mention them by their numbers as these never alter. The artist who founded the Florentine school was Cimabue, and he is now in Room III. Let us seek for him there, as I am anxious to trace for you the history of the Florentine school from the beginning.

Cimabue’s picture, “The Madonna and Child” (565), marks the beginning of the revival of art in Italy and in the world. It is the first picture that we have of the Florentine school. The Byzantine influence is strong upon it. It is important that you should understand what I mean by the Byzantine influence. In the fourth century, the Roman Empire had been broken up into two great divisions—the Eastern Empire and the Western Empire. The Western Empire had Rome for its capital, the Eastern had Constantinople or Byzantium. As trouble continued to overwhelm Italy from without and from within, the centre of civilisation was gradually transferred to Constantinople. Then when Italy had been broken up into separate republics, when peace returned to the country, it was found that during that time of warfare the buildings had been allowed to fall into decay, and, what was of greater importance, there were no artists in Italy fitted to undertake their restoration. Art had taken refuge in the Byzantine Empire. About the twelfth century wealth and happiness had come back to Italy. Florence especially was prosperous, and the gaiety and courtliness of its life had returned.

The heads of the State wished to rebuild and to re-decorate the ruined buildings, but there was no Florentine who could undertake the task, so they sent to Constantinople for Greek artists.

Byzantine art was a curious product. It was very conventional. Greek artists always worked from a preconceived idea, and they never looked at nature to correct this idea. They largely encrusted their work with gold; they put gold instead of light on the dresses, gold on the halos, gold on the crowns, gold in the background. It was garish, even splendid in effect, but it was not nature. For everything there was a ready-made model, and from that model the artists never departed. The faces they painted were always the same faces, with goggling eyes and rigid lips. The figures were without grace, they were gaunt and archaic, but gold made up for everything, and gold was lavishly used.

To Florence, therefore, came Greek painters and Greek architects to rebuild the churches and to decorate the walls and altars. The inhabitants of the town watched the painters at work; and in the crowd there was a little lad, the member of an illustrious family. He was born about 1240, and he was named Giovanni Cimabue. His father wished him to attend the classes held by a relative in the convent of Santa Maria Novella, but Cimabue did not care for that kind of learning; his heart was with the artists in the chapel. When he could not get there he covered the leaves of his lesson-books with drawings of men and women, of horses and houses, but whenever he could escape he would run off to watch the Greek artists at work. Don’t you fancy you can see the lad watching, with all his soul in his eyes? The father felt that the boy had a vocation and no longer opposed his bent. Cimabue was apprenticed to the Greek artists. He was happy now; he could devote all his time to his beloved art. His masters never looked to nature, but Cimabue was full of observation. For nigh three hundred years no one in Italy had drawn from life. Cimabue studied nature; his pictures were very grotesque, but it was a right impulse he gave to art; instead of following convention he attempted the representation of things as they were. He tried to paint what he saw, his Madonnas, his angels are gaunt, the drawing is almost childish, but there is in it a touch of reality. It was because of this truth that he brought into the world—to study from nature direct—that his pictures meant so much to his contemporaries.

He painted a Madonna, with the shadow of pain in her eyes, carrying the Babe on her knee; about her and the Child are angels. All the citizens of Florence turned out and carried Cimabue’s picture in triumph through the city to the church of Santa Maria Capella. The citizens donned holiday attire, the children threw flowers, the youths sounded trumpets, the joy bells rang, all the dignitaries of Church and State accompanied the picture on its way. Lord Leighton has painted a beautiful representation of this scene. The way Cimabue’s Madonna went has been called the suburb of gladness, and still it is called the “Borgo Allegri.”

The “Madonna and Child” (565), by Cimabue, is a colossal Madonna, very stiffly drawn, but her eyes are sad, and, with a tender gesture, she clasps her Child. Time has very much injured the picture’s colour; it has worn away the flesh tints; it has left uncovered the green foundation, yet there is truth in it, because Cimabue studied from nature. He became the founder of the Florentine school, to which Botticelli and Lippo Lippi belonged, Piero di Cosimo, and Andrea del Sarto, of incomparable grace, the school that blossomed into the genius of Michael Angelo, into the divine grace of Leonardo da Vinci.

We shall now return to the vestibule. Giotto, Cimabue’s pupil, carried further than his master did the study of nature, and shares with him the glory of being head of the Florentine school. He was the son of a shepherd who lived in Vespignamo, a hamlet fourteen miles from Florence. The lad used to take out his father’s flocks to pasture. One day, when he was about ten years of age, he drew, as was his wont, with a sharp stone for pencil upon a smooth rock. Cimabue passed that way and stopped to see the little fellow’s work; he was so pleased with it that he asked Giotto if he would go to Florence to learn there how to draw and paint. Giotto was wonderstruck and answered he would willingly go if his father allowed him. Then Cimabue went to the shepherd’s hut and asked if he might take the child back with him and teach him art. Permission was granted, and the boy from that day prepared to become a painter. In another version of the meeting of Cimabue and his future pupil, it is said that Giotto’s father had apprenticed the lad to a wool-merchant, and, one day asking news of his son, he heard that he used to spend all his time at the studio of Cimabue. It was no use to oppose his bent for art; the father took him away from the wool-merchant, and placed him under the care of Cimabue.

The joy of Giotto! He might work all day without pause! Very soon his ardour made him outstrip his master. He drew straight from life, and he drew everything. He formed a friendship with the poet Dante, painting his portrait. Poet and painter, how ennobling was their intercourse!

Giotto’s most notable works are his frescoes at Assisi. Saint Francis, who looked upon all created things as his brothers and sisters, who wrote canticles to the sun, to the birds, whom the very wolves obeyed, was dead. He was buried in the church on the hill. Giotto was entrusted by the prior of the order of the Dominicans to paint the frescoes illustrating the miracles and life of St. Francis of Assisi.

We have nothing authentic from Giotto’s hand. But we have pictures that undoubtedly belong to his school—thus (276), placed in the vestibule, shows the heads of St. John and St. Paul bowed in adoration. They are part of a fresco; some say that they are portraits. It is the beauty of the expression, the fervour of the look, that makes them dear to us. No. (568) is “The Coronation of the Virgin.” Neither is this picture held to be by Giotto, but, again, it is by a member of his school. There is a charming and familiar loveliness in the incidents depicted; the human element is strong, as it is in all that Giotto painted. Thus it was that, although Cimabue founded the school of Florence, Giotto went further than he did in the study of nature, and all the artists of this period were called Giottesques.

Margaritone (1216–1293) was the last of the Italians who painted according to the Greek or Byzantine manner. This picture, “The Virgin and Child” (564), with incidents taken from the “Lives of the Saints,” is placed in the vestibule. It speaks to us in symbols. The child Christ is blessing the faithful. He holds in his left hand the roll on which are inscribed the names of the saved. The Virgin is surrounded by an aureole, almond-shaped, used for her only when she holds the Child. Outside are placed the Angel, the Ox, the Lion, and the Eagle—emblems of the four Evangelists. On either side of the panel are pictured incidents from the “Lives of the Saints,” eight in number. How quaint and grotesque is the symbolism; it is almost childish in execution. Here, for instance, is St. John the Evangelist, apparently in a hip-bath of seething oil, blessing with uplifted hand his persecutors; a little further we see him resuscitating Drusiana; there is St. Benedict rushing into a thicket of briars and nettles to rid himself of the thought of a beautiful woman that is impeding his prayers, and St. Nicholas of Bari is also there preaching to the sailors. Further on is St. Catherine being beheaded, her body buried by angels on Mount Sinai, and strangest of all these strange little pictures is that of St. Margaret in prison swallowed and disgorged by the dragon.

Margaritone died when he was aged seventy-seven. He was weary of life; he had survived the art of his youth and the taste of his time, for taste had turned from the love of convention to the love of the new ideals in art. Cimabue and the shepherd’s son, Giotto, had taught their generation to care only for the truth of nature. Men were beginning to look to the present rather than to the past, to the teaching of the actual rather than to the teaching of the symbol, and Margaritone had been left behind in the march of the human spirit towards progress.

Orcagna (1308–1368), painter, poet, sculptor, and architect, is the next painter whose works I want you to look at. His name means the “Archangel,” and although his pictures are stiff and show a want of knowledge of anatomy, they are imbued with the solemnity of great faith. His virgins and angels have a certain elegant sweetness of pose and expression. He drew with force and energy, and he finished every part of his picture with care and delicacy. In this altarpiece (569), placed in the vestibule, the “Coronation of the Virgin,” we find these qualities exemplified. In the centre Christ is crowning His Mother. How dignified and graceful is the Virgin’s pose, as she bends her head to receive the crown which her son is placing upon it. Angels are around, some kneeling, some playing musical instruments, all worshipping the Lord and His Mother. In the two compartments, one on the right and one on the left of this central panel, saints are kneeling in adoration. On the left is Peter carrying the model of the church St. Peter Maggiore, for which the picture was painted. Saints and apostles are there, and among them are women—St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Mary Magdalene, and St. Catherine of Alexandria. It is a picture full of adoration and of a sense of character. You will find nine small pictures (570 to 578), portions of this altarpiece, helping to tell the great story of the redemption of man. All these pictures are more or less rudely drawn, but they reveal to us why the painter was called “Archangel.” His mind dwelt on heavenly themes, and he was impatient of others less exalted. We have not many details of Orcagna’s life.