V.I CORNELL university: LIBRARIES ITHACA, N. Y. 14853 Fine Arts Library Sibley Hall Cornell University Library ND 611.C951903 A history of painting in Italy; Umbria, F 3 1924 015 049 814 DATE DUE ^jlG...^^ IQBMliiiW' Itl^': RiW^ CAYLORD PRINTBO IN U.S.A. Cornell University Library The original of tiiis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924015049814 A HISTORY OF PAINTING IN ITALY BY J. A. CROWE & G. B. CAVALCASELLE VOL. I EARLY CHRISTIAN ART cZ{cavet,-l^, /4wi«& <2y?v y^t'C' C€c-^i^^c7a^n^c/€ G. B. CAVALCASELLE EDITED BY LANGTON DOUGLAS ASSISTED BY S. ARTHUR STRONG IN SIX VOLUMES ILLUSTRATED VOL. I EARLY CHRISTIAN ART .'^ NEW YORK ' CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS /•' 153-157 Fifth Avenue ^'- " *-- 1903 'H:f^^^^ ^ ' i ' ' '■ ' WW J. /yrf/'^^ SO i^ I.. PREFACE TT is unnecessary to make any apology for this second edition of the History of Painting in Italy. Notwith- standing all that has been done in the last forty years, by archivists on the one hand, and by connoisseurs on the other, with the object of elucidating the history of the central Italian schools, this book still remains the standard authority upon the subject. Of genuine additions to knowledge, of scientifically verifiable facts accepted as such by all serious and intelligent students, how little has been added to that particular fabric of human learning which owed so much to Crowe and Cavalcaselle ! Much that passed for knowledge a decade ago has been proved to be unfounded theory : and, were it not unwise to prophesy, we would venture to predict that, in the coming decade, the field of art criticism will be strewn with the wreckage of many other pretentious but cheaply-built structures. The public demand for the first edition has gone on in- creasing up to the present time, and in recent years second-hand copies of the book have commanded extra- vi PEEFACE ordinarily high prices. This demand cannot have been due to the outward form of the volumes — for the History of Painting in Italy had few of the adornments of the modern art book — nor can it have been occasioned by any graces of style that the work possessed. The one explanation of it is that Crowe and Cavalcaselle's History is indispensable to the serious student. The present edition, moreover, is much more than a mere reissue. It has, in a great measure, the character of a new work. With the assistance of the Cav. G. B. Cavalcaselle, Sir Joseph Crowe had, for some years pre- vious to 1896, been engaged in preparing a new edition of the History. When this work was interrupted by his death he had entirely rewritten more than a third of the book, and had collected a great store of important material relating to the later periods. We publish the authors' text and notes as they left them, merely making ordinary proof-reader's corrections. In the notes marked with an asterisk we have added the results of our own researches, and such genuine discoveries as have been made in recent years by other students of Italian painting. Before Mr. S. Arthur Strong, with the approval of Mr. Murray and the representatives of the late Sir Joseph Crowe, invited me to collaborate with him in the comple- tion of this work, I had been engaged for some years in collecting material in Italy for a new critical edition of Vasari's Lives, an undertaking which I had dreamed of, I do not like to say how long ago, when as a boy -student PREFACE vii I had come under the direct influence of Mr. Ruskin. Through no fault of my own, my scheme came to nothing ; and when, in the year 1899, I was asked to join Mr. Strong in the work of editing this book, I gladly accepted the invitation. In the earlier stages of the preparation of these volumes Mr. Strong took an active part. He has, however, been prevented by illness from correcting the final proofs, and cannot, therefore, be held responsible for any mistakes to be found in them. It is to be hoped that the remaining volumes of this edition will be en- riched by the fruits of his wide study of Italian pictures and drawings, by his fine connoisseurship, and his archaeo- logical and ieonographical erudition. Our thanks are due to many directors of galleries for their kindness in facilitating our researches. We wish to express our gratitude to Sir Walter Armstrong, Dr. Wilhelm Bode, M. Alfred Cartier, Mr. F. E. Earp, Dr. Georg Gothe, Dr. Friedlander, Dr. Lippmann, Dr. Karl Madsen, Dr. Ettore Modigliani, Sir Edward Poynter, Dr. Corrado Ricci, Dr. Oswald Sirdn, Professor Adolfo Venturi, and Professor York Powell, librarian of Christ Church, Oxford, as well as to the learned directors of the Hungarian National Gallery, the Magyar Nemzeti Museum, and the galleries of Oxford, Nancy and Munich. We desire also to thank the private collectors who have rendered us* assistance, and especially Lady Wantage, Lord Balcarres, Mr. E. H. Benson, Mr. Herbert Cook, Mr. Charles Loeser, Mr. C. Fairfax Murray, and Sir C. Hubert H. Parry. To viii PKEFACE Mr. S. A. J. Churchill, British Consul-General for Sicily, to Signer N. Mengozzi, and to Professor Zdekauer, we are indebted for various kind offices, and to the Minister of Public Instruction for Italy for the photographs of the newly -discovered frescoes at S. Cecilia- in -Trastevere, as well as for granting us access to those important works. LANGTON DOUGLAS BIOGRAPHIES OF THE AUTHORS JOSEPH ARCHER CROWE TOSEPH AECHEE CEO WE was born in London on October ^ 20th, 1825. He was no parvemo of connoisseurship. The formation of an educated taste takes time : it cannot be done in a hurry — as some pathetically imagine who in adult life career round Europe striving, as they phrase it, "to get culture." Crowe inherited a love of art. His early home, too, was in no modern Bceotia, but in Paris, the metropolis of art; where his father, a struggling man of letters, took up his residence when Joseph was nine years of age. The future art-historian's whole environment was favourable to the development of sesthetic discrimination. Artists frequented his father's house. His elder brother Eyre early gave evidences of artistic gifts, and the two boys visited together studios and galleries. Finally, when he was fifteen years of age, Joseph Crowe, following his brother's example, joined the atelier of Paul Delaroche, thus becoming a fellow- student of G^rSme, Yvon, and Ingres. It soon became evident that his true vocation was that of a connoisseur and historian of painting rather than that of an artist. Like his future co-worker Cavalcaselle, he often absented himself from the atelier to visit a picture gallery. He early began his career as a style-critic by spending long mornings in the Louvre, engaged in the careful study of the paintings and drawings in that great collection. Like X BIOGEAPHIES OF THE AUTHORS Cavalcaselle, he was a Morellian before Morelli. "It was my ambition," he writes, " to distinguish one painter from another by studying his peculiarities of drawing, touch, finish, and general execution." Whilst still a youth Crowe visited some of the chief German galleries, and in them acquired further practice as a connoisseur. He found that his days in Delaroche's atelier had not been mis- spent. For some kind of artistic training is essential to an art- critic or art-historian of the highest order : a fact which is often -overlooked by critics who lay claim to a superfine taste and an extraordinary gift of aesthetic judgment. Not only was the knowledge of technical processes that he had acquired there of permanent value to him in his work ; it was also a great advantage to a critic, in the days before the perfecting of photography, to be able to make a rapid sketch of any picture, or detail of a picture, of which he wished to have a record. In the year 1843, Crowe's father returned to London as leader- writer of the Morning Chronicle. The young man now adopted his father's profession and became a London journalist. At the same time he did not renounce altogether the vocation for which he was best fitted, but devoted whatever time he could spare from more remunerative work to the study of the works of the early Flemish masters. It was in the summer of 1847, whilst he was on a holiday on the Continent, spending his time in travelling from gallery to gallery, that he first met an Italian art-student, some five years his senior, who was engaged in similar studies to his own, Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle. In a post-carriage in Westphalia began an acquaintance which was fruitful of results in the history of art-criticism. After passing some hours together in the Berlin Museum, the two young men parted company, Crowe setting out for Italy, where, with his father as tra- velling-companion, he visited Venice, Florence and other cities. On his return he continued his preparation of the Early Flemish Painters. For some time, however, he was able to make but little JOSEPH AECHEE CEOWE xi progress. The effort to make a living by journalism absorbed almost aU his time and energy. In the year 1852 he took up his abode with Cavalcaselle, who had lost his property in his country's cause, and was now a political refugee, struggling to maintain himself as a draughtsman in London. With Caval- caselle's help, Crowe's projected work advanced more rapidly. The two enthusiasts visited together galleries and private col- lections, and worked side by side in great libraries. Their manner of life at this time has well been described by Crowe himself in his Reminiscences: "To see and judge of panels and canvases, and confirm or contest my opinions respecting them, was Cavalcaselle's main share in the history of the Flemish painters. He helped me at the British Museum in copying extracts, and was full of zeal at this sort of work. He had also an amazing insight into the periods of a master's career, his early form as well as his middle and later time ; and aU this would be discussed and argued, and be the subject sometimes of acrimonious debate between us. But the time always came when he or I yielded, and then, the question being decided, I adopted it and set it in its proper order in the narrative which, like all others bearing our joint names, was entirely written by myself. But the place in which these struggles occurred, the season in which they happened, the privations which we both endured during this occurrence, have never been known. Our working-room, which contained a round table and three chairs, was not more than twenty feet square. In the morning we breakfasted on tea and bread; dinner was uncertain, supper equally so. We husbanded our resources carefully: bought our tea by the pound at Twining's, and made it last as long as possible; had no fire, and kept ourselves warm by coverings. Two candles served for light in the evenings. One day in spring, 1853, even the tea gave out, and the morning roll was not forthcoming. The day before Cavalcaselle and I had no dinner. Hunger made us wake early. It was about six or seven in the morning when xii BIOGEAPHIES OF THE AUTHORS we rose. The sun was shining brightly. We dressed, got down in the street, thence into the parks. In Kensington we rested on a bench under the trees, enjoying the air, when there came up to us a very ragged individual, who begged us to take pity on him as he had had no breakfast. I looked at Cavalcaselle and laughed out right as I thought which was worst off of us three." The work was well advanced towards completion when, in the summer of 1853, on the recommendation of Thackeray, Crowe was sent to the Crimea as special correspondent of the Illustrated London News. He was present at the bombardment of Sebastopol and at the battles of Balaclava and Inkermann. On his return from the war, he corrected the proof-sheets of the Early Flemish Painters, which had been accepted by Mr. Murray. The book was published on the last day of the year 1856, and was well received by the critics and the public. Before its publication Crowe, finding it difficult to make a liveli- hood in London, had already resolved to try his fortune in India. Having some hopes of obtaining the headship of the Sir Jam- setjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art, he set out for the East. He obtained the post that he sought, but after having occupied it with success for two years, his Indian career was cut short by ill-health. Whilst at Bombay he had been appointed Indian correspondent of the Times, and immediately upon his arrival in England he was given other work by the editor, Mr. Mowbray Morris. Crowe was appointed war correspondent on the Austrian side in the Austro-French war ; and in this capacity was present at the battle of Solferino. Shortly after his return to London, Crowe was sent by Lord John Eussell to Germany on a diplomatic mission. He did his work so well that in the following year, that is in 1860, he was appointed consul-general at Leipzig. It was during this period of residence in Germany that he met his future wife the Fraulein Asta von Barby, stepdaughter of Otto von JOSEPH ARCHER CROWE xiii Holtzendorff, Oberstaatsanwalt of Gotha, whom he married shortly after his appointment to the consulate-general. Crowe was now able to pursue more uninterruptedly his favourite studies — studies which he had continued from time to time during his visits to Italy and Germany. He began the active preparation of a work which he had long planned, his New History of Fainting in Italy. His old coadjutor Caval- caselle had already been in Italy again for four years, during which time he had been indefatigable in research. It had been Caval- caselle's intention to prepare an English edition of Vasari with critical notes. But that scheme feU through, and he now resumed again his partnership with Crowe, with the result that the first volume of the new work was published in 1864. This book was followed by the authors' History of Painting in North Italy, Venice, Padua, Vicenza, etc., which saw the light in 1871. In the following year Crowe was appointed Consul-General for WestphaHa and the Ehenish provinces. His able discharge of his consular duties led to his being made commercial attach^ for the whole of Europe, a post he held for sixteen years, residing first at Berlin and afterwards at Paris. In this capacity he was called upon to negotiate treaties, and to serve upon various com- missions appointed for dealing with international commerce. In recognition of his services to his country he was made, in 1890, a Knight-Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. During the whole of the last thirty years of his life, Crowe continued his study of art history. In the year 1877 he had finished, with Cavalcaselle's co-operation, a monograph on Titian. Six years later the two authors had published the first volume of a similar work on Eaphael, of which the second volume appeared in 1885. Crowe also edited English editions of Burckhardt's Cicerone and Kligler's Handbook of Painting : The German, Flemish, and Dutch Schools. Finally he set about preparing a second edition of his New History of Painting in Italy. This work was interrupted by his death, which took place in 1896, a few 6 xiv BIOGEAPHIES OF THE AUTHORS months after he had resigned his post of commercial attach^ for Europe. Neither Crowe nor Cavalcaselle founded a coterie, or was the centre of a mutual-help society. They never allowed their aesthetic judgment to be warped by personal or pecuniary con- siderations. They were always able to give weighty and definite reasons for their attributions, and were never content to sub- stitute a subtle form of personal abuse for sound argument. Moreover, neither of the co-workers belonged to that parasitic, cosmopolitan class from which the writers of little art-books are frequently drawn. Crowe, like CavalcaseUe, was a virile, strenuous worker, and rendered signal public service to his country. It is to be regretted that he did not live to enjoy his hard- won leisure, and that he had to leave to others the completion of the present work. II. GIOVANNI BATTISTA CAVALCASELLE Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle was born at Legnago, in the valley of the Adige, on January 22nd, 1820. Whilst yet a boy he was inspired by the two emotions which influenced him throughout the whole course of his life — patriotism and a love of his country's art. He became a student at the Accademia delle Belle Arti at Venice, and hoped to become a painter. But he soon showed that his true vocation was that of the connoisseur and art historian ; and already in his youth he began the study of the masterpieces of what is perhaps the greatest, and is certainly the most lovable, of all schools of painting — the Venetian. For some time his relations entertained the hope that he might become an engineer, and with that object he was sent GIOVAJSTNI BATTISTA CAVALCASELLE xv to Padua. But he never really renounced his favourite pursuit, and in the year 1844 he recommenced his artistic studies in earnest. He visited the cities of Tuscany, and ultimately set out to see the treasures of Italian art in foreign countries. It was whilst he was travelling in Germany that he met in a post - carriage, hetween Hamm and Minden, Joseph Archer Crowe. The two young men were mutually attracted to each other, and in the Berlin Museum, as we have already related, they first studied together some works of the great masters. After his travels in Germany, CavalcaseUe returned to Venice, and in the memorable year 1848 he was one of the band of young men who rallied round Manin, determined to devote them- selves, under his leadership, to the cause of Itahan freedom. As an agent of the Venetian patriot, CavalcaseUe travelled through Venetia and Lombardy, helping to rouse the population to rebellion against the Austrian rule. Finally he was arrested by Austrian gendarmes, tried by court-martial, and sentenced to death. On the morning fixed for the execution CavalcaseUe and three companions, also condemned to death, were in a chapel of the cathedral of Piacenza awaiting their summons. First one of his comrades was taken out to be shot. An hour later another was led out to his death. Shortly after that a third was escorted out of the Duomo. CavalcaseUe believed that his own summons would immediately foUow. But a few minutes later, not Austrian soldiers, but victorious Itahan insurgents burst into the cathedral, and the artist was saved. The young patriot's troubles, however, were not over. He joined the forces of Garibaldi, and was taken prisoner by the French in 1849. He arrived at Paris in a miserable pHght. There he met Crowe again, and with his help was enabled to reach London. For some time after this CavalcaseUe was in great poverty. His property at Legnago had been sequestrated. He was no longer able to pursue, undisturbed by pecuniary anxieties, the xvi BIOGRAPHIES OF THE AUTHORS studies he loved. He had a small periodical remittance from his relations in Italy, but that was utterly inadequate for his needs, and the pittance that he earned as a draughtsman was not sufScient to relieve him from anxiety and even from actual want. About this time, Crowe, as we have seen, himself suffered reverses of fortune. And the two young men decided to occupy rooms together in Silver Street, Regent Street. It was then that their partnership in authorship really began. They worked together on a history of early Flemish painters, for which Crowe had begun to collect materials some years before. A description of the hardships the two friends suffered at this period and of their methods of study has already been given in Crowe's own words in the preceding biography. In the spring of 1853 Cavalcaselle's position began to improve. Sir Charles Eastlake discovered his merits and frequently con- sulted him. He obtained more regular work as a draughts- man and an expert. On the last day of the year 1856 Mr. Murray published the Early Flemish Painters, which had been finished some time previously. The publication of this book added considerably to the reputation of both authors, and Mr. Murray was so pleased with its reception that he engaged Cavalcaselle to prepare another important work. It was pro- posed that he should provide the notes of a new English edition of Vasari's Lives ; and, in order to enable him to collect material in Italy, the publisher gave him an allowance. Armed with an English safe-conduct, Cavalcaselle set out for Italy in the year 1857. After a time the allowance was withdrawn. Nevertheless, Cavalcaselle continued his labours. lU-clad, and living on the humblest fare, he wandered about the peninsula collecting stores of artistic knowledge. In the meantime Crowe had not been idle. He had continued in German galleries the studies which he had formerly pursued in Italy. The projected edition of Vasari came to nothing. The two friends again entered into GIOVANNI BATTISTA CAVALCASELLE xvii partnership, and produced together the Nma History of Italian Painting, which saw the light in the year 1864. Cavaleaselle had now permanently settled in Italy. A year before the publication of the History he had written a monograph on the Conservazione dei monumenii e oggetti di helle arti. This work gained for him the post of Ispettore di BeUe Arti, an office which he held until the year 1895. For the last thirty years of his life Cavaleaselle lived the quiet life of a student. Of the other works he published in con- junction with 'Crowe, the History of Painting in North Italy and the monographs on Titian and Eaphael, we have already spoken. He spent his closing years in preparing an Italian edition of the New History of Painting in Italy, a work he did not live to com- plete. In the autumn of 1897 he was taken suddenly ill whilst on a railway journey. He died on the last day of October, in the hospital of S. Antonio, at Eome. Cavaleaselle was a modest, retiring scholar, whose ardent patriotism impelled him to take for a time an active part in political life. He did not make either of patriotism or of connoisseurship a profitable trade. Being neither a place- hunter, nor a picture-dealer in masquerade, he never attained to affluence. Whilst Crowe had a wider knowledge of art in general than his co-worker, and contributed a great deal more than the literary form to every work he issued, Cavaleaselle had a more complete knowledge of Italian schools. He was, in fact, the greatest connoisseur of the painting of Italy that ever lived. He had, in something near perfection, the connoisseur's eye and the connoisseur's memory; and, in his case, pecuniary interests and the desire of wealth and position did not prevent him from using in the best possible way his great natural gifts. His extra- ordinary memory enabled him to do without the help of photo- graphs more than less richly endowed critics are able to accomplish with all the modern aids to study. At the same time he placed a proper value upon documentary evidence, basing his conclusions xviu BIOGRAPHIES OF THE AUTHORS on all the available testimony. It was, perhaps, his natural modesty that led him to take Vasari too seriously, and to rate too highly the evidence of tradition. The researches of archivists like Dr. Ludwig have tended to confirm many of the judgments of Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and to overthrow the too readily accepted theories of some of their critics. Sometimes, too, when connoisseurs have put forth as new and original some striking attribution, it has been found subsequently that their conclusions had been anticipated by the authors of the New History of Painting in Italy. As a patriot whose martyrdom was lifelong — for the loss of his property hampered him continually in the studies he loved — Cavalcaselle merits the gratitude of his own people whose liberty he helped to win. His work as a scientific student has made all throughout the world who are interested in the history of art his debtors. CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. CHAPTER I PAOK ART IN ITALY TILL THE CLOSIC OF THE SIXTH CENTURY . . . 1 CHAPTER II ITALIAN ART FROM THE SEVENTH TO THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY . 36 CHAPTER III THE COSMATI AND PIETRO CAVALLINI . . ... 81 CHAPTER IV NICCOLA AND GIOVANNI PISANO . . .98 CHAPTER V PAINTING IN CENTRAL ITALY . . . . . 138 CHAPTER VI GRADUAL RISE OP THE ART OF FLORENCE . . . . 173 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI CIMABUE AND THE RUGELLAI MADONNA . ... 187 INDEX OF PLACES . . . . ... 197 INDEX OF PERSONS ... . . 201 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VOL. I. Madonna and Child (photogravure) From a statae now in the Campo Santo, Pisa. Giovanni Piscmo Frontispiece Chkist and SAirfrs ...... From a mosaic in the Chnrch of S. Faolo-fuori-le-Mora, Borne. The Baptism of Ohkist, and the Twelve Apostles. From a mosaic in the Baptistery of S. Glovanni-in-Fonte, Bavenna. The Good Shepherd ...... From a mosaic in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna. A Saint Committing to the Flames a Heretical Book From a mosaic in the Mansoleam of Galla Placidia, Ravenna. The Emperor Justinian Offering Monet for the Building of San Vitale ...... From a mosaic in the Church of S. Vitale, Ravenna. The Empress Theodora making Offerings to the Church . From a mosaic in S. Vitale, Ravenna. Christ and Four Angels .... A detail from a mosaic in the Chnrch of S. ApoUinare Nuovo, Bavenna. The Adoration of the Magi .... A detail from a mosaic in S. ApoUinare Nuovo, Ravenna. Holt Virgins ...... A detail from a mosaic in S. ApoUinare Nuovo, Ravenna. From a Mosaic in San Giovanni-in-Fontb, the Baptistert of the Lateran, Rome ...... Four Saints ....... From a mosaic in S. Giovanni-in-Fonte, the Baptistery of the Latexan, Rome. The New Jerusalem, the Glorification of the Lamb, Christ and Saints ...... From a mosaic in the Church of S. Prassede, Rome. A Panel of the Doors of S. Sabina, Rome A Detail from a Fresco, S. Maria Antiqua, Rome The Adoration of the Magi . . ■ ■ Prom a fresco in the Church of 8. Maria Antiqua, Rome Eight Saints ..-••• From a mosaic in the Cathedral of Cefalii. TO FACE PAGE 14 18 20 20 24 26 30 30 32 40 42 46 50 52 52 62 xxii LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS TO FACE ] King Rooee Crowned by Christ . . . ■ From a mosaic in tlie Charch of La Martorana, Palermo. Madonna and Child (photogravure) . Ducdo di Btwninsegna From an altarpiecs in the Chnroh of S. Maria Novella, Florence. Christ and the Virgin Enthroned From a mosaic in S. Maria-in-Tras1»veie, Borne. The Apse Mosaic .... In S. Giovanni Laterano, Borne. The Coronation of the Virgin . . Jacapo Torriti From a mosaic in the tribune of S. Maria Maggiore, Bome. Christ (photogravure) . . . PUtro Cavallini . A detail fk'om a fresco of the Laat Judgment in the Church of S. Cecilia- in-Trastevere, Bome. Christ Surrounded bt Angels . . Pietro Cavallini . A detail tiam a firesco of the Last Judgment in the Church of 8. Cecilia- in-Trastevere, Bome. Six Apostles .... Pietro Cavallini . A detail f^om a &esco of the Last Judgment in the Church of S. Cecilia* in-Trastevere, Bome. Head of an Apostle . . . Pietro Cavallini . A detail from a fresco of the Last Judgment in the Church of S. Cecilia- in-Trastevere, Bome. The Virgin and Six Apostles . . Pietro Cavallini . A detail from a fresco of the Last Judgment in the Church of S. Gecilia- in-Trastevere, Bome. The Sacrifice of Isaao . . . Roman School From a portion of a fresco in the Upper Church, Assisi. The Pulpit of the Baptistery, Pisa . Niccola Pisano " The Annunciation and the Nativity . Niccola Pisano From a relief on the pulpit of the Baptistery, Fisa. A Bust, now in the Capua Museum, from the Fortress built by Frederick II. at Capua ' ' Mater Ecclesia " . . . Niccola di Bartolommeo , From a bust fi:om the pulpit of S. Pantaleone, Bavello. The Pulpit, Siena Cathedral . . Niccola Pisano . ,^ The Visitation AND THE Nativity . Niccola Pisano . From a relief on the pulpit of Siena Cathedral. A Portion of the Siena Pulpit . . Niccola Pisano . Madonna and Child (photogravure) . Gfiovanni Pisano From an ivory statuette in the Sacristy of the Duomo, Pisa. The Birth of Christ and the Message to THE Shepherds . . . Gfiovanni Pisano Detail firom a pulpit in the Museo Civico, Pisa, formerly in the Cathedral. The Last Judgment (photogravure) . Giovanni Pisano Prom a relief of the pulpit of S. Andrea, Pistoia. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Madonna and Child . . . Ctuido da Siena . From an altarpiece, now in the Palazzo Fubblico, Siena. Madonna and Child . . . Coppo di Ma/rcovaldo From an altarpiece in tbe Glinrcb of the Servi, Siena. Madonna and Child (photogi'svure) From an altarpiece in the Louvre, Paris. Madonna and Child From a picture in the National Gallery, London. Madonna and Child From a picture in the Siena Gallery. St. Peter Enthroned From a picture in the Siena Gallery. Early Sienese School Early Sienese School Vucdo di Buoninsegna xxui TO FACE PAGE 162 174 182 184 190 192 COEEIGENDA AND ADDENDA. Page 12, note #1. These words are to be added: "Whether Professor Venturi's interpretation of this mosaic is correct or not, that of the authors' is certainly wrong. Dr. Eichter's and Miss Taylor's forthcoming work, The Golden Age of Early Christian Art, wiJl contain a full account of the mosaics at S. Maria Maggiore." Page 13, line 11. For " characters " read " character." Page 33, note *1, six lines from the bottom of the page. For " S. Urbano a Caffa- rella" read "S. Urbano alia Caffarella." Pages 52, S3, note *1. At the time that the editor studied the frescoes in S. Maria Antiqua, he had not had the advantage of reading Mr. G. McN. Rush- forth's admirable monograph on that church. He now accepts Mr. Rushforth's conclusion that the more important frescoes referred to in the note belong to the time of John VII. (705-707). This change of opinion does not in any way affect the editor's general conclusions as to the history of the Roman school of painting. [See Papers of the British School at Home, vol. i. ; The Church of S. Maria Antigua. By G. MoN. Rushforth. London : Macmillan, 1902.] Page 84, line 7. Omit the word "unfortunately." Page 101, note 2, line 4. For " Bonnano " read " Bonanno." Page 129, note *2, line 2. For "oc . . . h" read "quod hic." „ ,, ,, 5. For "Ugolini" read "Ugonio," and add the following sentences to the note : " In the course of the restorations now in progress at S. Cecilia- in -Trastevere the epigraph has come to light again. On one of the pilasters which form the bases of the two anterior columns of the oiborium is to be seen the inscription — ^ HOC optrs FEOIT AENTJLFTJS ANNO DOMINI MOO. LXXXXIII MENSE NOVEMBER DIB XX This inscription proves that the ciborium was completed by Arnolfo on November 20, 1293, and not in 1283, as Ugonio stated." Page 130. In the second line of the notes omit the words "saoellitm bonif. VIII IN VATICANA BASILICA." Page 153, line 27. Add this note : " Professor L. Zdekauer has found the following documentary mention of Manfredino in the codices of the Opera di S. Jacopo at Pistoia (cod. 24, fol. 188). It relates to the year 1281 : — ' Manfredinus Alberti pictor pro suo salario et mercede et pictura volte (sic), que est in ecclesia Sancti Zenonis super altare Sanoti Proculi . . . die XV Oct. . . . lib. xl.'" EARLY CHRISTIAN ART NOTE, The Editor's notes are marked with an asterisk. EARLY CHRISTIAN ART CHAPTER P ART IN ITALY TILL THE CLOSE OF THE SIXTH CENTURY THEEE is some considerable difficulty in distinguishing Christian art as it was practised in Italy during the earliest centuries of our era from the pagan art in which it first took root. It is altogether doubtful whether any account can be given of the decay of classic painting and sculpture in Italian cities which would be acceptable as both interesting and correct. We shall therefore confine ourselves to a mere sketch of Christian art as it rose through the darkness of the centuries into a new originality, and then describe its renascence as time and insight may allow. The gradual decay of pictorial skill during the centuries which preceded the fall of the Western Empire has been variously attributed to the degeneracy of the Komans and the spread of Christian doctrines. But nothing can be more certain than that the depreciation of the standard established at a very early period by the genius of the Greeks began long before the advent of Christianity. It is, however, not unlikely that the spread of Christian teaching precipitated a catastrophe which could not under any circumstances have been averted. * ^ As has been already stated in the Preface, the editors have made no alteration in the authors' text. They have merely added notes and appendices. The editors' notes are preceded in each case by an asterisk. I. — B 2 ART IN ITALY BEFORE THE SEVENTH CENTURY [oh. The primitive Christians, notoriously disliking images and pictures, doubtless contributed to bring Roman painting in the earliest ages into discredit; but other elements equally powerful and destructive had been at work before they appeared, and when, in course of time, the followers of the nascent faith learnt to approve the embellishments which they had previously con- demned, they still found artists to carry out their behests whose skill was based entirely on the principles of the antique. If we visit the Roman or Neapolitan catacombs, in which the first compositions based on Christian themes are found, we discover that the subjects are pagan in form, and that painters had been unable to conceive of a new art which should simply lean on the Gospels, or on traditions of the Christian Churches. From the very earliest period of which we have illustrations at Rome, there is evidence to show the existence of this state of things, and nowhere is this more clearly manifested than in the catacombs which served as burial places for the Christian dead when Christians enjoyed but dubious protection from their pagan rulers. Amongst the oldest and most important of these catacombs is that of St. Callixtus at Rome,^ where we find the earliest sample of Christian subject and design in a chapel or cubiculum still called Stanza dei Pesci. There is so little doubt of the genuineness of this production, and so much danger of its obliteration under the wear of time, that it deserves description. A vaulted ceiling, divided into equal triangular sections by Greek cross ribbings, covers the whole chapel. A central medallion comprises a figure of a standing shepherd and two of his flock at his sides. A circle circumscribes this medallion, and coloured outlines in rounds, thrice repeated, of the Good Shepherd carrying the lamb, or women * ^ The paintings in the Cappella Greca in the Catacombs of Friscilla are now held by some authorities to belong to the first half of the second century. In the vault of this chapel are symbolical representations of the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist ; on its walls are scenes from the Old Testament and the Apocrypha, as well as a representation of the Agape discovered by Wilpert. See WiLPEKT, "Fractio Funis." La plus ancienne representation du sacrifice Eudiaris- tique a la" Cappella Greca" [Paris, Didot, 1896]"; also Wilpeet, Die MaUreim der Saeraments-kapellen in der katakombe des hi. Callistus. [Freiburg- in -Breisgau, Herder, 1897.] There is a Madonna and child in this Cappella, which is believed to be the earliest existing representation of the Blessed "Virgin. I.] ART IN THE CATACOMBS 3 orant, fill the principal spaces. The four figures face each other, and rest on pedestals springing from interlaced ornament winding round genii with pastoral emblems. In four smaller sections of the ceiling female heads are set in separate rounds, and other similar heads appear in subordinate framings.^ Eome about the time of the Antonines was tolerant of Christian emblems, and particularly so in places set apart for the burial of the dead. But the most jealous censor, looking at the decorations we have been describing, might have seen nothing in it beyond pictorial ornament. The Christian idea was present in the shepherd and his lambs, or the women calling upon Christ, but it needed only to seem so to the initiated; nor was there anything in the spirit of the art or its execution to manifest a new feeling differing from that of pagans. The very absence of assertions of Christian thought in these paintings tends to show that they were of early date. Evidence of all kinds warrants us in assigning them to the third century of our era, when art still preserved the semblance of the facile treatment derived from the classic time, but shows us its decay by conventionalism and incorrect shaping of the human form. Writers of this period tell us that the earliest subjects allowed to the Christian were this Good Shepherd, Daniel in the lions' den, N"oah and the ark, Moses striking the rock, Jonas and the whale, and Orpheus charming the wild beasts. The catacomb of St. Callixtus contains most of these subjects in the style of the decorations above described, yet, if possible, in feebler and ruder executions. Cubiculo delle Pecore, Lunette. The Good Shepherd is represented standing with the lamb round his neck and two sheep at his feet, two males in profile at his sides, each of whom is accompanied by two of the flock ; on the wall on the right : Moses untying his sandals at the bidding of God, whose presence is indicated by a hand, and the same Moses striking the rock that sends forth the stream from which a man is about to quench his thirst. Another subject, perhaps Jonah, has become uninteUigible on account of the decay of the wall surface, and in time it is to be feared very little will be left of the Good Shepherd and his companions, of which the arms and legs alone were lately distinguishable, * ' Near the door is a vessel for milk, symbolising the Eucharist, guarded by two 4 ART IN ITALY BEFORE THE SEVENTH CENTURY [ch. Here we have the simplest forms of gospel subjects as they came from the hands of painters of the third and fourth centuries, who practised the technical methods of the pagan time. The grotmd on which they worked is light; the figures are painted within the contours in uniform colours thrown into relief by deeper shades of the same tints. Characteristic are: the inner detail roughly and rapidly indicated — like the eyes, nose, and mouth — by rudely pencilled lines ; the standard colours of dress are the three primaries — blue, red, and yellow. There is no Christian feeling in the arrangement, which imitates the antique, and fails to reveal to any but the initiated its Christian character and origin. Years go by, and the same processes are perpetuated in the catacombs. St. Callixtus, Stanza d'Orfeo. Orpheus sits between two tiees on which birds are perched; he plays the lyre, charming two lions, camels, and a bull. Above a recess on the left the prophet Micah is standing, and Moses strikes the rock. Between them the Virgin Mary sits ia front of the stable of Bethlehem, with the infant Christ on her lap, receiving — one may think — the Magi, whose figures are now obliterated. In a neighbouring space, Daniel stands under an archway between two hons ; above him. Job seated to the left, and to the right Moses baring his foot, which he raises to a projection. Opposite to this subject Ehjah drives in a car drawn by four horses attended by two spectators, one of whom appears to be Ehsha, who is about to receive the prophet's mantle. Above the niche to the left, a female orante raises her arms to heaven. Noah looks out of the window of the ark at the dove returning with the oUve branch; Lazarus stands at the door of the sepulchre in his cerecloths, at the bidding of Christ who has ordered him to rise. A pagan might have thought that Elijah was racing in the circus. The Saviour might easily be confounded with a senator. Daniel looks like a Hercules. It is unfortunate that these wall paintings should be disappearing ; that nothing should be left but some outlines of the Virgin; that Orpheus should be mutilated, and the rest of the decoration injured by openings made in the I.] ART IN THE CATACOMBS 5 walls after the completion of the pictures. Fatal effects have been produced by the efiBux of lime on the vaulting, in the centre of which there are vestiges of a bust of Christ, with hair divided in the middle, and locks flowing on each side to the shoulders, the lips and cheeks being covered with a short beard and moustache, and the shoulders decked with drapery .^ The characteristics of the first Christian painters are combined in these examples, with elements peculiar to work of a later time. The subjects are no longer confined to the Old, they are also taken from the New Testament. Christ is depicted as a child, in the lap of the Virgin Mary, but he appears in the ceiling as the Saviour in his manhood. Yet the art differs very little from that of the earliest Christians. The drawing has perhaps lost in correctness; the forms are by turns too sturdy or too slender; detail is more carelessly worked out than before, but the technical system remains unchanged. It would be difficult to give a positive date to the first representation of the Epiphany, but the fragment above noticed might be ascribed to the close of the third or beginning of the fourth century, and other examples of equal, if not greater, antiquity are to be seen in the catacombs of Sant' Agnese and Santi Marcellino e Pietro.^ In Sant' Agnese the Virgin and Child are attended by three Magi, whose star is depicted above the principal figure ; but the painters, whose work is unfortunately injured, were careful to withhold the halo or nimbus from the first, and the kingly dress from the second. At Santi Marcellino e Pietro the kings are reduced to two, making their presents to the Madonna. But her figure is depicted with more grace of form and drapery than the counterparts else- ^ The Epiphany is much injured. The figure of the Virgin is now but faintly seen. The prophet originally above Daniel is gone. The head of Elijah has been out off by the opening of a recess in the wall. The same cause has produced the mutilation of the figure of the Saviour bidding Lazarus to rise, and half the head of Moses striking the rock. One wall is bared of all but a single figure. * Except the figure of the Orpheus, almost all traces of these paintings hare disappeared. * ^ The paintings in the crypt of the Madonna are now adjudged to belong to the first half of the third century. 6 ART IN ITALY BEFORE THE SEVENTH CENTURY [ch. where. Classic drapery and light colour indicate a comparatively early exeoutioru We trace more obscurely the progress of Christian art in a figure of the Redeemer in the chapel of the Rotunda in St. Callixtus. Some Christian sects of the second century are described as addressing their devotion to busts of Christ, and thereby giving cause for reprobation to other Christians. There were painted effigies of Christ, St. Peter, and St. Paul in the fourth century, which were not always looked upon with favour. It may there- fore be that in the space which intervened between these two dates the first representation of the manhood of the Redeemer in the catacombs was produced. The second to which we can now point, in the chapel of the Four Evangelists in the catacomb of St. Callixtus, was possibly executed at the close of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century. At that time the primitive notions of the physical ugliness of Christ had doubtless given way to that of more fervid worshippers, who asserted that his appearance had been dignified and beautiful. But, however much the ideals of the classic time may have been honoured and preserved, painters had gradually lost the faculty of realising them. They merely fashioned in a rude way the likeness of an adolescent, who passed as the Good Shepherd, or designated the Saviour as a bearded man of mature age, whose luxuriant hair was twisted into curling locks and hung copiously on his shoulders. In the vaulting of the Four Evangelists at St. Callixtus, Christ, as the Redeemer, is seated on a throne, holding the Bible in one hand and giving a blessing with the other. His divinity is indicated by a nimbus and the alpha and omega. On each side of him is a classic figure standing, one of them pointing to the star which guided the shepherds to the stable of Bethlehem. The face of Christ expresses some of the feeling which so nobly characterises effigies of this kind in the fourteenth century.^ In rude delineations of this kind — and especially pictures injured by age and neglect, as these are — it is hard to distinguish ' An injured painting, with diacolourationa on the Saviour's head, and but scanty traces of a blue mantle and red tunic. A copy is in the museum of S. Giovanni Laterano. I.] ART m THE CATACOMBS 7 the measure of skill which pertained to the artists of the time. But enough remains to justify the conclusion that painters were living on the traditions of the classic age, and applied the types of pagan gods to the figure of the Eedeemer.^ In their later endeavours to attain the semblance of majesty they merely exaggerated the superficial manifestations of ordinary passion or pain, and their power declined in proportion to the distance which separated them from the ideals of bygone centuries. On a level with the works of the catacombs previously de- scribed, is a group of the fourth or fifth century in the cemetery of Santi Nereo, e Achilleo, in which a mother with a child, and four men in Phrygian dress, represent the Magi offering presents to the Virgin and infant Saviour.^ On a lower scale is a series of subjects in the same place; Christ enthroned between fpur attendants, certain figures busy, it would seem, in navigating a ship, and the Good Shepherd carrying a lamb on his shoulders, accompanied by others guarding a flock, all of which display carelessness of execution, as shown in the design of slender forms incorrect in shape and defective in proportion. "Whilst art was thus falling into decay at Eome, it was following a similar decline at Naples, where specimens of painting of th6 fourth or fifth century are still preserved in Christian catacombs.* Here an adventitious interest is created by classic models stamped with a new originality. St. Peter and St. Paul are depicted in pagan garb. But the first shows the square head and beard, the short hair, and yellow tunic, which ever after characterised the bearer of the keys; and the second is delineated, as he always has been delineated since, with a long head and pointed beard. A nimbus encircles the heads of the apostles, but their pre- sentment is not less rude than that of Eoman figures of the same time.* *' On the origin and development of the type of the Good Shepherd, see Ventttei's admirable Storia dell' Arte lialiana, tom. i. [Milan, Hoepli, 1901], pp. 30-38. Venturi gives a bibliography of the subject. ' Santi Nereo e Achilleo, Cappella dei Dodici Apoatoli. ' Naples, Catacombs, Braocio Siniatro, seconda sepoltura. ' * Each saint is designated with initials. The flesh tints are ruddy, with lights and shadows painted in stiff body colour. 8 ART IN ITALY BEFOKE THE SEVENTH CENTURY [ch. An orant female, with outstretched arms, in a niche of the same catacomb, inscribed with the words "vitalia, in pack," illustrates the habit of commemorating the deaths of Christian proselytes by effigies. Further on is the tomb of St. Januarius, possibly of the fifth or sixth century, with a figure of the Saviour in a recess, the dress antique, consisting of a tunic and sandals, and both arms stretched forward. The youthful head is encircled by a nimbus inscribed with the alpha and omega. At the sides are two females with their arms extended, and above them are two candelabra. The treatment is similar to that of other paintings in the catacomb.^ It reveals the same decline as was manifested in similar productions in other parts of Italy. But when we speak of decline we are bound to remember that the progress of decay was so gradual as almost to defy chrono- logical definition. Thus it is that in Santi Marcellino e Pietro at Eome, at the close of the fifth or the opening of the sixth century, painting is but very little inferior to what it had been a hundred years earlier in St. Callixtus, and a St. Peter, St. Marcellinus, or St. Tiburtius attending the Paschal Lamb at the source of four rivers, on the walls of a vaulting, are designed with slender frames, diminutive heads, and faulty extremities, and still recall the antique ; whilst the Saviour seated in a Boman chair, in the centre of an arching, presents us with a type of face not unworthy of comparison with that which marked the transient revival which we shall have to notice at Eavenna. Especially in the shape of the head and the lines of the features of this wall tempera we still find something of antique simplicity and selection. There is no doubt of the painter's intention to depict Christ, for he applies the nimbus and the Greek letters. But his purpose is also indi- cated by the gospel in one hand, the blessing given by the other. Youth is apparent in an oval face, an open brow, and a calm glance not devoid of majesty. Long locks fall regularly to the shoulders, and a pointed beard adorns the chin. The contour of the body, too, is fairly defined, but length and slenderness are excessive, as they are, even in a greater degree, in attendant figures of St Peter and St. Paul, which appear all the more ex- ' The head of Vitalia is now little more than a contour. I.J EAELY MOSAICS 9 aggerated as they are forced into the cornered spaces of a furnace vaulting.^ Long before this time, however, painting had ceased to be con- fined to the catacombs, and the higher orders of the Italian clergy had felt that paganism could not be eradicated with greater ease than by the multiplication of pictures. But the mosaics with which holy edifices were adorned displayed no other character than the paintings of the catacombs, nor was the influence of classic forms less visible in them than it had been in the ruder or more hasty works of the Christian cemeteries.^ No mosaics of earlier date than the close of the foiirth century are to be found at Eome. The remains of those in the baptistery now called Santa Costanza, built at Eome by Constantine in the fourth century, though greatly injured, leave little doubt as to the time when they were executed. Here the more essentially pagan peculiarities of the early centuries are curiously marked. The Saviour appears in the centre of one of the arched doors, sitting on the orb, in tunic and sandals, and giving the gospels to one of the apostles, probably St. Peter, standing to the left in front of two other figures.' Another representation of the Saviour adorns the arch of a second door in the same edifice. He stands and gives a scroll to an old * These remnants are in the Cappella di Santi Pietro e Marcellino. A nimbus and Greek letter are above the Lamb, and Petkus is inscribed above the head of that saint. But a copy of the work may be seen in the museum of San Giovanni Laterano, ' Critics were long deceived by a so-called mosaic in the Christian museum of the Vatican into the belief that the Saviour was represented in the earliest times in the green tunic, long hair and beard, and the classical forms of a Greek philosopher. A Latin inscription vouched for the truth of a theory which analysis entirely over- throws. The celebrated ikon is but a plaster imitation of mosaic, and may have been a copy of an old classic portrait. It has been removed quite lately from the public rooms of the Vatican. A painting in the same museum, said to be of the fourth century, is equally unsatisfactory to the critic. Originally in the catacomb of St. Sebastian, it represents the Saviour holding a scroll and touching the shoulder of one near him, whilst other figures are seated around. This painting, semicircular in form, seems to represent the Last Supper. ' Behind St. Peter are two, and to the right of the Saviour seven trees. The head of St. Peter is comparatively new, and the mosaic, originally rough in execu- tion, has been mended at different periods, in some cases with plaster cubes. That the original work dates from the time of Constantine can now scarcely be contested. The stones are large and loosely set, which is a characteristic feature. But see M0NTZ, Sevnt Archiologique, 1875, " Notes aur les Mosaiques Chr^tiennes de I'ltalie." 10 ART IN ITALY BEFORE THE SEVENTH CENTURY [ch. and venerable figure on the left, whilst his right is stretched out in the direction of two apostles, probably St. Peter and St. Paul. A tree on each side of the Saviour and four lambs at his feet symbolise the kindly nature and the steady growth of the faith. In both these mosaics the Saviour's head is surrounded by a simple nimbus, whilst the apostles have none. In the spandrels of the arches of the cupola, ornaments of vine issue from vases. Genii gather the grapes, whilst birds flutter among the branches and children play musical instruments. The Christian and pro- fane are thus commingled as they were in the earliest art of the catacombs, and the general appearance of the remains is that of work grandly conceived and executed in the broad method of cubing proper to the primitive mosaists of the Christian era. The Baptistery of Naples, also of the time of Constantine — an irregular octagonal building surmounted by a cupola — contains mosaics, the style of which may be traced amidst the repairs of restorers. Amongst the prophets on the broad sides of the octagon, some of whom hold crowns and others offerings, varied attitudes, suit- able actions, and classic draperies remind us of the fine figures of previous ages. Scenes from the life of the Saviour also fill the cupola, but are fatally altered by restoring.^ ^ An old inscription in this baptistery, which is now called S. Griovanni in Fonte, supports the tradition that Constantine erected the building in 303. This fact is confirmed by the chronicles of Giovanni Yillani. See Lriei Catalani, Le Chiese di NapoU (8to, Naples, 1845), i. pp. 46, 47. Of the four symbols of the Evangelists, one, which represents St. John in the form of an angel, has the head of an aged man with the regular features of the classic Roman time. In the centre of the cupola is the Greek monogram and cross. * Very different opinions as to the date of these mosaics have been expressed by archaeologists and historians. Whilst Catalini holds with Crowe and Cavalcaselle that they are of the age of Constantine, some Keapolitan writers maintain that they were executed in the sixth century. Muntz maintained, on the other hand, that they are of the same date as the mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore, and belong to the early half of the fifth century. (MUntz, "Kotes sur les Mosai'ques Chretiennes de I'ltalie," in the Revue Areh&ilogique (janvier-fAvrier, 1883, vii., ics Uosa^ues de Naples). These mosaics have recently been carefully restored by the Cav. F. Mazzanti, director of the Ufficio regionaleper la conservazione deimonumenti delle promncie meridionali. As in many other instances, modern research tends to confirm the opinion of Crowe and Cavalcaselle. In the process of cleaning and restoration the early classical character of these mosaics became more and more obvious, and the best authorities I.] EARLY MOSAICS 11 Reverting to works at Eome, the mosaics of Santa Pudenziana first attract attention, because, in spite of unfortunate mutilations, the shape and features of the principal figure are classic and the style of the picture indicative of power. Christ sits enthroned in the apsis on a Boman chair. He gives the blessing with his right hand ; his left is on the gospel. The tunic, mantle, and sandals which he wears are Boman; his face is regular, and, but for the large nimbus that surrounds the head, with its long locks falling to the shoulders and the beard that copiously covers the chin, we should liken him to the antique Jupiter, in one of the grand movements which even artists of the. decline were able to produce. The figure is seated in front of an architecture of temple porticos, in the centre of which a hiU is surmounted by a cross, about which we still see the ox head which symbolises St. Luke, and remnants of other similar emblems in a sky with ruddy clouds tipped with gilt light. Prominent amongst the attendants in front of the throne are St. Pudenziana and St. Praxedis, standing with crowns in their hands, whose forms are visible above those of ten saints, of which none are seen below the waist, the remainder of the figures having been cut down by modern restorers. The broad masses of light and shade, the luminous flesh tones, where they are not marred by restoration, produce a good harmony, and the forms are not as yet inclosed in dark outlines which mark the later progress of the decline. The mosaics of the arch of the tribune and great aisle in Santa Maria Maggiore at Eome, which were finished in the middle of the fifth century, are more satisfactory and more interesting works of the time. They give sufficient proof of the difficulty under which the mosaists laboured in rendering scriptural subjects of which the typical compositions had not as yet been traditionally defined. The centre of the arch of the tribune is occupied by a throne on gold ground, inclosed in a circle. The throne is guarded by two prophets and the symbols of the Evangelists. Beneath are the words, xtstus BPiscoptJS PLEBi nBi. Both sides of the arch are filled with mosaics, are now agreed that they belong to an earlier date than that assigned to them by M. Miintz. See A Filangiebi di Candida, / restauri dei mosaid del Battistero di San GHovanni in Fonie nel JDuomo di Napoli, in L'Arte, anno i., faac. vi-ix., June-September, 1898. 12 ART IN ITALY BEFORE THE SEVENTH CENTURY [ch. of whicli the highest on the left represents the Annunciation. The Virgin is seated on a large antique chair, a diadem on her head, near a basket of wool. An angel in the air announces to her the coming of the Dove. At Mary's sides are two couples of angels, a fifth to the left stands before Joseph. The whole seems confined in the space between two temples, one of which near Joseph is open, and shows the lighted lamps behind the drawn curtains. Beneath this representation of the Annunciation is the Adoration of the Magi. The infant Christ sits on a throne, his head encircled by a nimbus surmounted by a golden star, his seat guarded by four angels in the act of benediction. To the left the Virgin, classically draped, rests her chin on her hand, and raises her right foot to a low stool. Two kings near her, in rich Phrygian dress, present their offering on cushions, and a temple closes the scene on that side. To the right a seated figure can scarcely be distinguished. Lower down, the Massacre of the Innocents. The mothers, with dishevelled hair, and children in their arms, stand together motionless, and the soldiers in a company also, but one of them striking a woman. On the right Herod on his throne, giving the signal with his baton. A cold and inanimate representation of a difficult subject. At the base of the arch on that side Jerusalem with five lamps. On the upper part of the right side of the arch the first composition is the Presentation. The temple is a simple portico, in front of which Mary carries the nimbed child, attended by two angels ; a third, who fronts the group, gives a blessing. Several persons of both sexes accompany the Virgin, one of them a man turning to look at the Child, and stretching his hand to a female in a mantle. Near these a group of bearded spectators, the foremost of whom is about to kneel. On one side a temple and two doves, and a spectator moving away. The grouping and action, as well as the draping of the figures, are fairly reminiscent of the art of the classic times. The next subject represents the youthful Christ retiring from the temple, followed by two angels, and Joseph, Mary, and another angel meeting the procession of Herod, who advances, accompanied by John the Baptist, half naked and holding a staff. A temple closes the scene on one side.' * ' Ybnturi {pp. cit, pp. 258-260) maintains that the subject of this representation is taken from the Pseudo-Matthew, and represents the arrival of Jesus at a city of Egypt. He comes in triumph as an emperor. The idols fall down at His approach, and a rejoicing crowd comes out of the city gate to welcome Emmanuel. I.] MOSAICS OF S. MARIA MAGGIORE 13 The lowest mosaic shows the thiee Magi questioning Heiod on the coming of the new-horn Messiah. The king sits in the tribunal in imperial dress, a guard at his back. Between him and the Magi, who move in a file, two priests carry the scroll of the prophecy. The closing composition is Bethlehem with the lambs, much decayed, and deprived of some figures.^ Along the walls of the aisle thirty-three mosaics represent scenes from the Old Testament. Nineteen to the right of the entrance portal are taken from the lives of Moses and Joshua; fourteen on the left from the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Entirely devoid of scriptural characters, the mosaics of the arch are also vreak in narrative povrer. But this is not surprising at a period of manifest decline. It may seem strange indeed that at such a time artists should have been found who could still produce harmonious colour and breadth of contrast in light and shade, and give to the human shape manly character, or fair outline and proportions, combined with something of the classic in action and drapery. The degenerate taste that was creeping more and more over art is shown in the barbaric splendour of dress ornament. The subjects of the aisles gave occasion to the artist to reproduce the movements of contemporary legionaries, imitated as they had already been by the sculptor of Trajan's column. It is a curious fact that the same monument should have furnished models to the earliest Christian artists of Kome and to Baphael. But Kaphael was a genius who adapted and transfigured what he saw. The mosaists feebly repeated what their immediate precursors had already copied from older craftsmen.^ Two figures of colossal stature in Santa Sabina at Eome symbolising the churches of the Jews and Gentiles, suggest no other remark than that they have the character of the fifth century, and recall, by good proportions, movement, and draperies, the Eoman antique. Both the figures are on the wall inside the portal of the church. The first, a female in purple drapery and * ^ The last composition has been restored. ^ These mosaics are of the time of Siztus III., A.s. 432-40. Those of the aisles hare been damaged by time and by restorers. Some have been patched together, others are overpainted. U ART IN ITALY BEFORE THE SEVENTH CENTURY [ch. wearing a stole with the cross upon it, much restored and more modern in appearance than the second, which is likewise a female in Roman purple, and pointing with her right to an open book in her other hand.^ The mosaics of the arch of the tribune at San Paolo-fuori-le- Mura may be considered to rank amoi^st the masterpieces of the time of Leo I. If they were really produced, as we may well believe, between, 441 and 461, which is the span of Leo's reign,^ they reveal a more rapid decline in the practice of mosaics than of the contemporary practice of painting at Rome. Under Sixtus, Leo's immediate predecessor, the classic, we saw, had still prevailed. Under Leo at San Paolo classicism was evidently on the wane, and design seems to have had no better aim than the personifying of the might of the Redeemer, by stature and girth superior to that of the attendants. Christ in benediction at San Paolo is only visible to the breast in a nimbus of large diameter and lainbow hue. His pro]X)rtions aie gigantic when compared with those of all the surroundings — St. Peter and St. Paul below, the hierarchies of angels and saints at the sides, even the cross . and symbols of the Evangelists above. But disproportion is not confined to the decoration, it affects the parts ; and the Redeemer's hands, in benediction, or holding the pastoral staff, are paltry and small in contrast with the vast frame encased in a tunic and violet mantle, or the aged and careworn face, of which the eyebrows are mere semicircles and the nose a hne. The whole face is enframed ia a copious short beard, parted and brushed over the cheeks, and hair equally abundant parted also to fall in wiry lines behind the back. Nothing but symmetry is observable in the two angels who bend to the right and left, or the twenty-four who stand with offerings in their draped hands in double rows at the sides.^ 1 An inscription on the wall between these two figures places their execution in the time of Pope Celestine, a.d. 427-32. Ciampini (tome i., p. 190) tells us that the symbols of the Evangelists were here above the windows with the hand indicating the Eternal. At the sides of the windows there were prophets. All this is obliterated. Amongst the remains of the same century at Rome are the mosaic decorations of the chapel annexed to the baptistery in S. Giovanni Laterano, the cupola of which is adorned with borders of tendrils on a blue ground, with the lamb and four doves in the centre. * ' Leo I. became Pope in August, 440. ' This figure of Christ has been very much restored. This and other parts no <1 I.] MOSAICS OF S. PAOLO-FUOEI-LE-MURA 15 Ifc is a pity that the mosaics of the aisle should have perished, and deprived us of the means of comparing the composition and execution of gospel subjects at San Paolo with those which had been left some time before in the tribune of Santa Maria Maggiore. Almost a century elapses between the period which witnessed the adornment of San Paolo and that which produced the mosaics of Santi Cosmo e Damiano.^ It is a period marked by the invasion of the Goths and Vandals, the two successive sacks of Eome (455 and 472), and the fall of the Western Empire. Yet as regards the spirit in which the apsis and arch of this church were adorned, it is evident that little change had taken place in the feeling for pictorial delineation which characterised the time. The classic Eoman form still struggles for mastery, and still holds sway. The four angels who stand guard on each side of the Lamb on the front of the arch differ but little from those of Santa Maria Maggiore.^ Their short stature, their heads adorned with tufts of hair held back by cinctures, their free movements, and draperies flying in the wind still remind us of the practice peculiar to Eome, where artists still possessed considerable technical ability. The mosaics of the apsis are less powerfully relieved than those of the arch.* doubt suffered greatly during the fire of 1823, and much of the restoration is due to the injuries then inflicted. Four fragments of mosaics representing animals, preserved in a room adjacent to the sacristy of San Paolo, may serve to give a faint idea of the original ornaments of the external front of the basilica, whilst three colossal heads of apostles, in the same place in a later style, may be useful hereafter to illustrate a foreign Greek or Byzantine element in the art of Italy in the twelfth or thirteenth century. ^ The «hurch was erected during the time that Felix III. was Pope of Rome (626-530). ' The Lamb stands on an altar with the cross above him. Three candlesticks are on one side of him, four on the other. Left and right of these are two winged angels, four in all, nimbed (blue), and standing on clouds. Of old the symbols of the Evangelists appeared above the angels. One of these, repainted anew, and symbolising St. John alone, remains on the extreme left. The arch seems to have been reduced in size during repairs, for the prophets on the lower course are cut away, and an arm with a hand and crown projects singly at each aide, and indicates the place where these figures stood. This mosaic is executed on a gold ground, and has been restored. ' Or restoring has impaired that quality. 16 AET m ITALY BEFOEE THE SEVENTH CENTUEY [ch. The Saviour, in tunic and mantle and again colossal, stands out against golden-edged clouds, stretching out his right arm in token of command and holding a scroll. A gold nimbus encircles his head, and a hand issuing from above points to him, symbolising the first person of the Trinity. At the Saviour's feet flow the waters of Jordan. Below are the Lamb, on the source of the four streams of the gospel, and the twelve sheep, six on each side, emblematic of the apostolical mission. Although the Saviour still has a spirited attitude and regular forms, his frame and head have changed to a longer shape whilst the neck remains broad and massive, but the brow is muscularly developed, and staring eyes seem intended to inspire terror. The hair falls in regular spirals behind the shoulders, and the short beard, equally divided, leaves part of the chin bare. It is still a Eoman type, but inferior to those of the earlier mosaists of Santa Fudenziana and Santa Costanza, and even to that of the painter of the San Marcellino catacomb. The draperies have lost much of their flexibility. Attendant on the Saviour, and on each side of him, there remain, on the left, St. Peter leading St. Cosmas and Pope Felix IV. bearing crowns, on the r^ht, St. Paul leading St. Damian and St. Theodore.^ Mosaists here make a brilliant display of enamelled colours. But their images are work of pomp and state and not of pure art ; and Eome for the nonce has ceased to cultivate the study of composition, design, expression; ceased even to imitate the models of pictorial delineations bequeathed by classical predecessors.* Meanwhile Eome is not only losing her supremacy in painting and sculpture; she sees a distant Italian city establishing a ^ This apsis mosaic has been much restored. The figure of St. Felix is new. Those of St. Damian and St. Theodore are modernised. Bumohr had already noticed that these figures wore boots, whilst the Sariour is in antique dress (See RuMOHK, It. Forschungen, i. p. 172). The figure of St. Cosmas is pieserved. Of the apostle Feter half the figure only is old. St. Paul is repainted. The best part of the mosaic is the ornament in the midst of which the Lamb stands enthroned. Note the sidelong action of figures in profile with faces fronting the spectator. * ' In design the mosaic of the apse is the prototype of the apse mosaics of S. Prassede, S. Cecilia, and S. Marco. In technical qualities it shows a great falling oS from the earlier work at Bome and at Bayenna. The cubes are larger, and are more irregular in shape. There is less relief in the figures, and the colour scheme is cruder than in the older mosaics. I.] THE MOSAICS OF EAVENNA 17 dangerous rivalry, and Eavenna, to which Honorius retires as a safer residence than Milan, becomes the political capital of Italy, where new and gorgeous churches are raised to suit the taste of a luxurious court. When Constantine laid the foundation of the city which bears his name the arts had declined throughout the whole extent of his empire. But schools of architecture were created by his orders in various provinces; for the embellishment of his favourite residence the cities of Greece and Asia, and even of Italy, were despoiled of monuments; and Constantinople might boast of possessing the finest statues of Phidias, Lysippus, and Praxiteles. But Constantine could not revive the ideals of the Greeks, which were, indeed, no longer suitable to the declining Empire or to the development of the Christian faith. The want of a new language was felt, and with this want and the necessity of satisfying it the fall of the old and the birth of the new went hand in hand. The efforts of Constantine, therefore, only served to prolong the agony of the antique. Yet the antique in its dying moments maintained its grandeur and its majesty, and the mosaics of Eavenna are the last expression of its greatness and power. To affirm that these mosaics are of the same class as those which were produced at Eome during the fifth century would be to place on the same level the artists of Eome and Eavenna, though it clearly appears that the latter were not only abler than their Eoman contemporaries, but acquainted with Greek as well as Eoman models. If it be admitted that the mosaists of Eavenna were taught in Greece or at Constantinople, it becomes evident that the efforts of Constantine to arrest the decline of art were not useless, and that he did something to renew the traditions of the antique. The earliest manifestation of the transient revival which dis- tinguished Eavenna in the fifth century is to be found in the octagonal baptistery which now bears the name of San Giovanni in Fonte,^ which received its decoration some twenty-five years * ' For the history of the Baptistery see Sangiorgi, H Battistero della Basilica UrsiatM di Ravenna. Baveniia, 1900. I. — 18 ART IN ITALY BEFORE THE SEVENTH CENTURY [ch. after its erection in the year 400.^ It is characteristic of the mosaics which adorn this edifice that they are admirably dis- tributed within the space which they are intended to adorn. The due subordination of the figures to the architecture, both real and feigned, which gives to the building its peculiar character, is perfect. The figures themselves are majestic, bold in movement, varied in attitude, and individual in character. They are finely designed and relieved by a broad distribution of light and shade. The ornaments which serve to set off the figures are of their kind beautiful, and the colour is both harmonious and brilliant. Seen from below, the forms of the Saviour, the apostles, and the pro- phets seem to have the size of life, and are therefore colossal. Yet everywhere balance and general harmony prevail. The cupola is divided into three circles, the smallest of which is the medallion centre of the vault where the baptism of the Saviour is depicted. Separated from this central mosaic by a wreath of festoons, and from each other by a beautiful ornament of growing plants, the apostles are represented in classic flying draperies, in exaggerated stride, holding crowns in their hands, and supported on a frieze formed of feigned pilasters between which alternate thrones and emblems are placed.^ Beneath the windows and in the spring of the basement arches there are eight prophets in white raiment, surrounded by elegant foliated ornament.* These prophets, whose ' San Giovanni in Fonts was adorned with mosaics in the first half of the fifth century, it may be, by Archbishop Neon, who held the episcopal seat at Eavenaa from 425 to 430. (Consult Aonbllus in Muratobi, Lib. Poniif, ii., p. 58.) * Neon was archbishop from the year 449 to the year 452. The mosaics were certainly executed by his order, as is proved by inscriptions and by his monogram, which is to be found in the decorations. Dr. Coirado Kicei infers from the inscrip- tion given in Agnello that a Eoman bath had previously occupied this site. See Sanoioboi, op. cit., p. 15. '^ Under the frieze are the windows of the Baptistery, adorned at the sides with stucco figures and ornament in no less than sixteen niches. *5 The latest writer on the Ravenna mosaics makes a distinction between .the mosaics of the cupola and the lower mosaics of the Baptistery. He speaks of two schools of mosaists — the masters of the cupola and the masters of the archivolt There is something to be said for his theory. But the mosaics of the archivolt have undergone such a drastic restoration, or rather renovation, that it is very difficult to come to any definite conclusion. Scientific criticism will not be able to formulate final decisions on such theories until some painstaking critic sets to work to discover not only what parts of each mosaic are original, but what parts have not been THE BAPTISM OF OHEIST, AND THE TWELVE APOSTLES Prom a mosaic in the Baptistery of S. Giovanni-in-Fonte, Eavenna Alinari, ■plw I.J THE MOSAICS OF RAVENNA 19 garments are relieved in gold, are finely formed and classically draped, standing forth boldly, wearing mantles, holding scrolls in their hands, or declaiming. If anything is to be urged against the figures of the apostles, it might be that something of shape and proportion is sacrificed to the necessities of the space — ^that the heads are small for the frames; but it was quite as difficult a task to preserve faultless form in this instance as it had been in the furnace vault of the catacomb of Santi Marcellino e Pietro. The long stride and the flying draperies were necessary to fill the diverging space of the cupola. The prophets are the finest in character that had yet been produced by the art of the early centuries. Eeverting now to the Baptism in the cupola, we observe the figure of Christ facing the spectator, and standing above the knees in Jordan. The Saviour's attitude is simple, his frame well modelled. The hair, falling on the shoulders, is long and copious. Above is the dove of the Holy Ghost. St. John, on the bank to the left, with one foot raised on a stone, is pouring the water from a cup on the Saviour's head. With his left he holds a jewelled cross.^ The attitude is noble and classic, the body a little long for the size of the head. Floating on the water to the right, looking up and holding a green cloth in both hands, Jordan — a bearded river-god holding a reed and resting on a vase — is well drawn and anatomically rendered, but robust and Herculean in shape. Bavenna, it is obvious, is now much nearer the antique source than Bome, as it clings to the idea of the river-god, which had long been abandoned elsewhere. Yet, as regards the act of baptism, the arrangement is that which prevails as late as the age of Giotto, entirely altered in colour and design in successive restorations. One of the editors has endeavoured to do this in the case of one or two mosaics, but he has merely touched the fringe of the subject. Dr. Eurth has almost entirely avoided it. What we know, however, from early documentary evidence in regard to one or two mosaics has revealed to us in a somewhat startling fashion upon what insecure foundations a great deal of modern criticism of these mosaics rests. See Eubth, Die Mosaiken von Savenna. Leipzig, 1902. ' We may be indebted to a restorer for this strange addition to the mosaic of the baptism. * It ia now held by some competent authorities that the cross was not added by a restorer. See Sanoiobgi, op. cit, p. 129. 20 ART IN ITALY BEFORE THE SEVENTH CENTURY [oh. The mosaists of Eavenna, like those of Rome in the days of Constantine, worked with cubes of a lai^e size. In the Baptistery the stones forming the outlines are of a glowing reddish tint, decisive enough to mark the shape without hardness, — the high lights of a brilliant yellow-red, the half tints a deeper shade of warm tone, the shadows of a reddish brown. The general effect is a gorgeous sunny colour.^ Still more classical and if possible finer than the mosaics of the Baptistery are those of the mortuary chapel of the Empress Galla Placidia.2 In a lunette above the portal the Good Shepherd appears tending his flock, and a figure of triumphant aspect, but enigmatical meaning, faces it in the corresponding lunette of the choir. We have the symbols of the four Evangelists and prophets in the midst of appropriate emblems in the cupola and the spaces beneath it. Christian art had not as yet been illustrated by such noble representations as these. The Good Shepherd, classic in form and attitude, sits on a rock in a hilly landscape, graspii^ with his left hand the cross and with his right caressii^ the lamb. His sandaUed feet are crossed. His nimbed head is covered with curly locks, and rests on a majestic neck turned towards the retreating forms of the lambs. The face is oval, the eyes are spirited, the brow vast, and the features r^ular. The frame is well proportioned. The blue mantle, shot with gold, admirably drapes the form. A warm, sunny glow pervades the whole figure, which is modelled in perfect relief by broad masses of golden light, of ashen haK tones, and brown-red shadows. We are far ^ In the central Baptism the head and shoulders and arm of the fignie of the Saviour, the head, shoulders, and arm, the leg and foot of the Baptist and the cross in his hand have heen repaired, and thus tiie t^pe and character of the heads and other parts may have heen altered. ^ Now SS. Kazario e Celso. * It is prohahle that the mosaics at the Mausoleum of Galla Flacidia and the mosaics of the Baptistery were executed hy the same group of artists. The scroll ornament around the figures of prophets on the spandrels of the arches of the Baptistery closely resembles some of the decorative work in the transept of the Mausoleum ; and some of the decorative borders and arabesques of the one building are identical with those of the other. Since writing this note we have found that this view is supported by Dr. Julius Eurth, the latest writer upon the mosaics of Bavenna. Ettrth, Die MosaiJem wn Bavenna, Leipzig, 1902. 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BBHHJ o o d p^ Kl z o a o 83 IV.] NICCOLA PISANO 109 occurs is a contract of 1265, in which he agrees to furnish a pulpit with all its carved work to the cathedral of Siena. The notary describes him minutely as " Magister Niccolus lapidum de paroccia ecclesie Sancti Blasii de Ponte de Pisis quondam Petri," from which we gather that having lost his father he lived in the parish of San Biagio at Pisa. In a second record, of later date, "Magister Nichola Pietri de Apulia" is required to summon Arnolfo, then his assistant, to work at the pulpit of Siena. We thus ascertain that the birthplace of this sculptor, and probably that of his father, is Apulia. A third document, dated in August, 1267, shows that Niccola lived at Pisa whilst he was still engaged on the pulpit of Siena, and it is from there that he gives receipts for wages, signing himself "Magister Niccholus olim Petri, lapidum de Pissis populi Sancti Blasii," which is the customary form in later records of 1272 and 1273 at Pistoia.^ ^ RuMOHR (Forachungen, ii., p. 14S) was the first to publish the earliest of these documents, which are reprinted in Milakesi's Documenti per la Storia delV Arte Senese (8to, Siena, 1854), i., pp. 145 and fol. The date October 3, 1266, " secundum cursum Pisanorum," is really 1265 of our reckoning. Those of 1272-3 were first given by Ciamfi in his Notizie, but inaccurately transcribed, so that the name was transformed from "Magistro Nichole quondam Petri de cappella Santi Blasii pisa ..." into "Magistro Nichole quond. Petri de Senis Ser Blasii pisa . . ." This attempt to establish by a false reading that Nicholas was a Fisan, son of a Sienese and grandson of a Fisan, was detected by Milanesi, who found that the documents at Fistoia gave the same results as those of Siena. Milanesi is, howeTer, of opinion that the words " de Apulia" refer to a suburb of Lucca, and not to the province of Apulia, and that therefore Nicholas is a Tuscan (see Vasaei, Sansoni's ed., i., p. 324). This opinion is one which Milanesi will get few persons to accept. * This melancholy controversy illustrates well in all its phases the extreme parochial patriotism of Italian archaeologists and art-historians. It may be com- pared with the preposterous attempt, made by Ugurgieri and other erudite Sienese of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to prove that Sodoma was born at Yergelle, a little castle near Siena, and was in reality a Sienese and not a Yercellese, First of all Ciampi, by a false reading of an ancient document, seeks to show that Niccola was a Fisan, and grandson of a Pisan. This attempt having failed, and it having been demonstrated that Niccola was a native of Apulia, loyal Tuscans searched their native counti-y to find a place with a name resembling that of the southern province. Two little villages were discovered bearing the name of Pulia, one near Lucca and one near Arezzo. The patriotic antiquarians of Siena and Florence were happy again. They had found, they said, the birthplace of Niccola Fisano. They assured themselves that the revival of sculpture which began in Tuscany owed little or nothing to foreign influences. They had, however, forgotten the claims of Fi.ia. The Fisan archaeologists did not wish to give up their Niccola to some insignificant village, even though it was » 110 NICCOLA AND GIOVANNI PISANI [ch. According to Vasari, Niccola studied first under certain Greeks whom he found carving figures and ornaments in the cathedral and baptistery of Pisa. But in the midst of his other avocations he also carefully examined a number of ancient monuments which the Pisans had brought home from the wars, and amongst them a sarcophagus inclosing the remains of the Countess Matilda, set up in a place of honour in the square facing the cathedral. Niccola admired the chase of Meleager, which was carved on this monu- ment, and extended his admiration to similar works which he skilfully copied. His cleverness in this style of imitation was soon acknowledged by the Pisans who, in a comparatively short time, hailed him as the best sculptor of his age. No doubt the pulpit of Pisa bears out Vasari's opinion that Niccola studied and imitated the antique. But previous to the execution of that work he must have produced something similar in Pisa or elsewhere, and we might also require some evidence of his earlier devotion to the manner of the Pisan Greeks. Testimony Tuscan village. Signor Tanfani-Oentofanti, the learned archivist of Pisa, protested, as a loyal citizen, against Milanesi's theory. The Pisans, he said, did not wish " to yield to another Tuscan town an honour which up to then had been all their own." The argument that the words " de Apulia " signify that Niccola was a native of an obscure village called Pulia, near Lucca, or of another hamlet of the same name, near Arezzo, has nothing to recommend it, and obviously owes its origin to Tuscan patriotism. Nor does the fact that Niccola was called Pisanus prove that he was a native of Pisa. In many an early document an artist is spoken of as though he were a native of a certain town, when, in fact, he had only resided a long time there. It is, of course, just possible that Niccola himself was styled " de Apulia," not because he was born there, but because he had resided in Apulia for some time in his early years. But that question is of little importance to art historians ; the main fact is that whilst still young he was brought under the direct influence of the masters of the southern classical revival. Por this fact both documents and stilkritik afford sufficient evidence. This question has been discussed by Milanesi in his edition of Vasari (vol. i., p. 321-329) ; by Tanfani-Centofanti, Notizie di Artisti traite dai Documenti Pisani (Pisa, 1898, pp. 389-393), as well as in his pamphlet, Delia Patria di Niccola Pisano ; estratto dal Gfiomale "Lettere e Arti," No. 12 (Bologna, 1890) ; by Schubring in his Pisa (Leipzig, Seeman, pp. 42-46) ; and, briefly, by Professor Venturi in his article, II genio di Nicola Pisano in the first number of the Bivisia d'lialia (Jan. 15th, 1898). Professor Venturi supports the views of Crowe and Cavalcaselle as to the southern origin of Niccola. But he regards some of the heads on the exterior of the baptistery as early works of Niccola. To us some of these busts seem to be closely related to those of Capua. Not even the best of them, however, have quite the quality of Niocola's authentic works. We think that these are by some other Apulian artist, an associate, perhaps, of Niccola. IV.] OEIGIN OF FICCOLA'S AET 111 of this kind is absolutely wanting. The sculptors of the cathedral and baptistery of Pisa were taught in other schools than that in which Niccola was bred. Their work is not like his. It is unlike theirs. Vasari's account of the antiques of Pisa is a legend. The raptures into which he falls before the chase of Meleager are affected. Countess Matilda was not buried in a cippus upon which the chase of Meleager was represented. The subject cut upon her tomb is Atalanta preparing for the race, or Hippolytus and Phgedra. A chase of Meleager, in the Campo Santo, is a feeble work of late Eoman execution. * If, on a superficial examination, Vasari's narrative hangs but loosely together, it collapses entirely when subject to analysis. If we should venture to compare great things with small, we might place on a parallel the careers of Niccola Pisano and Michaelangelo Buonarroti. Michaelangelo was the greatest artist of the Italian revival, and we trace his career from its beginning to its close at Florence ; but judging him by his works, we conclude that he would never have been famous but for the previous existence of Donatello and Ghirlandajo. At Pisa no precursor to Niccola has been found, and, unless we look abroad, we cannot explain his career and the expansion of his style. Niccola appears at Pisa in 1260 as an artist of mature power. Are we to suppose that a man whose earliest creation in Central Italy is a masterpiece rose quite suddenly to eminence without leaving a trace of his rise behind him? We must refuse to believe that by simply imitating carvings found casually on ancient tombs he ascended to the position of "the best sculptor of his age." We might think, on the contrary, that Niccola was taught in a country where antique examples were more abundant than at Pisa — that he was not a Pisan by birth, though he became a Pisan by adoption. We may believe that he was called to Pisa from a distance because he had a name and repute amongst the seafarers of the republic, and that, having come at their bidding, he displayed from the outset an art which naturally struck them as being superior to that with which they were acquainted at home. Then, no doubt, but not till then, Niccola was acknow- ledged as " the best sculptor of his age." Pisa, in the thirteenth century, commanded the trade of the 112 NICCOLA AND GIOVANNI PISANI [ch. west coast of Italy. She was alternately at peace or at war with the Sicilians and Apulians, protecting or monopolising the traffic of the south, and particularly of the ports of the south, amongst which Salerno and Amalfi were conspicuous. Her population thus came to be recruited from distant places, and from thence we may suppose there migrated, about the middle of the thirteenth century, Niccola the son, and perhaps Peter the father, with whom we make acquaintance at Pisa as Apulians. That about this time there should have been a current of emigration from the south to the north will not appear strange to those who remember that Frederick II. had just died, and Southern Italy was about to witness the struggles of the house of Anjou with the last descendants of the Hohenstaufen. Niccola, it is clear, resided permanently at Pisa from 1260 upwards. We now inquire where he had his domicile previous to that date; and as to this it must be confessed that, beyond the fact that records speak of the master as an Apulian, circumstantial evidence alone remains to guide us. Pisa and its neighbourhood revealed, as we have seen, no signs of his presence, and none of his sculptures are to be found either there or in any other part of Tuscany. Unfortunately the same void is apparent in Apulia and the south generally. But we also saw that in Tuscany and the north the sculpture of the region was different in spirit and in style from that of Niccola. In the south, on the contrary, and particularly in Apulia, sculptors practised their art after the same methods as Niccola, and with the same tendency to imitation of the antique ; and though we cannot find work assignable to Niccola himself, many examples can be pointed out which remind us of his style and suggest a similar origin. Vasari, curiously enough, has prefaced the life of Niccola with some general observations, in which he speaks of edifices built by a mythical architect, whom he calls Fuccio of Florence, in the cities of Southern Italy, and he specifies more particularly the castles of Naples, the gates of Capua on the Volturnus, and the deer park at Amalfi. It is interesting to observe that he thus gives prominence to the very spots in which Niccola Pisano might have acquired the rudiments of his art. Salerno, Amalfi, IV.] THE SOUTH-ITALIAN SCULPTOES 113 and Capua are now admitted to be well furnished with specimens of sculpture which closely resemble the sculpture of Niccola Pisano. At Salerno, which is remarkable for the antiquity of its buildings and classic remains, the first thing that strikes even a casual observer is the abundance of old sepulchral monuments, which, in variety and quality, are not surpassed by similar ones in Pisa. The difference between the two cities in this respect is that the monuments of Salerno are apparently the produce of the place, as we may judge from the numerous pieces, including a chase of Meleager, in the cloisters of the episcopal palace; whereas those of Pisa are mere spoil from the wars of the Middle Ages. Sculpture at Salerno, too, is formed after the antique, of which we have illustrations in Jeremiah and other prophets; and clusters of angels and symbols of the Evangelists on the pulpits of the cathedral recall Niccola both in spirit and execution. Close to Salerno, the city of Amalfi, with its satellites Eavello and Scala, furnish examples of even greater importance, which again are surpassed by those of more recent discovery, now pre- served in the museum of Capua. Of Amalfi and the gates of its cathedral we have already had something to say in reference to the efforts of the Benedictines to extend the cultivations of the arts.^ We saw that the gates of the churches of Montecassino, Ostia, and even San Paolo-fuori- le-Mura at Eome, were executed about the same time, and we learn that they were designed at the bidding of an Amalfitan consul who patronised Amalfitans in practice at Constantinople about the year 1070.^ A century later these examples of South Italian carving were thrown into the shade by work of greater power, of which we have specimens at Eavello and other places. Nothing can be more interesting than the gates which close the portal of the hill church of Eavello. We hardly require the inscription which is carved on them to prove that they were executed in 1179. In form they are similar to those executed by 1 Antea, pp. 59, 60. ^ Consult Cakavita, u.s., i., p. 193-4. I. — I 114 NICCOLA AND GIOVANNI PISANI [ch. Barisanus of Trani^ for the cathedral of his native place, or the northern portal of the Sicilian church of Monreale. At Eavello the folding doors are framed in an edging of Saracenic pattern, encircling ten courses of six panellings, carved with gospel and other subjects. At Monreale the number of courses is only seven, the panellings four. Scenes of the Passion, including the Deposition from the Cross and the Limbus, alternate at Eavello with figures of saints and prophets. At Monreale, with the same arrangement, the gospel scenes are more numerous, com- prising Christ between Moses and Elias, the Descent from the Cross, the Limbus, the Virgin and Child, St. Nicholas, St. George, St. Eustace, and other saints. The date of the Trani bronzes is 1175. The distinctive features in all these productions are an apparent clinging to classic models, an excellent distribution of space, something stunted in the forms, but no lack of action or ex- pression. The master who cast the plates is a contemporary of Bonanno, but superior to him in so far as he works with a distinct leaning towards the antique. The gates of Ravello, however, only warrant the interest shown for them in this narrative, because they indicate the existence at a very early time of the current which ran strongly in Southern Italy during the reign of the last of the Hohenstaufen emperors. Frederick II. spent his life in trying to establish the Eoman Empire in Italy in opposition to the Papacy. His effort involved the restoration of much that was obsolete of this old world of the Caesars, and perhaps we may count amongst these obsolete things the classic art which he endeavoured to restore.^ But the * 1 Signor Palmarini traces the influence of Byzantine art upon Barisanus, and shows that Diehl exaggerated the influence of French art upon the sculptor. See Palmarini, Barisano da Trani, in L'Arte, 1898, fasc i., ii., pp. 15-26. * ^ Frederick II., the pupil of Michael Soot, was one of the leaders of a genuine proto-Kenaissance. "Just as in our cold English February there come sometimes a few golden days bright with presages of the spring, so in the winter-time of the Middle Ages there was a brief period of sunshine, when a few flowers sprang up here and there from the old, seemingly dead roots of antique culture." The proto-Eenaissance had seven chief centres — Byzantium, Toledo, Provence, the Ile-de-France, Tuscany, the Kingdom of Sicily, and Rome, " It was in Byzan- tium that it first showed itself. There an art revival, which commenced in the ninth century under Basil the Macedonian, was followed in the eleventh by another IV.] THE SOUTH-ITALIAN SCULPTOES 115 effort, however vain it may appear to us now, was earnestly made, and we owe to it the pseudo-antique of the Southern Italians and the transient revival of classic sculpture embodied in the works of Niccola Pisano and his precursors. We have seen that evidence of this revival was to be found in the pulpit of Pisa. The same phenomenon will presently be noticed at Eavello, but it only became visible there after its apparition at Capua. It would be difficult to find a more characteristic manifestation movement of advance, which manifested itself especially in ivory-carvings, in bronze reliefs, and in miniatures. In some of these works we find evidences of a sincere desire to render natural form, as well as a more artistic treatment of drapery. In representing a draped figm:e the artist is no longer content to represent the folds of the robe by a mere web of decorative lines. He seeks to make us feel the material significance of the form he portrays." In Spain the movement showed itself in literature and scholarship. Under the enlightened patronage of Don Eaymon, Archbishop of Toledo, scholars like Dominicus Gundisalvus, Johannes Avendeath, and Michael Soot translated into Latin the scientific works of Aristotle and the writings of Aristotle's great expositor, Avicenna. In Provence the movement manifested itself in the poetry of the troubadours, and in such architectural works as the portal of St. Gilles. Here as elsewhere the return to nature was preceded by a classical revival. In the Ile-de-France it found expression in the writings of Abelard, in the works of name- less sculptors, in ivory-carvings, and in miniature-painting ; in Rome in the mosaics of the Cosmati. In Tuscany the movement produced early fruit in architecture, in the works of the Pisan school and their followers, but it only tardily affected the other arts. The movement reached its climax in Sicily and Apulia in the reign of Frederick II. " There, for one brief period, the new life manifested itself in many departments of human effort. It brought forth fruit of all kinds, in architecture, in sculpture, in mosaic, in literature. Its chief source of inspiration was the art of ancient Borne, but to it flowed, too, streams of vitality from other centres of the new life. Artists from Byzantium made coins for Frederick, and decorated his walls with mosaic. French architects built his castles. Michael Scot, his tutor, brought to Palermo from Toledo the lore of Aristotle. Proven9al poets sang their new measures in the shade of the ilex groves of Sicily." (Douglas, A History of Siena. Murray, 1902, pp. 298-300.) Of the works of French architects in Apulia in the reign of Frederick II., M. Bertaux has given a full and scholarly account in his Cartel del Monte et les architectes frwruiais de I'empereur Fridiric II., published in the Comptes rendus des aiances del' Acad4mie des inser^tions et belles-lettres, Paris, 1897. Id. L' Arte (1898, faso. iii.-v.) E. Eocchi has commented upon the monograph of M. Bertaux. In a paper that M. Bertaux read before the International Historical Congress, held in Paris in July, 1900, he confirmed the authors' conclusions as to the Pugliese origin of Niccola Pisano's art. The paper was entitled Magister Nicholas Petri de Apulia. 116 NICCOLA AND GIOVANNI PISANI [ch. of this new tendency than is afforded to us in the chief city of the Terra di Lavoro. Frederick II. had resolved to make of Capua a stronghold, and the seat of a supreme court of law. Immediately after his coronation at Eome in 1220 he met the barons of Apulia in the old capital of the province, and ordered the erection of a citadel or bridge-head on the Volturnus, which not only became celebrated in later days as a dtefence, but famous as a work of art. Years were spent in building the fortress, which was planned by the proto-magister Liphantes, and de- scribed by one who witnessed its reduction by arms in 1266 as admirable and remarkable, as well for the strength of its round towers as for the decoration of its entrance. Above the gateway there was seated a crowned efBgy of the Emperor on his throne, expressing by mien and gesture the idea of powerful rule. Ac- cording to the accounts of successive annalists, the entrance was a marble arch, which had been completed some years before the death of the Emperor, whose statue, in robes of state, represented a man of forty, in the mantle of an old Roman Caesar and the modern wide -sleeved under garment of the knights of the thirteenth century. The gesture, the drapery, were Eoman. Above this commanding figure of more than life-size there were ranges of old works of statuary dug out of the ruins of the neighbouring Capuan circus, and an inscription conveying threats of punishment to traitors. Beneath and at each side of the Emperor colossal busts of the two Capuan judges, Pietro delle Vigne and Eoffredo of Beneventum, were placed, accompanied by mottoes announcing safety to the honest and captivity to the treacherous. Lower down, and still above the arching of the gate, was a statue nearly three times the life-size of a woman, with crisp hair bound by a coronet of vine leaves, opening her breast to show the Imperial Eagle. It was an allegorical representation of Imperial Capua, and bore the motto: "By order of the Kaiser, I keep watch over the Empire." Carved on the marble of the archway were trophies and reliefs representing the victories of Frederick. It was the Duke of Alva who ordered the enlargement of the Capuan citadel, and caused its sculptures to be thrown down. After this, Frederick the Emperor's effigy lay for years in the mire, where his nose, hands, and feet were struck off and lost. gl^ «' A BUST, NOW IN THE CAPUA MUSEUM, FEOM THE FORTRESS BUILT BY FREDERICK II. AT CAPUA I.— To face page 116 IV.] SCULPTURE AT CAPUA 117 Imperial Capua and the judges disappeared, together with the antiques of the Capuan circus and the reliefs of the arcbings. But parts of all the statues were recovered in 1870-1, and the torso of Frederick, the head, without the body, of Imperial Capua, and the busts of Pietro delle Vigne and Eoffredo of Beneventum are now in the museum of Capua.^ There can be no doubt that in these remains we possess characteristic productions of the period of classic revival to which we have been pointing. The figure of the Emperor appears, from what remains of it, to have been an imitation as regards gesture and dress of a Eoman Csesar. The statue of Capua is also an enlargement of an antique goddess, with sharply-cut features, put together after the fashion of the Greeks, but marking about the same relapse from the Greek as would be a mechanical revival of the sculpture of Egina by feebler craftsmen of the Eoman Empire. What the artist has well attained is a certain measure of severe gravity expressed in the orb of the large eye, the curve of the brows, and the breadth of the cheek. The judges are very fair imitations of bearded philosophers of antiquity, with mantles round the shoulders loosely knotted at the throat, the hair in short Eoman curls under laurel wreaths, the eye scooped out, as we shall presently see it in later work of the same class. Nothing can be more natural than that carved works of this kind should have been the models on which Mccola Pisano was formed — models which were taken almost without modification, so far as method and ippearance are concerned, from the remains, then easy of access ■^ For the details consult Descriptio mctorioB per Carolum regem, ap. GR.fiVii, Thesaurus, v., p. 21; Geimm. (H.), Kunst and Kiinstler (8vo, Berlin, 1865), i., 3. 62; fiich. of San Germano in Mitkatori, Berum Itat., vii., p. 1032; Dampano, De rebus gestis Andreoe Bracchii (da Montone), lib. v. ; LircoA di Pbnna, 7omm. ad Cod. Justinian, lib. xi., tit. xi., lex. i; Della Vallb, Lettere Sanesi, ., p. 200 ; SciPiONB SoNELLi, MS., Capua; ap. 0. von Fabsiczt, in Zeitsch. fii/r Hid. Kunst, xiv., ann. 1879, p. 185. The statue of Frederick was set up on a )edestal near the bridge gate of Capua by order of the Senate in 1584. But it was :hrown down again in the wars of the eighteenth century, and since then the head las disappeared. The busts of the two judges and the head of the Capua were found .Imost buried under rubbish in niches above the inner side of the arched gate .butting on the Volturnus bridge ; and in similar concealment there were found Iso a hand of Jupiter and eight other antique pieces, evidently spoil from the Japuan circus. See D. Salazabo's, Studi sui Monumenti, Pt. I. (Nap., 1871), note p. 63, and Fabbiczy, u.s., note to p. 216. 118 NICCOLA AND GIOVANNI PISANI [ch. in that wonderful circus, which still remains to this day one of the greatest marvels of antique architectural carving. Curious and interesting to the same extent as the remains at Capua are the carvings of the pulpit in the cathedral of San Pantaleone at Eavello, of which we have already examined the gates. The pulpit rests on pillars reposing on the back of rampant Mons.^ The steps which lead up to the desk support a marble balus- trade inlaid with mosaics; and above the arch leading into the pulpit is a Latin inscription recording Nicolo Eufolo and his commission to Niccola di Bartolommeo of Foggia to execute it in 1272. Above the arch of the doorway is a fine bust of a female, by some supposed to represent a queen, by others Sigil- gaita Eufolo,^ of life size, in a diadem from which there hangs a long rich tassel. Her hair, divided and gracefully twined along the ears, exposes a fine forehead and a face of oval shape. The brow and scooped eyes are noble, the nose regular, and the features elegantly chiselled and broadly carved. The neck is massive. Niccola di Bartolommeo of Foggia evidently studied the antique like his contemporary Mccola at Pisa. The two styles are essentially similar. The marble has the same high polish and technical workmanship. The use of the drill is common to both ; on the capitals of the door are other portraits, one a male profile, less happily rendered, but still by the same hand. Had not the name of Nicholas been united to that of Bartolommeo of Foggia, proving the existence of two contemporary sculptors of the same name but of different families, the busts of Eavello and the pulpit ^ Though this pulpit has been reshaped, probahly because parts of it have been allowed to decay, there is no reason to suppose that anything was added to it which did not form a part of its original structure. The long inscription which records the commission of the work by Bufulus, the husband of Sigilgaita, ends with the lines : — EGO MAOISTER NICO- LAUS, DE BAKTHOLOME- O SE FOQIA MARMOEAB- ITJS HOC OPtrS FECI. These lines are preceded by the date : — LAPSIS MILLENIS BIS CENTUM BISQ. TKECENIS ZVI. BISSBNIS ANNIS AB OBIOINE FLENIS. * ^ It has been shown that this bust does not represent Sigilgaita. Professor Venturi holds that it represents " Mater Ecclesia." See an article by Filangieri di Candida, in NapoU NoUlisHma, February, 1903. "mater ecclesia' By Niccola di Bartolommeo From a bust from the pulpit of S. Pantaleoue, Eavello I.— To face page 118 M IV.] SCULPTUKE AT RAVELLO 119 of Pisa might have been assigned to one person. Foggia was in the thirteenth century the ordinary residence of the Emperor Frederick II. Delia Valle devotes a page of one of his Sienese letters to a description of this palace, which was erected in 1223, and on the solitary arch of which there now remains an inscrip- tion, which comprises the date and the name of the builder, Bartholomeus, who erected it.^ Bartholomeus, the architect of Foggia, may possibly be related to Nicholas the sculptor of the pulpit of Eavello. But the busts of San Pantaleone are not solitary specimens of the art of Eavello and Amalfi in the age of Niccola. At Scala, near Amalfi, there stood in a niche above the gate of a house, till it was removed to the Berlin Museum, a bust of a woman wearing a diadem, some- what injured about the nose and lips, but dressed in jewelled attire of the same style as that of the bust of Eavello, and carved with the help of similar perforations and scoopings of the eyes. The person represented is said to be the same as that portrayed in the pulpit of San Pantaleone; but if this should be doubtful, there can be no question that we have here also an art akin to that of Niccola at Pisa. And we thus ascertain that as early as the thirteenth century sculptors found employment at Capua, Foggia, Eavello, and Amalfi, whose skill was superior to that of the Pisans, whilst one of them, called Niccola di Bartolommeo, is so nearly related to Niccola of Pisa in style that the works of both may be confounded.^ However venturesome it may once have ' ANNO AB INOAENATIONB, 1223 M. JUNII. XI. INB. KZG. DSO S FEEDEKIOO IM- PBKATOBI BEX SEP. AUO. A III. ET EESIS SIOILIiB XXVI. HOC OPtJS FELIOITEK INCEPTUM PPHATO DNO PEKFIOIENTB. SIC CESAR FIERI JUSSIT OPUS PTO (?PEBCEPTO) BAETOLOMEITS SIC OONSTRUXIT ILLUD. (Delia Valle, Lettere Sanesi, i., p. 205 and fol.) It is amusing to find Della Valle (ii., p. 20) change the word "pto " into " Pis." in order to prove that Bartolommeo of Foggia is the same as Bartolommeus Pisanus, a bell-founder at Pisa in the thirteenth century. This theme Morrona {Pisa lllusU, ii., p. 97) extensively developes. ' If it should be argued that Niccola of Foggia was a pupil of Niccola of Pisa, it would be natural to expect that history should record his presence elsewhere than in the south of Italy, where his work is also preserved, and his style would have made a nearer approach to the later one of Giovanni than to that of Giovanni's father. 120 NICCOLA AND GIOVANNI PISANI [ch. seemed to acknowledge the existence of a South Italian school which acquired new life under the encouragement afforded to it by Frederick II. ; however difi&cult it may have been at first to establish the fact that such a school was formed, because it was not possible to point out a suf&cient number of examples to prove its effectual development, time and research have now brought to light materials enough for a reasonable confirmation of a not unreasonable theory; and those who might have thought the sculptures of Eavello alone insufficient to afford material for a sound judgment, will perhaps be ready to accept as convincing the sculptures of Capua, which may perhaps some day become all the more precious if the reliefs of the castle of Capua should be recovered. It is a remarkable circumstance that one of the earliest works which Vasari attributes to Mccola Pisano is the tomb of St. Dominic in San Domenico of Bologna, erected, he says, in the year 1231,^ but only completed in 1266-7 by Fra Guglielmo, No records have ever confirmed the biographer's assertions respecting the building or remodelling, in the earlier part of the century, of edifices in divers parts of Italy by Niccola Pisano,^ whilst in many instances these assertions have been positively contradicted. The oldest records of the Duomo of Siena (1229)^ make no mention of Niccola Pisano as being present at the foundation of that edifice. The fame of Niccola would have been great long before * ^ Vasaei, Le vUe, etc. Florence, Sansoni, vol. i., p. 296. P. Berthier, the learned historian of the Convent of S. Domenico at Bologna, has found no con- firmation of this statement. ' Ernst Fokstek in his £eitrdge afiSrmed that he saw a record at Pistoia proving that Kiccola worked in the Duomo in 1242. The record itself he does not give. Was he quite sure of the date ? See Beitrdge, u.s., p. 61. * Ko such document is known to Signor Tanfani-Centofanti, the learned archivist of Pisa, who has made most diligent search for documents relating to Mccola Pisano, to support his theory of the Pisan origin of the great master. ' BuMOHR quotes original records of payments for work in the Duomo of Siena as early as 1229 (ForscJmngen, ti.s., ii., p. 121). Gaetano Milanesi going back still further (Sulla Sioria civile ed artistica Senese, 8vo, Siena, 1862, p. 59), notices Bellamino, who in 1198 restored the Eontebranda, which was repaired anew in 1218 by Giovanni Stefani, then capo-TruMstro of the Duomo. * The earliest existing records of the Duomo of Siena are of the year 1227. These early references to the Duomo of Siena are about to be published for the first time by one of the editors of these volumes. Si I !5 a a S o ■^ < H o M 8 IV.] THE SIENA PULPIT 121 the year 1260, had he, as a Pisan, carried out the numerous Works which are assigned to him previous to that date. The only con- cession that can be made in respect of the period of his first settlement at Pisa is that he resided there sufficiently early to compose and to execute the pulpit which, we saw, bears the date of 1260, that he resided there when Giovanni was born, since Giovanni has described himself in a pulpit at Pistoia as a native of Pisa. We shall presently see that Niccola, in the contract of 1265 for the pulpit of Siena, makes it a condition that he shall be allowed to employ his son Giovanni at one-third of the ordinary wages. We must therefore suppose that the age of this son, who ftiight have then been an apprentice, was about ten to fifteen, and this would bring Niccola's settlement at Pisa to the period of 1250-5, the period when Frederick II. died, and the feuds of the princes of Anjou and the Hohenstaufen began. It was on the fifth of October that Mccola signed the contract for the erection of the pulpit in the cathedral of Siena.^ The conditions to which he subscribed were the following : — Firstly: That he should, between October and the November next following, deliver at Siena eleven columns of white marble, with the necessary capitals, and sixteen smaller pillars and slabs for the erection of a pulpit in Santa Maria. He was also to furnish the lions or pedi- ments. Secondly : From and after the next month of March he was to reside at Siena, and to accept no other commission until the pulpit was finished ; but he was, if he desired it, to have, four times a year, a fort- night's leave to visit Pisa, either for the purpose of giving counsel in the matter of the completion of the Duomo and Baptistery there, or for his own business. Thirdly : In the same month of March he was to bring with him to Siena his pupils Arnolfo and Lapo, who were, like- wise, bound to remain at Siena till the pulpit was completed. Fourthly: The price of the marble columns and slabs was fixed at sixty-five Pisan pounds, the daily pay of Niccola at eight — that of his pupils six Pisan " solidos," besides bed and lodging. Fifthly : If Johannes, the son of Niccola, declared himself ready and willing to work under his father, he should receive one-third the salary of the latter. Sixthly : None of the sculptors were to be subject to any real or personal service in the *> MiLANESi, Documenti per la Storia delV Arte Senese, vol. i., Siena, 1854, p. 145, 122 NICCOLA AND GIOVANNI PISANI [ch. republic of Siena. Seventhly : Breach of contract on either side was forbidden, under a penalty of 100 pounds Pisan.^ About November, 1268, the pulpit was completed by the joint labours of Niccola, Giovanni, Arnolfo, Lapo, Donato, and Goro. Of octagonal form, it rests upon nine columns, four of which are supported on lions and lionesses, four on simple pediments, and the central one upon a group of nine figures in half relief. Seven bas-reliefs cover the faces of the pulpit. Firstly, the Nativity; secondly, the Adoration of the Magi; thirdly, the Presentation in the Temple; fourthly, the Flight into Egypt; fifthly, the Massacre of the Innocents; sixthly, the Crucifixion ; seventhly, the Last Judgment. It is not necessary now to go into a searching criticism of the subjects, which are throughout remarkable for the classicism which characterises the style of Niccola. In the Massacre of the Innocents we observe great variety of action, and appropriate movement, combined with expression in faces. In the vehement gesture of soldiers, tearing babes from the grasp of their mothers, or in the act of killing them, a certain tendency to exaggeration may be observed. Yet it is obvious that Niccola's treatment of these groups was of service to later artists, and even to Giotto. The Saviour in the Crucifixion is less in the spirit of the Boman antique than the Christ of the pulpit of Pisa, but, if more realistic, he is also worse proportioned. The same faults mark the Saviour distributing blessings and curses and the Saviour crucified, in which conventional classic form is united to realistic anatomy without much repose or dignity. Double groups of superposed figures adorn the angles of the pulpit, and represent scriptural subjects, allegories of the Virtues, and angels. In the spandrels of the trefoil arches are fourteen prophets. But the most interesting and admirable productions in the whole pulpit are those which adorn the base of the central octagonal pUlar. Here Astronomy is symbolised by a female holding a book and looking through a level ; Grammar by one teaching an infant; Dialectics by an old female in contemplation; Bhetoric by a woman wearing a diadem and holding a book ; Philosophy by one with a cornucopia, from which flames issue; Arithmetic by a female writing on a slate, and so with geometry and music. If the *^ MiLANESi, Documenti, de, etc., pp. 145, 146. s ■- iv:] THE SIENA PULPIT 123 allegory be imperfectly conceived, it is probably not the fault of the artist. Each figure as a work of art is in admirable movement. A certain inequality which may be traced in the various parts of this noble monument is perhaps assignable to diversity of talent in the pupils employed by Niccola. But the compositions, which are doubtless his, might have been presented in better form and distribution. The study of the antique, which is sufficiently displayed everywhere, was varied by an evident reference to nature,^ and precisely where this occurred the master's ability is least visible, and he produces defects of proportion, and even of fleshy and muscular form. The fanciful spirit, which characterises *'^ The authors do not quite grasp the significance of this manifestation or understand its origin. In the six years that had intervened since the completion of the pulpit of Fisa, an important event had happened, one of the greatest events in the whole history of the sculptor's art. The pioneers of modern Italian sculpture had set out upon a new road. In the reliefs of the Siena pulpit we can trace the influence of the great nameless sculptors of mediaeval France — the masters who made beautiful the portals of Chartres and Amiens, of Kheims and Sti'asbourg. In some way or other, we know not how, these great masters had begun to influence Niccola Fisano. Traces of French influences are most clearly seen in the isolated figures at the angles of the pulpit. The Madonna and Child might have been carved at Chartres or at Rheims. The figure of Virtue is scarcely less French in feeling and execution. The Siena pulpit marks the commencement of a fresh epoch in the history of the plastic art. Italian sculpture now seeks to express more violent, more poignant emotions, emotions which some of us think are unsuitable for expression in such a medium. To attain its new ends, it sacrifices the generality, the repose of the old sculpture, which Niccola Pisano had first chosen for imitation. The Last Judgment of the Siena pulpit paves the way for Giovanni Fisano's Massacre of the Innocents. But a few years after Niccola moulded this relief of the Last Judgment, Tuscan sculpture was already well advanced upon the road which led to the splendid failures of the Medici chapel. Even at Siena it was already beginning to sacrifice its purely decorative qualities, in order to express a wider range of feeling. The compositions of the reliefs are more crowded than those at Pisa. In the individual figures, direct Roman influence is still manifest everywhere, but they are somewhat less dignified in their attitudes, somewhat less restrained in their gestures, than those of the Fisan reliefs. The whole design of the pulpit of Siena is not so well articulated, not so well proportioned, as that of the earlier work. M. Reymond contrasts the pulpits of Fisa and Siena, and notes the change that French influences caused in the master's style in his La Seulpture Florentine : Les Pridicesseurs de I'Ecole Florentine (Florence, Alinari, 1897), p. 72. In a paper read by M. Bertaux before the International Historical Congress held in Faris in July, 1900, that critic discussed at length the traces of French influence in the achieve- ment of Niccola Fisano. 124 NICCOLA AND GIOVANNI PISANI [ch. Niccola at Pisa, is illustrated anew. But though he now varies his somewhat arbitrary study of the classic with the imitation of nature, he shows no symptoms of religious feeling, and his work, fine as it is, remains somewhat cold and formal. Omitting for the present the tomb of St. Dominic in San Domenico of Bologna, which, as already remarked, is more properly a monument executed by Fra Gugliefino, we turn to the beautiful fountain which stands in front of the cathedral of Perugia to note the part which Niccola may have had in its execution. This fountain is made of three superposed polygonal trays, the upper tray of bronze, the lower trays of marble. The bottom one, of the largest size, is decorated with the lion and griffin, emblems of Perugia and the Guelphs, and fifty bas-reliefs illustrating the seasons, arts, and sciences. The second tray, on pillars, is adorned with twenty-four statuettes, of which two at least are now modern.^ The fields of the second tray, originally prepared for bas-reliefs, remained bare. According to the inscrip- tion^ on the basement, the monument was completed by Niccola and Giovanni in 1278 ; but a tradition has been handed down to us which assigns a share of the work to Arnolf o. Kecords of recent discovery have proved that Arnolfo was invited to take a part in the labours of his old master in 1277, but was prevented from accepting the invitation by engagements which he had made to King Charles of Naples. In September Charles allowed Arnolfo to proceed, and granted the use of certain marbles to the Perugians for the building of the fountain ; and it appears from the books of the municipality that Arnolfo was receiving pay at the rate of ten soldi per diem as late as the 4th of February, 1281. It ' The two new statuettes are Melchisedek and an archangel. " The inscription on the fountain of Perugia runs as follows.: — NOMINA SOULPTOEUM FONTIS STJNT ISTA BONOETJM CBRTE PEOBATUS NICOLAUS AD OFFICIA QEATUS EST FLOS SCULPTORUM GEATISSIMUS ISQFE PROBOEUM EI OENIIOE ; PRIMUS GENITUS CARISSIMUS IMUS. GUI £1 NON SAMPNES NOMEN DICESSE JOANNES NATUS PISANI. SINT NULLO TEMPORE SANI ANNI8 MILLB DUOBNTIS SEPTUAGINTA BIS QtrATUOR. See Vasaki, ed. Le Monnier, i., pp. 269-70, and Maeiotti (A.), Lettere Pittoriche (8vo, Perugia, 1788), pp. 24-5. A PORTION OF THE SIENA PULPIT By Niccola. Pisano Alinari, pho. I. — To face page 124 IV.] THE FOUNTAIN AT PEEUGIA 125 is difficult to distinguish the work of these men, who all belonged- to one school, it is true, yet who had their idiosyncrasies. Prob- ably the true difficulty lies in the state of the marbles, which are partly corroded and partly incrusted.^ Amongst the figures which adorn the angles of the upper basin Niccola's peculiar style seems apparent, whilst in the reliefs of the lower basin, the allegories of the seasons, the sciences, and the arts display a broader style, which may be the work of Giovanni ; and if so, Giovanni appears about this time to have overtaken Niccola in the race for improvement. In the fountain of Perugia (1278) Giovanni reveals power in distribution. In the reproduction of energetic types and chastened movements, and in the study of the nude his art is antique modified by constant appeals to nature.^ The noblest monument that can be assigned jointly to Niccola, Giovanni, or their school, is the Deposition from the Cross in the lunette above the portal of San Martino of Lucca, which may be admired as the perfection of a style which was gradually acquiring an original stamp as it stripped itself of purely imitative elements. No other example combined, in the same degree, skill in composition and grouping with boldness of attitude, foreshortening, and vigour of handling; deep study of nature and anatomy with lofty character and expression. The body of the Saviour, still supple in death, has just been taken from the cross and is held in the powerful grasp of Joseph of Arimathea. On his shoulder the head, recumbent on the outstretched arm, hangs powerless. That arm the Virgin tenderly embraces, whilst St. John carefully upholds the other. Nicodemus strives to extract the nail from one of the feet. A youthful soldier near the Evangelist leans on a staff, and grasping the hilt of his sword, seems inspired with the wish to avenge the cruel agony of the Saviour. At his feet kneels one with a sponge on a plate waiting for the washing of the body, whilst behind ' Records to this eflFect exist in the archives of Perugia; they were communicated to us by Professor A. Rossi. " Niccola restored the Pieve di Cortona, and founded the church of St. Margaret in the same city (Vasaki, ed. Sansoni, i., p. 305). Morrona pretends that this was in 1297, when Niccola had been dead some years. He read in the Campanile the names of "Niccola and Johannes"; if so, the date is false (Moekona, Pisa Elust, ii., p. 69). 126 NICCOLA AND GIOVANNI PISANI [oh. the Virgin stand two of the Marys. In the Saviour's suppleness of limb and frame, fine foreshortening, and perfect proportion, in the figures around, force is allied to natural movement, somewhat marred by squareness of stature and overcharge of drapery. Some feebleness of frame and classic imitation may be noted in the females. If com- pared with the earUer works of Pisa and Siena, it may be admitted that the carver of this subject had gradually freed hhnself from much of that merely imitative character which previously marked the school, and had given power and animation to figures by the study of nature ; yet that, to the last, religious feeling remained as foreign to his mind as it was later to that of Donatello or Michael Angelo. Equally interesting as a monument of the revival under the teaching of Niccola and Giovanni is the tomb of St. Margaret in the church dedicated to that saint at Cortona, where excellent distribution of space and grouping, combined with progress in the rendering of form and varied character in expression or attitudes, mark one of the finest productions of mixed archi- tecture and sculpture in the thirteenth century. The body of the tomb, resting on three brackets in the wall of the door of the sacristy, is adorned with four bas-rehefs representing incidents from the life of the saint — St. Margaret taking the vows; receiving the holy benediction ; sick in her cell ; and on her death-bed, after receiving the sacred oil. Nothing can be finer than the com- position of these episodes. Beneath the brackets, the miracles of St. Margaret — her cure of the sick and lame, and the casting out of a devil at her shrine — are represented with equal power and intelligence. Some shortness and squareness of form may be noticed in figures which are otherwise of fine proportions and natural attitudes. A slight over- charge of drapery detracts at times from the beauty of the groups, as in the lunette relief of St. Martin at Lucca; but the monument as a whole is one of the great works of Pisan sculpture. On the slab of the tomb lies the statue of St. Margaret, beneath a dais held up by two angels, the whole within a double pointed trefoil recess, sup- ported on each side by twisted columns crowned at the pinnacle with statuettes, and supported in the centre on a bracket leaning upon a figure with a scroll. An airy lightness in the architecture, a harmonious subordination between it and the sculpture, form, together with the arrangement and working out of the bas-reliefs, an excellent whole. IV.] THE TOMB AT CORTONA 127 It has not yet been possible to ascertain the authors of these monuments. To Niccola nothing can be assigned later than 1278, at which period he is noted with the fatal quondam,''- but it must not be forgotten that, besides Fra Guglielmo, whose known works are inferior to those under consideration, Giovanni, Arnolfo, Lapo and his brothers Donato and Goro, shed some lustre on the architecture and sculpture of the thirteenth century. Of Arnolfo, who, according to Vasari, was bom in 1232 and learnt drawing from Cimabue,^ little more is known than that he is the son not of Lapo, but of Cambio of Colle* di Val d'Elsa, that he was a disciple of Niccola and worked under him at the pulpit of Siena. * Numerous architectural monuments have been assigned to him ;* and there is no doubt that having practised by ' Vasabi, ed. Sanson!, i, p. 308. See farther the original record of 1284 in MiLANESi, Doc. Sen., i., p. 163, in which he is noted as dead. How, then, could Niccola be the author of bas-reliefs in the Duomo of Orvieto, an edifice only com- menced in 1290? (Vasaei, ed. Sansoni, i., p. 306). ' Vasaki, i., p. 249. ' Gate (Carteggio inedito, Florence, 1839, 8vo, i., p. 445) publishes a record of April 1st, 1300, granting to Arnolfo certain privileges at Florence. * ^ C. Feet, in his Loggia de' Lanzi (Berlin, 1885, p. 82 et seq. ), promulgated the theory that Arnolfo di Cambio, the architect, and Arnolfo Florentine, the sculptor, Niccola Pisano's pupil, were two distinct persons. In its original form this theory was severely criticised by G. B. de Eossi in the SuUettino d'archeologia criatiana, (1891, p. 73 et seg.). The German critic has since strengthened his theory, and restated it in the Miscellanea Storica della Valdelsa (anno i., fasc. ii., pp. 86-90). He asserts that the sculptor was styled Arnolphus de Florentia, whilst the architect was known as Arnolfo di Cambio. He contrasts the style of the sculptor, as shown in the De Braye monument at Orvieto and the tabernacle of S. Paolo-fuori-le-Mura, with the style of the architect of S. Croce at Florence, and seeks to show that they have nothing in common. Certainly it is diflScult to believe that the De Braye monument at Orvieto, which is the work of an imitator of the earlier manner of Niccola Fisano, who had been strongly influenced by the Cosmati, was by the same master who designed S. Croce and the old fa9ade of S. Maria del Fiore. But the question cannot be regarded as settled. The theory of the Comm. L. Fumi, the learned historian of the Duomo of Orvieto, that Arnolfo was the original architect of Orvieto Cathedral has nothing to commend it. There is no documentary evidence to support it ; and in style the original design of that building has nothing in common with any of the works attributed to Arnolfo di Cambio. If Arnolfo di Cambio and Arnolfo Fiorentino were the same person, there is no evidence to show that he undertook any architectural work as early as 1282, when he visited Orvieto as a sculptor ; nor can a single document be produced to prove that at that time or at any subsequent date he was consulted in any way by the Operai of the Duomo, or that he ever revisited the city. Evidence of style tends 128 NICCOLA AND GIOVANNI PISANI [oh. turns at Pisa, Florence, Eome, and Naples, he died about the year 1300 in possession of the title and office of chief architect and sculptor of Santa Eeparata of Florence.^ Time has dimmed the lustre of his services as a sculptor, and most of the works assigned to him have perished, except the tomb of Cardinal de Braye at San Domenico of Orvieto, and the tabernacle of San Paolo-fuori-le-Mura at Eome. The monument of Cardinal de Braye, in the right transept of San Domenico at Orvieto, is a beautiful assemblage of highly polished marbles. On a bracket in a lancet-shaped receptacle, the Virgin enthroned holds the infant Christ. Beneath the bracket a stone panelling framed in pilasters bears a mutilated inscription of which the date is 1280 and the concluding line, hoc opus fecit arnolfus. At each side of the pilasters a saint is standing, one of whom, to the left, recommends the kneeling donor. On a canopy below this the prelate lies with his arms crossed on his breast, and two figures hold back a curtain of bold sweeping fold, after the fashion of the Cosmati, the body resting on a panelled chest of fine workmanship in marble and mosaics. Though imperfect, this tomb is a very fine one, and displays Arnolfo's style much purified from the mere imitative dross of the antique. ^ to show that the original design for Orvieto Cathedral was the work of some mediocre architect of the conservative Boman school, who produced an ill-constructed imitation of a Latin basilica, which had to he patched up a few years afterwards by Lorenzo del Maitano. See FuMi, 21 Duomo d'Orvieto e i suoi restauri. Borne, 1891 ; Nardini, Loreino del Maitano e lafacdata del Duomo d'Orvieto, Borne, 1891 ; and Douglas, Orvieto Cathedral, in the Architectural Beview of June, 1903. * * Vasari says Arnolfo died in 1300. The annotators of both the best critical editions of Vasari (see Vasabi, ed. Le Monnier, i., 255 note 2, and Vasaki, ed. Sansoni, i., 290) quote the entry of his death in the Eegister of Santa Beparata at Florence as follows: "IIII idus (Martii), Obiit magister Arnolfus de" opera di sancta Eeparata MCCCX." But in C. Fret's Uher das Todesjahr des Arnolfo di Caviiiovre have a facsimile of the register, which, at page 12% runs thus : "D. VIIL idus (sc, obiit) davanzato f. Alfieri Cambio chiavainolo : n.a>^^n.<^u^. IV. J FRA GUGLIELMO 131 magistrates of Bologna (May 23, 1233). * Inclosed on this occasion in a simple urn of stone, they remained sealed until the completion of a marble sepulchre, the execution of which was entrusted to Niccola and Fra Guglielmo. The former, how- ever, being bound by his contract at Siena, scarcely contributed more than the designs and composition of reliefs, which were only completed in 1267. Several incidents in the life of St. Dominic and his disciples are the subjects of these reliefs which cover the sides of a quadrangular tomb.^ In the first, the saint restores to life the youth Napoleon ; in the second, the books of his doctrine are saved from the fire which consiuned those of the Manicheans of Langaedoc, and between the two is a statuette of the Virgin and Child. On the opposite front are three scenes of the life of the Beato Eeginald of Orleans — St. Dominic appearing in a dream to Pope Honorius III. and supporting the falling church, Honorius examining and granting the rules of the order. On the short sides, St. Dominic receives the gospels from St. Peter and St. Paul, entrusts the same to his disciples; and angels bring food to the followers of the nascent brotherhood of the order. At the four angles are the four doctors of the church. Fra Guglielmo in the carving of these subjects preserves, but enfeebles, the style of Niccola, to whom he is always inferior in character, expression, and design. From Pisa he proceeded to Pistoia, where he erected, most probably in 1270, the pulpit of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas, traces of his name and the foregoing date having been discovered on the marble itself, and in the records of Pistoia.* The shape of this monument is quadrangular. But the subjects carved on it are confined to three of its sides. In these six reliefs, which represent New Testament subjects, Niccola's system of arrangement is preserved, but Guglielmo's inferior powers are displayed. With- out the marked squareness of stature, or the peculiar classicism of Niccola, the style is also wanting in the devotional spirit, 1 Makchbsb, Mermrie, etc. (8vo, Flor., 1854), i., p. 70. ' Except for some of the statues the tomb was completed with a cover by Maestro Niccola del fu Antonio di Puglia, in 1469. Some of the statuettes are by later artists, and the base is by Alfonso Lombardo (Maechesb, u.s., pp. 74-80). ' See TlOEl, Guida di Pistoia (Pistoia, 1854), p. 223. 132 NICCOLA AND GIOVANNI PISANI [ch. which might have been expected from a member of a religious fraternity. Fra Guglielmo was employed in the loggia of the Duomo of Orvieto in 1293/ and as late as 1313 at San Michele in Borgo of the Camaldoles of Pisa. He died in the convent of St. Catherine of Pisa, having been fifty-seven years of the Dominican Order.^ After Niccola's death, Giovanni Pisano's career illustrates very fully the spread of the new art throughout Tuscany. There is a fulness, a variety in his creations, which give him a well-merited repute. He is an architect, as well as a sculptor, on a great scale, laying out such gigantic works as the Campo Santo of Pisa,* with the same success as he redecorated Santa Maria della Spina* or the baptistery before the close of the century. Working out the theory of Niccola on independent lines, that is, infusing the elements of the antique into the body of Tuscan sculpture,* after the example of Arnolfo, he appears to us even now as a prosperous artist, greatly in demand at a time when much was built that people required either to adorn with sculpture or to prepare for * Della Valle, Storico del Duomo di Orvieto, u.s., p. 263. ^ See inscription to that effect, transcribed in Moekona, Pisa Illust, , ii., pp. 101-2. "Chron. and Annals of St. Catherine of Pisa," in Mabohesb, u.s., i., p. 398. One of Fra Guglielmo's pupils was Fazio, a lay brother Dominican, who died 1340. See Cronaca del Convento di Santa Cateri/na a Pisa, in Archivio Storico, vi., p. 504. " Commenced in 1278. See the original inscription to that cfTeot in Vasaki (ed. Sansoni, i., p. 309), who says the Virgin and Child on the pinnacle is by GloTanni. The height is great for a critical examination, but the cast reveals the hand of Giovanni. He mentions also a portrait of Niccola there. In the life of Andrea Fisano he adds that at S. Maria della Spina Nino, Andrea's son, produced a portrait of his father. Has he not confounded these portraits, which do not exist, with a statue of the apostle Peter ? * * The chapel of S. Maria della Spina did not attain to its present form until the year 1325. The sculptured ornament here is probably the work of one of Giovanni Pisano's pupils. Signer Supino attributes the Virgin and Child on the central pinnacle to Andrea Pisano (Archimo Storico dell' Arte, anno vi., faso. v.). A careful examination of this figure leads us to believe that he is right. * 5 The most important achievement of Giovanni Pisano was that he introduced into Tuscan sculpture French-Gothic and romantic elements, that he developed his fathei-'s later manner. Like his father, though in a less degree, he was in some measure an imitator of the antique. But he imitated much more closely the works of the early French masters. The life-size Virgin and Child is singularly French in feeling, and suggests that the artist had studied some such ivory-carvings of the Ma- donna, of the thirteenth century, as are to be seen in the Cluny Museum, a view which the study of Giovanni's own ivory Madonna in the sacristy of the Duomo confirms. 03 ■§ 'f- ,s H -S a £ o- S „ 2 a i5 5 a iv.J GIOVANNI PISANO 133 the brush of the painters, who followed in the wake of the architects and sculptors. A boy apprentice at Siena when Niccola began the pulpit of Siena, a master when Niccola took him as his partner to Perugia, he soon rose to a very high position, and as he rose he produced what may truly be considered the best work that came from under his chisel. His labours at Pisa, after 1278, continue without much interruption till he goes to Naples in 1283, and thence to Siena in 1284 Before he went south, he probably carved the celebrated group above the frieze of the eastern gate of the Campo Santo which represents the Virgin and Child between two sJtints, one of whom, St. John, introduces to her a youthful figure of a kneeling patron.^ Here Giovanni laboured in that grand style which marks his work at Perugia, a style by which other works of the same period may be distinguished. The life-size Virgin and Child beneath the first fresco of Benozzo, in the interior of the Campo Santo, may be placed amongst this class, revealing in the master a feeling of grandeur allied to a study of nature in its happiest mood. The Infant's playful smile pleasantly contrasts with the classic features of the Virgin, her antique profile and broad, fleshy throat ; and under the artist's hand the marble seems to represent elastic forms and articulations, and draperies of breadth. A tabernacle on the front of one of the gates of the Campo Santo Likewise incloses six statues of 1 Beneath the Madonna is the inscription; sitb petei cuba fitit h^c pia scuLPTA FiouKA NicoLi NATO scuLTOKB JOHE vocATO. Vasaii says the kneeling figure is Fietro Gamhacorti, operaio of the Duomo, which the annotators deny. * The authors, as Morrona and Bosini did before them, have confused two entirely different works. The Virgin and Child with St. John Baptist presenting a kneeling figure on the left, and with another saint on the right, is not above the entrance to the Campo Santo, but above the frieze of the eastern portal of the baptistery. The Madonna is a fine, stately figure. Classical and French-Gothic influences meet in her. This work was not executed when Fietro Gambacorti was operaio of the Duomo, for Gambacorti never held that office. It was chiselled when another Feter was master of the works. The Peter to whom the inscription refers was operaio in 1304 (Archivio di Stato, Pisa, Archivio del Capiiolo, fllza 2). We find him mentioned as holding this position as late as 1315 (Archivio di Stato, Pisa, Arch. deW Opera, entrata e usdta 9, c. 48). The Madonna and saints above the baptistery doorway was executed, I believe, in about the year 1304. The tabernacle, with the Madonna and four saints, above the door of the Campo Santo is not from the hand of Giovanni Fisano, and is quite an inferior work. 134 NICCOLA AND GIOVANNI PISANI [ch. saints, and the architecture, as well as the sculpture, do the Pisan honour.^ In 1284 Giovanni becomes a citizen of Siena, and director of the works of the Siena Cathedral, which he superintends with casual interruptions till 1299. There are traces of his labours in certain ivories carved in 1300 for the canons of Pisa,^ and a font adorned with figures for a suburban church near Pisa. He produced the holy-water font with figures of the Virtues in San Giovanni Puorcivitas at Pistoia, and the well-known pulpit in Sant' Andrea, in the same city, in 1301 j and at Pisa, in 1302, he began the other pulpit, in which he competed, not in- effectually, with his own father.* Later on, it is said, he executed the monument of Benedict XL in San Domenico of Perugia, which seems such hasty work that it may be assigned to his disciples. Finally, he designed, according to Vasari, the carved reliefs of the front pilaster of the cathedral of Orvieto, which, for various reasons, cannot be accepted as his work. In 1313 the tomb of Matilda, Empress of Henry VII. of Luxemburg, was finished, of which the remains are still in the Villa Brignole at Voltri. Giovanni's death is variously dated 1320 and 1328. To dwell minutely on the characteristic features ' Of the same period, perhaps, is the Virgin and Child on the pinnacle of the front of the Duomo. * The Virgin on the pinnacle of the front of the Duomo is not by Gioranni Fisano. The existing statue was executed in 1346, long after Giovanni's death, to replace another figure which had fallen down in the great earthquake of 1322. See Saedo, Archwio Storico Italiano, vi., vii., p. 104 ; and Supino, Archivio Siorieo dell' Arte, Serie Seconda, anno i., 1895, fasc. i., ii., p. 51. * " The Madonna in ivory which is preserved in the sacristy of Pisa Cathedral is proved by documentary evidence to be a work of Giovanni, This statuette occupies a most important position in the history of art. It is one of the links that connect the Tuscan with the early French art that preceded it. It reveals to us the channel by which the influence of the northern masters reached Tuscany. The early portable works of the great French carvers came to Italy with Proven9al songs and French costumes, and were imitated by the Italian masters. The great Madonna of Giovanni in the Campo Santo is closely allied to Giovanni's ivory Madonna, and that in its turn is a masterly, not a servile, imitation of some French ivory Madonna. * ' Signer Supino has shown that some of the pieces hitherto supposed to form a part of this pulpit do not belong to it, but to Tino da Camaino's tomb of Henry VII. For Signer Supine's reconstruction of the pulpit, see the Archivio Storieo dell' Arte, Serie Seconda, anno i., 1895, fasc. i., ii., pp. 52-69. ^ 1 ^ » IV.] GIOVANNI PISANO 135 of his numerous works would exceed the space at the disposal of historians of painting. It will be sufficient to point out that the master is always at his best in single statues, or groups of detached figures, where no display of religious feeling is required, and success is achieved by dexterous manipulation, ready action, energetic movement, and appropriate expression. Prominent examples of these qualities are apparent in the statues, single and clustered, of the pulpit of Sant' Andrea, and the Virtues on the holy- water stoup of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas of Pistoia. In bas-relief composition still remains what it was in Niccola's work. But the antique, to which both father and son appealed, is no longer followed 'by Giovanni with imitative zeal. Traces of it remain, tempered by a constant reference to nature, so that a curious mixture of the classic and realistic is created, in which, the old process of selection being neglected, form, instead of being shaped according to the laws of refinement, is reproduced, either coarsely or with accidental disproportions and defects, which impair the beauty of the whole. It is curious to observe also that these defects are manifested most conspicuously where they ought to be avoided, that is, in the figure of the crucified Saviour, whose shape is either too lean, or too bony, or coarse beyond the permissible measure in extremities. But Giovanni, on the other hand, is favourably distinguished by the subtle insight which enables him to catch and to delineate actions extremely appropriate for certain well-known Scripture subjects, which he helps to form, not only for himself, but for generations that come after him. So that, in one phase at least of his art, he rivals the Giottesques, by supplanting classic con- ventionalism with realistic and homely truths. In the Last Judgment the angel wrestles powerfully with the souls of the evildoers. The Magi are warned by the messenger of God to avoid Herod, and the vision is one that becomes typical. So, again, with the Virgin fainting amongst the women at the foot of the cross, or playing prettily with the babe as she rides on the ass in the Flight into Egypt. In the artist who represented the Virgin raising the veil from the sleeping Child's face we see a precursor of Eaphael. The nurse in the Nativity holds the Child and tests the temperature of the water in which it is to be 136 JSriCCOLA ABTD GIOVANNI PISANI [ch. washed. This, too, is an incident which artists of the revival never forgot. And all this is caught up and rendered by one highly observant of nature, though still in the trammels of an old- school tradition. To sum up, it is evident that in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as in earlier ages, sculptors existed in every part of Italy, but that they had lost all but the traditions of Christian composition. In the south of Italy, however, the antique still drew life from a source which elsewhere was clearly exhausted. Classicism, suddenly transported to Central Italy by Niccola, naturally created wonder amongst men reduced to an almost primitive generalisation of art. Mccola's manner created emula- tion and rivalry in the study of form, and the examples of Pisa in this sense were of advantage to all the schools of Italy. But whilst Niccola infused a new spirit into the art of his time, he could not recreate Christian types. His art, had it remained unsupported by the new current of religious and political thought which became so sensible in the thirteenth century, would perhaps have perished without leaving a trace behind it ; but it produced an emulation which yielded the noblest fruits, and convinced Niccola himself that without a return to the study of nature no progress could possibly be made.^ In his attempt to graft on the conventional imitation of the antique a study of nature Niocola failed ; nor would his son and pupils have succeeded even in the measure which their works display but for the examples which were created for them in the Florentine school.^ The spirit which had been roused throughout Italy by the examples and miracles of St. Francis contributed to the development of an art based on nobler principles than those of mere imitation, and the spirit of which Giotto was the incarnation spread with uncommon speed * ' It has been pointed out that Niocola studied nature under French inflnencea. How he was first brought under such influences we do not know. But in the pulpit at Siena, and especially in the single figures of that pulpit, the influence of the great nameless sculptors of France is unmistakable. The manifestations of this influence are yet more pronounced in the works of Oioranni. See Eetmond, op. cit., p. 72. * ' But Giotto and contemporary Tuscan painters were deeply influenced by the potent artistic personality of their senior, Giovanni Fisano, as Dr. Bode demonstrated some thirty years ago. IV.] NICCOLA'S INFLUENCE 137 throughout the whole of the Peninsula, affected the schools of sculpture, and assisted them also in the development of a new life. So that whilst Niccola revived the feeling for true form, others gave to that form a new meaning and laid the foundation for the greatness of Italian art. CHAPTER V PAINTING IN CENTRAL ITALY WE saw how sculpture gradually rose from a very low state to a high level in Pisa, Siena, and Florence. We shall now deal with examples of early painting in the same localities, in order to show how the depression which lay so long over those parts gradually yielded to a current of progress. If time had spared the earlier decorations of Tuscan churches we might no doubt trace with comparative ease the spread of decay. The remains which have survived afiford but a faint notion of the true condition of things previous to the advent of Cimabue. Wall paintings are almost entirely wanting. But amongst the things which the Church has preserved we count a certain number of old crucifixes, which alone afford materials for a history of the art which they illustrate. Painted crucifixes, at the close of the eleventh century, were much in use in churches, where it was customary to suspend them from the transoms, which then formed a necessary part of places of worship. In shape these crucifixes imitated the form of the church itself, the limbs of the cross representing the nave, choir, and transepts, and sets of panels, ranged along the lower limb of the cross, simulating rows of side chapels in the aisles. The body of the Eedeemer was depicted on the cross, whilst the side panels contained scenes from the Passion. Christ crucified was represented at first, as we have seen, in a state of absolute repose. The hands and feet were separately nailed, the eyes were open, and the body was erect. The cruci- fixes of the eleventh and twelfth centuries will show how the sermons of the Middle Ages modified traditions; and the 138 OH. v.] CEUCIFIXES AT LUCCA 139 Eedeemer was exhibited at first in suffering and at last in torture. Amongst the earliest crucifixes the colossal one at San Michele in Foro of Lucca is the best preserved. It is by an artist of the eleventh century, whose ideal of the Saviour is neither perfect nor attractive. The frame is erect, of good proportions ; the eyes are open, and the feet apart ; the head, slightly inclined to the right, is somewhat long, the nose equally so, and the mouth and eyes are small. The form, which is roughly outlined in black, is imperfectly rendered, yet without glaring inaccuracy of anatomy.^ Plastic art helps to produce the idea of relief, and whilst the whole -figure is painted of an uniform colour the idea of rotundity is given by the sculptured projection of the frame, which merges into the flat at the neck, wrists, and feet. The head, with its nimbus, is painted on a projecting wedge in order that it may be more visible to the spectator,. The whole of the figure is painted on a canvas beaten into the priming which covers the wood above the crucified Eedeemer ; the Eternal appears enthroned in benediction, the gospel on his knee, two adoring angels at his feet. The symbols of the Evangelists are in couples at the ends of the horizontal limb of the cross. Beneath the feet Peter denies Christ. In the side panels are the Virgin, the Evangelists, the Crucified Thieves, the Entombment, and the Marys at the Sepulchre. The execution of this very old relic is rude to an extreme degree, and the gospel scenes are composed in the oldest typical form. A later example of the same kind is the crucifix of Santa Giulia at Lucca, representing, without relief, the Saviour, Evangelists, saints and angels, and scenes of the Passion. But the decline even of tjiis art may be noticed in the forms and attitude and in the mode in which the painting is executed. The figure is still erect, but the head is a little more bent than ^ The stature and position of the Saviour is the same as that in the Crucifixion at S. TJrbano alia Cafiarella at Borne, and in that of the bronze gates of Bonanno at Monreale. The hair divided in the middle falls down the shoulders, and a gold drapery is fastened by a jewelled girdle to the hips. The cross is painted blue on a gold ground. An ornamented border runs round the panels at the sides. The outlines have suffered from restoring, and the colour is darkened by time. 140 PAINTING IN CENTEAL ITALY [oh. before. The drawing is worse, and green half tints contrast with reddish shadows. The modelling of the parts is rendered by meandering lines, the features by closely repeated red, black, and white streaks. This crucifix, which is connected with a miracle of the year 1209,^ may be of the latter half of the twelfth century. Two crucifixes, similar to these but damaged by time, in San Donnino and Santa Maria de" Servi at Lucca prove the existence of painters there in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The further decay of painting in that locaKty is evident from the works of a family of artists which can be traced back to the opening of the thirteenth century. Amongst the names of men who signed the treaty of peace with Pisa in 1228 occur those of Bonaventura, Barone, and Marco, sons of one Berlingherus, a Milanese. Marco painted an illuminated Bible in 1250. Barone completed several crucifixes — one for the Pieve of Casabasciana in 1254, another for Sant' Alessandro Maggiore at Lucca in 1284. Of Bonaventura, whose works have alone been preserved, panels and wall paintings are known to have been delivered in 1235 and 1244.^ Some years ago a picture assigned to Margaritone in the church of San Francesco of Pescia, was subjected to a rigid examination by Professor Michele Kidolfi, who discovered that according to a practice not uncom- mon in past times, the head of the principal figure was part of a picture concealed under a superposed panel. This later addition having been removed, a standing figure of St. Francis appeared of over life size, holding a book and showing the stigmata, with two archangels at his shoulders, and six incidents of his life in a triple course of panels at his sides. The lines of an inscription showed that the picture was painted by Bonaventura Berlingheri » See the opuscule of Tblksforo Bini (8vo, Lucca), pp. 13, 18. ' Telesfoeo Bini, u.s., p. 15 ; Atti della B. Acad, di iMcca, xiii., p. 365 ; Archives of the Chapter of Lucca, lib. LL. 25, fol. 78 ; Archives of the Cancelleria del Vesoovado, Lucca, lib. 6, fol. 10, in BlNl, U.S., p. 15. Bonaventura painted on the wall in Lucca in 1244 (Archives of the Cancelleria del Vescovado, lib. LL. 18, fol. 115). He painted in 1243 a panel for the Archdeacon of Lucca {ibid. 17, fol. 12). Barone was summoned to complete within a given time a Madonna which he and Bonaventura had commenced at Sant' Alessandro of Lucca (Md., L. ITo. 3, fol, 2, in Lettera del prof. M. Eidolfi al Marchese Selvatico, 8vo, Lucca, 1857, p. 16). Again Barone promises to paint a room for the canons of the cathedral of Lucca in 1240 (same Archives, lib. IL 18, fol. 115 in Letlera, u.s., p. 16). -V.J BONAVENTURA BERLINGHIEEI 141 in 1235, some years after the death of St. Francis.^ Unfortu- nately it is a very defective portrait on gold ground, presenting the saint in frock and cord and cowl, and of long and slender proportions. The shaven head,, of regular and bony form, with sharp features and a wrinkled brow, is supported on a very thin neck. The figure seems to hang in air with a pair of very ugly, pointed feet resting on nothing. The flesh tints are of a bronzed yellow, with green shadows stippled in black, and defined by coarse dark outlines and streaks of white light. The execution is perhaps more careful, and the idea of rotundity less feebly conveyed than in the crucifix of Santa Giulia, but the method is the same. The folds of the frock, which is all of one colour, are indicated by lines. The half lengths of archangels, with embroidered dresses, are in the old motionless style, and the episodes of the saint's life are rendered with childish simplicity, and coloured in sharply contrasted colours. St. Francis may be seen talking to sparrows of a gigantic size, perched on trees growing out of a conical hill ; and, in a style of similar primitive exaggeration, we have the saint receiving the stigmata, restoring a dead child to life, giving alms, healing a lame man, and expelling a devil at Arezzo. The range of Berlingheri's powers, as shown in these pieces, is quite on a level with that of the sculptors who practised in Central Italy before the arrival of Niccola Pisano. But it is a range at which many others were standing at the same time, as we may observe in a diptych in the Florence Academy by a Lucchese painter of the thirteenth century, who represents the crucified Saviour lifeless, with drooping head and closed eyes, and combines with this subject the Virgin's Swoon, the Saviour on the road to Golgotha, the Entombment, the Virgin and Child, and figures of saints. Though assigned to Bonaventura Berlingheri, and traceable to the convent of Santa Chiara of Lucca, this picture can only be taken as an illustration of the decay of which even Berlingheri's art was capable.^ ' The inscription runs thus : — A.D. MCCXXXV. BONAVETUKA BEKLIGHEKI DE LU . . ." But see also BiNl, U.S., pp. 18, 19. ^ Florence Academy, Sale dei Maestri Tosoani, Sala Prima, No. 101. 142 PAINTING IN CENTRAL ITALY [gh. After the Berlingheri cornea Deodato Orlandi, the author of a crucifix now in the magazines of the palace of Parma, having been in San Cerbone, near Lucca, and in the ducal chapel of Marlia. Deodato lived at the close of the thirteenth century.^ He represents the Saviour on the cross in a more defective and unnatural shape than Berlingheri, with a long and ill-proportioned frame, protruding hips, and a sunken head. The Saviour in Benediction at the top of the cross, unlike that of the Crucifixion, is of an oval and regular shape, whilst the Virgin and St. John Evangelist, lamenting at the extremity of the arms, reveal the artist's lack of power in imparting expression otherwise than by contraction of brow and features.^ Another crucifix of the same type as the foregoing but executed a year later has comparatively recently been added to the gallery of Lucca. It also bears the master's name, and the date of 1289.' Deodato still painted as late as 1301,* when he completed a gable altarpiece in five arched divisions inclosing the Virgin enthroned between St. James, St. Damian, St. Peter, and St. Paul, now in the gallery of Pisa. He gives to the Madonna a high forehead, small chin and neck, and a face in which grieving is expressed by wrinkles, whilst, as regards colour, some additional lightness appears due to the study of examples now increasing in numbers under the impulse of the Florentine revival. Here was a guild of painters, which for centuries had done nothing to stem the current of decay in art, represented at last by a painter of the very lowest possible class.^ • His crucifix is inscribed : a.d. m.cclxxxviii, deodatus filius orlandi db LTTCHA ME PINXIT. ^ The outlines in the crucifix are of a certain tenuity and cut into the surface. The nimbus as usual projects. The blue mantle and red tunic of the Saviour in Glory have been retouched. The Saviour Crucified is also retouched. 2 Viz. : A.D. M.CCLXXXVIIIl. DEODATUS FILITIS ORLANDI DE LtTCHA ME PINXIT. ** Pisa Gallery, Sala III., No. 4. a.d. m.ccoi. dkodatus orlandi mb pinxit. ' Padre Antonio da Brandeglio, in a life of St. Cerbone, alludes to Deodato's crucifix of 1288, and adds that the same Deodato was commissioned to paint "una imagine " for the nuns of San Cerbone. In 1295 the convent was on fire, and the crucifix with a picture of the Virgin and Child in the midst of saints was saved vrith. Ai&Balty{AUiuffiziali delta Seale Acad. Lucch., Lucca, 1845, by Prof. Ridolfi, xii. p. 20). There is now at San Cerbone a picture of the Virgin holding the Saviour V.J DEODATO 143 In Lucca, however, there were mosaists who might have excelled where painters and sculptors failed. But those who in the thirteenth century decorated the front of the church of San Frediano, display in a disproportioned figure of the Eedeemer, supported by angels of vehement and exaggerated movement, or in apostles of defective forms, no greater skill than their comrades. At Pisa, painters existed apparently in very early times. As far back as 1275 money was voted by the "comune" for the purpose of repainting " the images of the Virgin Mary and other saints on the gates of the city," because they were then well-nigh obliterated.^ The earliest examples of painting are now crucifixes, the oldest of which at Santa Marta produces the same impression as the Crucified Eedeemer in Sant' Angelo near Capua. The body hangs heavily from the cross, but the frame is still straight, the eyes are open and menacing, and the feet apart. This crucifix probably belongs to the eleventh century. ^ Its side panels represent the Capture, Christ before Pilate, and Christ crowned with thorns, and the scourging, the descent from the cross, and the Marys at the tomb. In the Capture the Eedeemer appears prominent in stature, in the midst of a crowd of smaller mortals. To the left, Peter strikes Malchus. One of the Marys in the Descent from the Cross stands on a stool and helps to lower the body, supported by Joseph of Arimathea ; the Virgin kisses the hand and Mcodemus extracts the nail. In the last subject, the angel sits on the tomb, the women listen with surprise to his announcement of the Eesurrection, and a soldier sleeps at the foot of the sepulchre. In two small panels at the foot of the cross St. Peter sits at a fire and a figure knocks at the door. tenderly — in good movement and well draped, with the narrow eyes peculiar to Simone and Ugolino of Siena, of clear flesh tints and neat outlines, — of St. John Evangelist with a long flowing beard and a face full of character coloured with much impasto. Both figures, painted on verde flesh tint with shadows stippled in red, rouged cheeks and lips, betray the manner of the school of Siena, and a far later date than 1301. But even if of 1301, how could this picture be saved from fire in 1295 ? and again, how could Deodato paint a better picture before 1295 than that of 1301 ? ' BoNAlNl, Notieie Inedite, pp. 87, 88. 2 The bust of the Saviour in Glory, apparently broken ofif from the top of the cross, is now placed immediately above the projecting nimbus of the Crucified Eedeemer. The figures on the arms of the cross as usual represent the Virgin and St. John. Some of the small scenes are partly damaged by time and restoring. 144 PAINTING IN CENTRAL ITALY [oh. These subjects deserve to be noticed, because they are repeated in the same traditional form and grouping by later and more able artists. They are rendered in the crucifix of Santa Marta with some animation of movement, with distances of red houses on gold ground, and they are painted with considerable body of colour. Another crucifix of the same period has been recently dis- covered in San Sepolcro of Pisa, in which the Eedeemer is repre- sented erect, and of fair proportions, but the execution is rude. The contours are red in light and black in shadow. Lines give the features in profile, the eyes are remarkable for stare, and the nose has an unpleasant bend. Some diversity is also apparent in the rendering of the subjects. The Virgin and Evangelist, near the hands, are replaced by the Last Supper and Christ washing the Apostles' Feet. Beneath the feet we observe the Descent of the Holy Spirit; on the side panels, the Last Supper, Christ and the Apostles, the Captme and Crucifixion, the Women at the Sepulchre, and the Meeting at Emmaus. The painters of Pisa and Lucca, in their mode of representing the Saviour, merely followed a custom which had become general throughout many parts of Italy, as we observe in a crucifix at Sarzana, where the open-eyed Christ is erect on the cross in the fashion peculiar to the eleventh century ; and in a crucifix at San Giovanni e Paolo of Spoleto inscribed with the name of Albertus and the date of 1187,' in which the position of the Sufferer does not essentially differ from that of the Eedeemer in the Cappella del Martirologio at Eome. It may, however, be remarked that Alberto gives to the head the bullet shape occasionally to be found in pictures and mosaics at Eome after the seventh century, combined with a high forehead, hair faUing in waves along the sides of a slender neck, roimd eyes, and a nose with a round protrusion at the end. The feet and hands are long, and the forms are bounded by a continuous wiry outline. Some little shadow of a reddish hue relieves the general yellowish tone. The cheek also is a little rouged.^ ' A.D. MCLXXXVII. M. OPUS ALBERTO SOM . . . ' On parchment stretched on \7ood. The loins of the Saviour arc enveloped in a transparent green cloth bordered with red. The head and nimbus project. The v.] EARLY PISAN WORKS 145 Superior to this, but doubtless of the second half of the twelfth century, is the crucifix in the Cappella Maggiore of the Campo Santo at Pisa,' in which the lean figure of the Eedeemer on the cross is marked by a certain elasticity. The bending head and closed eyes indicate the progress of modern religious conceptions, though as yet pain is merely rendered by a quiet mournfulness. The drawing is still incorrect. The features are rudely made out, the diaphragm and stomach are indicated by lines, and the extremities are thin and pointed. The attendant episodes are better and livelier in action than before. They include the Descent from the Cross, the Wail of the Virgin bearing the corpse of Christ on her lap amidst saints and angels, the Entombment, the Marys at the Sepulchre, Christ at Emmaus, and the Incredulity of St. Thomas. At the ex- tremities of the horizontal limb are the Virgin and Evangelist together, and the three Marys together. On a second horizontal projection there are four archangels with orbs and sceptres, and at the Saviour's feet the Limbus. Mournfulness and grief are more emphasised than usual in a crucifix at San Pietro in Vinculis, now San Pierino of Pisa, in which, though the feet of the colossal Saviour are still separately nailed to the cross, the hips hang outwards and hideously realise the idea of death. At the same time care and age are expressed in the face. The oblique brows, forehead, and closed eyes are furrowed with wrinkles. Anatomy seems to have been studied in vain, and the execution shows a gradual decline from the standard of previous years.^ Saviour's hair ia a dull red, as at St. Elia of Nepi. The blood from the wounds flows into a death's head, the emblem of the first man ; and at the sides, instead of scenes of the Passion, are two panels representing the Virgin and the Evangelist. > The date of this crucifix may be fixed with accuracy, by the attitude and expression of the Saviour, between A.n. 1150 and 1190. Hence it is difficult to assent to the opinion of those who assign it to Appollonius, a Greek, whom Yasari mentions without convincing us of the reality of his existence. The crucifix was formerly in S. Matteo and San Lorenzo of Pisa. But see the commentary on the life of Tafi, in Yasari, ed. Le Monnier, i, p. 288. * The contours are coarse and dark, the colour thin and brownish in hue. The medallion of the Saviour in Glory at the top is supported by two angels in flight, and on a tablet below it the descent of the Spirit is depicted. At the ends of the horizontal limb two archangels stand holding the orb and sceptre. The Yii-gin and St. John are on the sides, as in the crucifix of Spoleto, and at the foot St. Peter and I. — L U6 PAINTING IN CENTEAL ITALY [ch. With this doleful representation of the divinity of the Saviour, we are introduced to the degenerate style of Giunta Pisano, who, though not the author of it, carefully copied its defects. Giunta, instead of exhibiting improvement, merely illustrates the decay of painting. Art, reduced to the representation of one figure, which in itself should have combined all excellence, now reached a level below which it was only just .possible to fall. Giunta produced, in the crucifix of San Eaineri e Leonardo at Pisa, a work more absolutely repulsive than any previous one. Whilst he preserves the custom of keeping the feet of the Saviour apart, he realises the idea of death and pain by overhanging hips, the total abandonment of the head to its own weight, and a hideous ex- aggeration of grief. It would be difficult to find anything more unattractive than the angular contractions and swoUen muscles of the brow, the vast and unnatural forehead, the large nose cut into two or three sharp planes, the hair mapped out in masses on the shoulder, nothing worse than the proportions of the long, falsely anatomised body, the short arms, and long, pointed feet. The head of the Saviour on gold ground at the top of the cross corresponds with that of the cruci- fied Eedeemer, in so far as its lean shape, round gazing eyes, and enormous wig are ugly and repulsive — a character to which the Virgin and Evangelist at the extremity of the limbs are equally entitled.'^ Painting in Pisa was evidently at a low ebb at the time of Giunta, of which no better proof need be sought than is afforded by the rude works of San Pietro-in-Grado. In the first half of the thirteenth century the chief aisle of this edifice was painted in the style then usual throughout Italy. In the upper course, beneath a painted cornice, angels are depicted as if appearing at open or half-closed windows, made, by a rude sort of perspective, to imitate recesses and openings. In a lower course, episodes from the lives of St. Peter and St. Paul are depicted, amongst which the martyrdoms of both are fairly visible. Lower again a series of the servant — the whole painted on a primed canvas stretched on the gesso. This crucifix is on gold ground, and the projections at the sides are ornamented with black and red fillets. ^ This crucifix is inscribed below the feet of the Saviour: juncta pisanus mb FECIT, and hung, in the time of Morrona (Pisa, llltist., ii. p. 135), in the kitchen of the convent of St. Anna of Pisa. The episodes of the Passion are wanting. v.] GIUNTA PISANO 147 painted arches are filled witli portraits of popes, some of which are now modern. The whole of the architecture, real or feigned, is coloured in raw and harsh tones. The figures are heavy and square in proportions, and large of forehead and head, the figures being indicated by profiled lines of angular or oblique direction. The eyes are large and round, the mouths small and expressed by three strokes, the beards by three or four touches of a brush. The outlines generally are red. Yet in all this rudeness the characteristic traits of St. Peter and St. Paul are still preserved. The technical method is that which consists in covering the space within the outlines with verde, over which the yellow lights are laid in with a red patch to mark the cheeks. If Giunta be not the author of these paintings, there can be no doubt that the artist was of the school out of which he arose ; for here there is no more trace of the Greek manner — ^respecting which so much has been said by the historians of Italian and chiefly of Pisan art — than is to be found in all the works of this period in many parts of Italy. Besides the paintings of San Pietro-in-Grado, other specimens of art exist in Pisa itself which betray great barbarism ; for instance, the Madonna and saints in the Opera of the cathedral, a wall painting darkened by time, coarsely thrown off with much body of tempera colour,^ With little more art, and in the mixed architectural and pictorial manner of San Pietro-in-Grado, the middle aisle of the lower church of San Francesco at Assisi seems to have been covered, between 1225 and 1250, with scenes from the life of the Saviour and St. Francis. It had been the aim of the Franciscans, at the very earKest possible moment after the death of their founder, to illustrate with the help of pictures the theory that such of the faithful as might venture to follow his example would find in heaven a place of eternal rest. It was for this reason that the subjects of the Passion had been taken in juxtaposition with those of the life of St. Francis and depicted on the wall of the aisle in the lower church of San Francesco. On one side of the aisle one could see the Descent from the Gross, on the other St. Francis receiving the Stigmata. But these first illustrations of ' The Virgin and Child are enthroned between St. John the Baptist and St. John Evangelist in niches. See a print in Rosini, Storia delta Pittura, u.s , i., p. 76. 148 PAINTING IN CENTRAL ITALY [ch. the Franciscans were rude, as we shall presently observe. The Order grew rapidly in importance and wealth; the aisle proved too small for the wants of the community. Its walls were broken through for the purpose of forming arched entrances to rows of side chapels, and the frescoes were lost except on those parts which did not require removal. But such was the con- servatism of the friars that they preserved the fragments of the primitive decoration, and they are still visible to us in their mutilated state. At the sides of the first arch in the central aisle are remnants of a Descent from the Cross, of which the ladder and one of the timbers are visible. In the opposite spandrel there are fragments of a Calvary, with Mary and her women accompanying the procession. Part of the Descent from the Cross fills the spandrel of the next arch, with half the figure of Christ, supported by Joseph of Arimathea, John kissing the hand, Nicodemus extracting the nails from the feet, which are fastened apart, and one of the Marys orant. On the opposite spandrel Christ is on the ground, the three women support the Madonna, and portions of other figures are in the vicinity. The third arch is almost bare, even of stains of colour. On the opposite side of the aisle, the nearest spandrel of the first arch only shows us St. Francis, whose nakedness is covered by the mantle of the bishop. The other spandrel contains St. Francis and the Pope who dreams that the church would fall but for the saint's support. At the edges of the second arch are St. Francis and the Sparrows and St. Francis receiving the Stigmata. On the nearest spandrel of the third arch the body of Francis lies on a bed, attended by friars with Ughted tapers and censers. Though Vasari assigns these wall paintings to Cimabue and certain Greeks, his companions, it is clear that the execution is that of an earlier artist, because the handling betrays a feebler hand than that of Cimabue, and because the treatment is similar to that which we find in San Pietro-in-Grado, near Pisa.^ Yet, on the whole, it may be said that even these defective productions display a certain amount of progress in the delineation of move- ment and the forming of groups, especially in those fragments which comprise the Funeral of the Saint, the Descent from the ' Vasaki, i., p. 223. v.] GIUNTA PISANO 149 Cross, and the Virgin grieving over the Dead Body of Christ. Why the painters should be Greeks it is difficult to understand, except on the assumption that everything poor in art in the thirteenth century is Greek, in which case Giunta would be the most genuine of all the Byzantines.^ Whatever may have been this painter's real birthplace he is claimed by the Pisans as their own, and in this they are author- ised by a signature in which he calls himself Pisanus.^ That Giunta lived in the first half of the thirteenth century is a fact confirmed as much by records as by the evidence of style. The crucifix of Santi Eaineri e Leonardo is a genuine example of the master, and we therefore accept or reject the works assigned to him according as they approach or recede from the original pattern. Setting aside, for this reason, two crucifixes in the Cappella Maggiore of the Campo Santo, a third, of colossal size, in the hospital of Pisa, and a fourth in Santa Caterina of Siena,^ Giunta may again be traced to Assisi, where, after 1220, he is said to have laboured in the upper church of San Francesco. The annalists of Pisa, Wadding and Father Angeli, vouch for the truth of statements, according to which Giunta painted a Cruci- fixion, with Father Elias, the first general of the Franciscans, embracing the foot of the cross, on a large panel which hung, until 1624, on a transom in this edifice.* Giunta's presence at ' Still earlier wall paintings were noticed by EuMOHR in the crypt of San Fran- cesco of Assisi {Forschungen, i., p. 193), but they have since been obliterated. ' ClAMPl (Notizie Ined., u.s., p. 140) publishes a contract of sale, drawn up in 1202, between one Strufifaldus and one "Juncta quondam Guidottipict.," and another of 1229 in which the same name appears, but the link which should confirm the identity of the party to the contract with Giunta is wanting. In the last-named document Guidottus is called "de Colle," upon which Morrona jumps at the con- clusion that Giunta is of the noble family dal Colle. A more satisfactory record is that which preseryes the name of "Juncta Capitemis piotor" as having sworn fealty in 1255 to the Archbishop Federigo Visconti of Pisa. See Moekona, Pisa lUust, p. 116 and fol. ' From S. Crestina of Pisa (Morkona, Pisa lUust., ii., p. 142). * The inscription ran as follows : — FEATEK . ELIAS . FIEBl FECIT JESTJ CHRISTB PIE MISERERE PRECANTIS HBLIE GIUNTA PISANUS ME PINXIT A.D. 1236. IND. 9. See the passages quoted in Morrona, Pisa lUust., ii., p. 126 and fol. 150 PAINTING IN CENTRAL ITALY [ch. Assisi about 1236 is confirmed by the existence of a crucifix in Santa Maria degli Angeli inscribed with his name.^ Though here the head of the Crucified Redeemer, as well as that of the Saviour in Glory above it, is almost gone, the execution closely resembles that of the crucifix of Santi Raineri e Leonardo at Pisa; whUst it also displays, with more distinctness than the latter, that of the crucifix of San Pierino. The usual busts of the Virgin and Evan- gelist on the horizontal limb likewise betray the style of Giunta; whilst two figures at the sides, which are in the manner of Niccola da Foligno, may be considered additions of a later period. Time has almost obliterated the frescoes of the transepts and choir of the upper church of Assisi, assigned partly to Giunta and partly to Cimabue.^ That the former was employed there is affirmed by Wadding and Angeli on the authority of conventual records,^ and it is probable from the style of the work, which is that of a rude artist of the early part of the thirteenth century; but by the side of these works there are others of early date and of no very high pretension, but in a difiisrent manner; and it may be possible and not unimportant to deter- mine which are the older of the two, always bearing in mind that great part of what remains is mutilated and damaged as regards colour, whilst in general the contours exist where the plaster has not fallen or been removed.* On the side wall of the right transept nearest to the nave the Crucifixion is represented in dimensions much above those of nature. Christ is made fast to the cross with four nails, the shape and its delineation being that of the darkest period of ItaUan art. ^ Angels in ' Inscribed :— ... nta pisanus ITI p. MB FECIT. ' The paintings of the choir are assigned by Vasari (i., p. 223) to Cimabue. ' See in Mokrona, Pisa Jllust, ii., p. 119. ■» Compare Bumohr {Forschungen, ii., p. 37), who thinks it impossible and unimportant to attempt to discover the masters who may have painted in the upper church of Assisi in the thirteenth century. * ° In the pose of the figure this Christ strongly resembles that of Coppo di Marcovaldo in the sacristy of the canons at Pistoia. Nevertheless, it may be by Giunta Pisano. For the early schools of Pisa and Florence were closely connected, and Coppo may have tarried at Pisa on his way from Siena to Pistoia. Coppo, who was taken prisoner at the battle of Montaperti, was at Siena in 1261, and settled in Pistoia in 1264 or 1265. v.] GIUNTA PISANO 151 violent action fly at the sides of the principal figure, three of them receiving the blood that drops from the hands and the lance wound. In front of the cross, to the left, there are remains of the upper part of the Virgin's frame as she swoons in the arms of the Marys. The large and overweighted head is disfigured by the usual staring eye and the curved nose. Other fragments represent the crowd, the soldier striking with his lance, the guard with the sponge on a reed, and part of the head and nimbus of a friar, who may be St. Francis. The mode in which the surface was originally treated is not quite clear ; the remains are a brownish-yellow general flesh tint, patched with white in the light and black in the shaded parts. Little beyond the preparation of the vestment colours appears. The whole surface is dimmed by time, not excepting the edges of the nimbuses in relief. In the broad red outlines and angular draperies, coarsely traced in black, we observe the defects of one who, like Giunta, lived before the revival of art. Large flaws show that the painting was upon a single intonaco, and that the original design was sketched on the bare wall. Along the arches of the gallery which divides the upper from the lower course of the edifice and serves as a practicable passage, medal- lions seem to have contained the forms of angels, and prophets to have adorned the walls of the gallery itself. In the lunette the Transfiguration is depicted, with Christ in a mandorla holding a book and Moses and Ehas kneeling at his side, whUst three apostles are partially seen below. All this, where the design is preserved, reveals the same hand, which may be traced likewise in the three divisions of the end wall of the transept. Of these one is obliterated, whilst the two others represent in mere outline the crucifixion of St. Peter and Simon Magus carried away by the ministers of Satan. In the latter the vehement action common to the old style would- alone sufiice to prove that the painter preserved the forms and peculiarities of an art approaching extinction.^ In the lunette above the window are the figures of the angel and Virgin Annunciate. The east face of the transept is bare of all but fragmentary outlines of what seem to be the symbols of the Evangelists in the lunette, and scenes from the lives of the apostles beneath the gallery ; but in the pentagonal choir there are still fragments of subjects. In the first side the artist evidently intended to delineate the Saviour and the Virgin on a common throne with angels singing about it, and on the colonnade of the gallery prophets; in the second, the death of the Virgin, of which that portion remains which depicts her carried ' See a print of the painting in D'AGiNConRT. 152 PAINTING IN CENTRAL ITALY [ch. to heaven in an elliptical glory by angels ; in the third, above a large throne, two half lengths of Popes Innocent III. and Gregory IX., separated from each other by a cross ; in the fourth, the death of the Virgin, of which all that is visible is the infant form carried by the Saviour into heaven ; in the fifth the Virgin, on her death-bed, receives the visit of the apostles with St. Peter at their head. Next to this, in the transept, is a large field covered with three colossal figures of archangels, and in the lunette above St. Michael in the act of transfixing Lucifer, whilst the archangels expel the rebel angels from the realms of bliss. In the end wall the three compartments contain Christ in Judgment in a glory of angels j the four allegorical figures of Death, Famine, Pestilence, and War sowing their seed from cornucopias upon earth; and the Lamb on the altar with the book, adored by the twenty-four elders. Finally, in the wall of the left transept nearest the nave remnants of a second Crucifixion in the same form as that on the right, but with St. Francis in prayer at the foot of the cross. In the lunettes of the choir are remnants of scenes from the Old Testament. Painting here generally is subordinate, as it was in the baptistery of Parma, to a general architectural arrangement, the arches, recesses, cornices, and columns being coloured to harmonise with the painted subjects. The Saviour in Judgment in the left transept is characterised by paltry forms and a large head. A vast circular wig of hair, with a heavy forelock, overhangs a broad forehead and semi- circular eyebrows. The nose starts from a projecting triangular base, and is flattened at the end ; and the face is terminated by a small pointed chin and beard. These are features more charac- teristic of Cimabue than of Giunta. The blue draperies, of which the red preparation alone remains, are less angular than those of the fainting Virgin in the opposite transept. The hands and feet are defective and broad. The angels blowing trumpets are of a heavy and rotund form, with short round noses and chins, and expanded cheeks. The whole is painted over verde, on which the shadows are superposed in red. Above the gallery are angels and saints, as in the colonnade of the right transept, where they are of a colossal character, but in a great measure obliterated. Taking the paintings of both transepts into comparison, it is v.] GIUNTA PISANO 153 obvious that those of the right are worse and older in date than those on the left. Those of the choir, assigned by Vasari to Cimabue, it may be difficult to judge, but those of the left tran- sept certainly make a nearer approach to the style of Cimabue than to that of Giunta. It is not strange that Giunta, having lived and laboured about the time when St. Francis was canonised, should be associated in name with the saint's imaginary portrait in the sacristy of the great sanctuary. This worki does not differ much from that which might have been produced by successors of Giunta. It is painted with much body of yellowish colour, shadowed in dark tones, and outlined in black/- and might date from the close of the thirteenth century. The pictures in the small compartments are composed of figures in the usual exaggerated manner of the period. The effigy of St. Francis was repeated a hundred times in this form in the convents of his order, and a sample much like that just described may be seen in the Museo Cristiano at the Vatican.^ After Giunta's time art maintained itself at a low level, though it did not cease to be productive. Nor was Pisa solitary in this. A specimen of the feeblest kind, completed in 1271, may be found, in the shape of a crucifix, at San Bernardino of Perugia.* At Pistoia, in the antechamber of the chapter of the cathedral, is a crucifix with scenes of the Passion, like those at Santa Marta of Pisa.* Yet it cannot be said that the painter was a Pisan, since artists obviously existed at Pistoia as elsewhere, and the name of Manfredino d'Alberto is preserved as the author of frescoes, dated 1290, in the sacristy of San Procolo. Manfredino was an itinerant artist. In 1292 we find him furnishing frescoes for San Michele of Genoa, and fragments of these wall paintings, saved from the wreck of the church which was recently demolished, are now to be seen in the Academy of Arts at Genoa. On one of the fragments Christ is at the table ' See postea, comparison between this and other portraits of St. Francis. ' Case No 19. The panel is much injured. *» Inscribed: anno domini mcclxxi temp, okeqobii p. p. x. Now in the Finacoteca at Perugia, Sala I., 26. * * This crucifix was executed by Coppo di Marcovaldo in 1274 or 1275. It is now in the sacristy of the canons. Abch. del Comune di Pistoia, Opera di San Jacopo, fllza ccelzxiii., carte 9. 154 PAINTIKG IN CENTRAL ITALY [ch. of the Pharisee with the Magdalen prostrate at his feet ; another fragment represents the archangel Michael weighing souls in a balance. Beneath the first is the name of the painter.^ The difference between this master and Giunta is that the latter, in all his barbarisms, preserves a rugged power which looks imposing; whilst the former has none of the breadth of Giunta, and gives to his forms a poor development and' strong, but not very correct, outline. Another unpleasant example of crucifixes in this century is that of Sant' Eustorgio in Milan, probably by one Fra Gabrio of Cremona,^ which combines every sort of defect apparent in works of this time. Towards the close of the thirteenth century at Pisa, the names of painters become frequent in records. " Giucchus, pictor, filius Bindi Giucchi pictoris," appears in a chart of 1290-1300,8 whilst in the works of the Duomo, several mosaists and painters are mentioned immediately previous to the arrival of Cimabue. Amongst these, the chief, no doubt, was Trancesco, who in 1301, new style, held the office of master in chief of the mosaics of the great tribune, and who afterwards, with his assistant Lupo ' Genoa Academy. Inscription: magistbr manfeedintjs pistoribnsis me PINXIT 1292, IN MENSB MADii. The oolouis are dull from exposure, age, and ill- treatment. ^ Consult MS. Chron. of the Dominican Galvano Fiamina at Milan, who assigns this crucifix to the year 1288 and to Fra Gabrio of Cremona. ' Hindus had painted in the cloisters of St. Catherine of Pisa. See Mem. d'lUust. Pisa, I, p. 258, by Tempbsti, extr. in Arch. Star., vi., p. 495. The chart mentioned in text is No. 1110 of the Archiim arcivescoviU. See Bonaini, Notiz. Ined., p. 88. * This document is to be found in the Archivio delta mensa arcivescovile at Pisa. It has no date, but probably belongs to the early years of the fourteenth century. It is a deed of gift executed by the painter at the time of his marriage. There is reason to believe that the father of Bindus, who also was called Giucco, was also a painter (Arch, di Stato, Pisa, Perg. Coletti). Bindus was employed at the Duomo in 1317 (Arch, di Stato, Pisa, Arch, dell' Opera del Dwmo, libra d'entrata e uscita, ad annvm, c. 113). He died in the year 1347. Just as Florentine writers antedated the lives of their early painters, and post- dated the lives of Roman and Sienese masters like Pietro Cavallini and Duooio, so the Pisans have persistently endeavoured to antedate the careers of painters like Giunta Pisano and Bindus. Bonaini speaks of Biudu^ as a painter of the Dugento, whereas all the documentary notices we have of him belong to the fourteenth century, and he did not die until that century had run well-nigh half its course. v.] EARLY PISAN MASTERS 155 and his son Vittorio, was the colleague of Cimabue in that work.^ In subordinate employ were Gavoccius,* Barile, Cagnassus, Par- duccius, Povagansa and Turetto,^ Tanus, and Ghele di Santa Margarita.* Contemporary with these, but not regularly em- ployed in the Duomo, though equally unknown by their works, are Vanni of Siena, supposed to be the father of a line of painters,* Bordone di Buoncristiano, his son Colino,^ Vivaldo and Paganello,^ all living at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Yet of pictures, as old as the thirteenth century, Pisa possesses few; and these are by no means productions of merit. The oldest that can be pointed out is a Virgin and Child, assigned to Cimabue, in the Academy of Pisa,* with St. Martin on horseback on the pediment, and incidents of the life of the Saviour at each side. This picture recalls Cimabue in the action of the ugly infant Saviour, whilst the Virgin's depressed nose and black ^ Uguccio Gtugni and Jacobus Murci were then superintendents of the Duomo. Francesco's daily pay was ten soldi, the same which Cimabue afterwards received. Vittorio works later (1302) for four soldi eight den. See Bonaini, who quotes the original records, and corrects Rosini's statement that Francesco was capo maestro after Cimabue (Notiz. Ined. , pp. 90-2). * Tanfani-Centofanti quotes a document which shows that Lupo worked at the chiuoh of S. Caterina at Pisa in the year 1336. See Notizie di Artisti, Pisa, 1897, p. 341. ^ As "puer" or "famulus'' at eight den per diem (iUd., p. 86). ' The four first seem mere labourers ; the latter was a mosaist, and has been confounded probably with Fra Jacopo (di Torrita) by Vasaki (i,, p. 285).— /Jid., p. 89. * These two are painters (ibid., p. 92). ' Vannes quondam Boni painted, in 1302, for nine lire, the hall of the Compagnia d'arme della Cervia Nera, and gilded a Virgin and Child above the portal of the Duomo (BoNAiNi, pp. 88, 89). * Tanfani-Centofanti holds that the Vanni del fu Bono who painted in the hall of the Compagnia della Cervia Nera and Vanni da Siena who painted the Madonna above the door of Pisa Cathedral were two distinct persons. A Vanni of Florence, perhaps the first of these two, assisted Cimabue in making the Majestas of the Duomo of Pisa. Yet another painter of the same name lived in Pisa in the first decade of the fourteenth century. See Tanfani-Centofanti, op. cit., pp. 488, 489. ' The first is known as a painter of banners, the second had more extensive employment (ihid., p. 90). ' The latter alive 1304, the former dead in the same year (iiid., p. 94). * 8 There is no evidence to show that Cimabue worked in Pisa before the year 1301. The only picture that he is known to have executed in Pisa, a Madonna which he painted for the church of S. Cbiara, has disappeared. 156 PAINTING IN CENTEAL ITALY [oh. outlines point to one continuing the style of Giunta. Another picture in five arched compartments in the same academy, repre- senting half lengths of the Saviour in benediction between the Virgin and St. John Evangelist, St. Sylvester, and St. Catherine, has been assigned to Giunta,^ but displays the defects common to the beginning of the fourteenth century, combined with that lighter style of colouring which may already be noticed in the work of Deodato Orlandi. Nor, indeed, is there much difference, in the mode of drawing the sharp features and ugly hands of the Eedeemer, between this and the third-rate productions of the painters of Lucca.^ Pisa, therefore, though great for its school of sculpture, was feeble as regards painting in the thirteenth century. Her artists produced, besides crucifixes, vast works, such as those of San Pietro in Grade and Assisi, but they displayed no peculiarities which can be called exclusively Pisan. They betrayed on the contrary a character common to artists of Parma or Capua, or even of Eome. The list might be swelled by the productions of those early workmen, who in 1237 depicted a hunt, of which some vestiges still exist, in the palace of the Podest^ at San Gimignano. Art was feebly practised in the thirteenth century at Siena, as it had been at Pisa or Lucca.^ A fresco of Christ in benediction in a lunette on the front of the church of San Bartolommeo, one of the earliest examples of Sienese painting that remains to us, may be taken as proving how low, yet how equal, the level of artistic power was at that time. A Virgin and Child — half carved, half painted — in the oratory of Sant' Ansano in Castel Vecchio* shows no better than the fresco, and can only have interest for such of the painter's countrymen as consider it a venerable relic, executed in commemoration of the battle of Monte Aperto in 1260. The Madonnas of Tressa, of the Carmine, and of Betlem, of which local annalists speak with pride, must ' MoRRONA, Pisa Ulust., ii., p. 142. This picture was, in Morrona's time, in the church of S. Silvestro of Pisa. ' The tones of the draperies in this picture are light, gay, and shot with gold. *' Eecent research has shown that in the last thirty yeai's of the thirteenth century, if not at an earlier date, the school of Siena was in advance of all other schools except that of Eome. * * This picture is now in the Opera del Duomo. There are no grounds for sup- posing that it was executed in commemoration of Montaperti. v.] EARLY SIENESE MASTERS 157 be classed amongst works which disarm criticism by their bad condition, whilst other pictures of the early part of the thirteenth century only confirm the belief that Sienese art shared a general degeneracy. The custom of combining the plastic and pictorial methods was maintained ; and altarpieces are preserved which demonstrate the poverty of that species of production. Without multiplying examples it may be sufficient to notice a votive piece in the Academy of Siena, in which the Saviour in benediction, in an elliptical glory between two angels and the symbols of the Evangelists, is represented in a carved and tinted relief. Three stripes at the sides of the principal figure contain six Passion subjects in flat painting. The date of 1215 on the upper framing tells us that at this period coloured sculpture and painted episodes were both to be classed as worthless.^ In later pictures of the same collection, in which relief was not used, equal feebleness may be traced, as in the Saviour blessing and holding the book between the Virgin and Evangelist ;2 in St. John the Baptist Enthroned, wearing a diadem embossed with glass stones, and in the six scenes from his life ;^ in St. Peter Enthroned, with ' Galleria di Belle Arti, Siena, Sala Prima, No. 1 , inscribed : anno dni millbsimo CCXV. MENSE NOVEMBM HEC TABULA FACTA EST. 2 No. 3, Siena Gallery. ' Siena Gallery, Sala Prima, No. 14. * The picture of St. Peter Enthroned holds a somewhat important place in the history of art. It is not a Byzantine picture, as it has sometimes been called, although it was painted by a master who was artistically a direct descendant of the miniaturists of the second golden age of Byzantine art. In the architecture of its backgrounds we see fully developed Gothic forms fantastically mingled with less prominent Byzantine features. It is not of as early a date as has sometimes been assigned to it. I believe it to have been painted by some immediate predecessor of Duccio about the year 1265. There are three things to be specially noted in this picture. First of all, there is the wooden throne. It is of oriental origin, and the side supports are of a pattern which is still in use in the East. This throne is the parent of the throne of the Rucellai Madonna, and of the throne in another of Duccio's works, the little Madonna and ChOd (No. 20) in the Siena Gallery. Like its descendants, it is seen a little from the side; several of its details, too, are repeated in the later wooden thrones. Note especially the ornamentation of the framework of the back, and the finials of the supports both of front and back. These features we meet with again, with but little alteration, in Duccio's two works. The leaf ornament, too, on the footstool of the throne in the Bucellai Madonna is a repe- tition of the ornament on the side panels of St. Peter's throne. The head of the saint, too, is a distinctly Sienese edition of the early traditional representation of 158 PAINTIKG IN CENTRAL ITALY [oa three incidents of his legend in small panels on each side,^ and finally in a crucifix from Santa Chiara of San Gimignano, in which the Saviour is presented in the old attitude, with the usual scenes of the Passion at his sides.^ Yet if Sienese painters failed to give an impulse to art, the cause was not want of en- couragement or of rivalry. The early school of Siena in the thirteenth century is richer in names than the Florentine. The building of its cathedral was commenced and diligently pursued. Mosaics were commissioned for it.* Pictures, commemorative and votive, were ordered for churches and public edifices. Justice and law owed some of their efi&cacy to artists who painted the likenesses of criminals, pilloried in effigy on the great square of the city. Banners and flags were adorned,* and even the St. Peter. It is closely connected with the later representation of St. Peter in the Madonna and Child with Saints (Ko. 23) in the same room in the same gallery. It is assuming too much to conclude that the painter of the St. Peter Enthroned was one of the masters of Ducoio. But it is clear, I think, that the younger artist borrowed some things from the older and much inferior master. ^ Siena Gallery, Sala Prima, No. 15. The same general features are to be seen in other pictures of the same collection. ^ No. 11, Siena Gallery. ' Milanesi, Doc. Sen., i., pp. 103-4. " Painters of banners, in 1262, are Piero, Bonamicua, and Parabuoi. See Rumohb, U.S., ii., p. 23. * The following is a list of the names of painters of the thirteenth century to be found in the Sienese archives and in inscriptions on pictures, compiled by the Cav. A. Lisini, ivith two subsequent additions made by the editors : — (1) Rolando, abate di S. Salvadore del Montamiata, 1187-1212; (2) "Guido de Senis," 1221 ; (3) Bartolomeo, 1231-1257 ; (4) Napoleone, 1236 ; (5) Bartolo, 1237; (6) Aldighieri, 1245 ; (7) Jacomo di Giraldo, 1240 (?) to 1250 ; (8) Acoursio, not. e miniatore, 1248 ; (9) Gilio, 1249-1261 ; (10) Bruno, 1250; (11) Ildobrandino, pittoro e miniatore, 1252 ; (12) Parabuoi, 1254-1266 ; (13) Giovanni, 1257 ; (14) Piero, 1262 ; (15) Buonamioo, 1262 ; (16) Dietisalvi di Speme, 1261-1291 ; (17) Ventura di Gualtieri, 1264-1270; (18) Picoiolino, 1273; (19) Guido di Piero, 1278; (20) Kinaldo, 1276-1279 ; (21) Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1278-1313 ; (22) Giovanni di Bindo, miniatore, 1278-1299 ; (23) Lapo di Michele, 1280 ; (24) Bindo (1284) ; (25) Guamieri ; (26) Meo di Graziano, 1284-1297 ; (27) Guido di Graziano, 1278- 1302 ; (28) Vigoroso, 1276-1287 ; (29) Conte di Eistoro, 1276-1288 ; (30) Ghezzo, 1288; (31) Pinagio, 1289; (32) Guccio, 1289; (83) Mino di Graziano, 1289-1323; (34) Fazio di Dietisalvi, 1289 ; (35) Jacomo di Conosoiuto, 1289-1294 ; (36) Angelo di Conosoiuto, 1289-1294 ; (37) Massarello, 1290-1339 ; (38) Memmo Bernardini, 1290-1291 ; (39) Masaruccio, 1291 ; (40) Giovanni di Guido, miniatore, 1291-1296 ; (41) Guarniere di Saracino, 1292 ; (42) Pietruccio o Pietro di Dietisalvi, 1292-1302 ; (43) Creoio, 1293 ; (44) Jacomo, 1293-1294 ; (45) Sozzo di Stefano, miniatore, 1293 ; (46) Einforzato, 1293 ; (47) Minuocio di Filippucoio, 1294-1298 ; (48) Memmo di V.J EAELY SIENESE MASTEES 159 registers of public offices were covered with portraits of the officials who kept them, or with their arms. The contracts for these paintings unfortunately, in most instances, outlived the works themselves; but some specimens have been preserved which connect pictures with certain names, and these it is of some interest to follow. One Dietisalvi appears to have had a monopoly of official work from 1264 to 1276.^ Four book covers, with portraits of clerks, are preserved in the Academy of Arts.^ The first is by Maestro Gilio, and represents a monk of St. Galgano in a white dress, seated in profile on a chair. It is dated 1257. Two others by Dietisalvi, of 1264 and 1269, are portraits of Aldo- brandino Pagliarese ; the fourth, of 1276, also by Dietisalvi,^ is a Filippuooio, 1294-1326; (49) Lorino, 1294; (50) Luccio Kinfvedi, 1296; (51)Sandro di Guido, miniatore, 1296 ; (52) Tanni Boni, 1298 ; (53) Segna di Buonaventura detto Tura di Buoninaegna, 1298-1326 ; (54) Bindo di Viva, miniatore, 1300. ^ Dietisalvi Petroni appears in records as painter of the arms of the Camarlingo in 1267-70, at a daily salary of ten soldi. Again in 1281-2 and 1290. See Kumohk, U.S., ii., p. 25, and Della Valle, Lettere Sanesi, i., p. 241. * Dietisalvi was in no way connected with the house of Petroni. Milanesi also errs in speaking of him as Dietisalvi Petroni. In a document in the Siena archives we read : " Dietisalvi piotoris olim Speme " (Arch, di Stato, Siena, Ferga- mene spettante alia Casa di Sapienza, ad annum, gennaio 18). The allusions to this artist to be found in manuscripts in the Siena archives relate to a period of thirty years, 1261-1291. He was the head of a large school of artists. We read of a Fazio di Dietisalvi, and a Petruccio or Piero di Dietisalvi, and we know that com- missions for all kinds of painted decorations were executed in this master's lottega. Lisini holds that Duccio himself was a pupil of Dietisalvi (Bulletino Senese di Storia Patria, Notizie di Duceio pittore, 1898, fasc. i., p. 41). Dietisalvi painted several of the tavoUUe of the Biccherna at this period. In addition to those mentioned, we find notices in the Sienese archives of payments made to him for painting book covers in the years 1281-1284 : — " 1281-82 gennaio 22. Item viij sol. den. die dicto, Dietisalvi pictore Ubrorum Cam^rari etiiij,presentia rec." (Biochema, Libri d'entrata e usoita ad annum o. 98*). " 1282 da luglio. Hem viiij sol Dietisalvi ^iciore depinxit libros" (Bicch. c. s., c. 84'). "1283-84 da gennaio. Item miij sol. Dietisalvi pictori quia depinxit libros camerarij et iiij" (Bicch. e. s., o. 129'). "1284 da luglia. Item miij sol. den. Dietisalvi dipentori, dipentura Ubrorum Camerari et iiij°' " (Bicch. c. s., o. 128'). * ' AU of these book-covers that remain in Siena are now kept at the Archivio di Stato. Dietisalvi painted three tavolette di Biccherna. The first, of the year 1264, is a portrait of Ildebrandino Pagliaresi, Camarlingo of the Biccherna. The second, of the year 1267, bears the coats-of-arms of the four overseers of the Biccherna. The third, of the year 1270, bears a portrait of Kanieri Pagliaresi, Camarlingo of the Biccherna. * * There is no evidence to show that the tavoletta of the year 1276 was painted by Dietisalvi. The personage represented is Don Bartolommeo, monk of San Galgano, Camarlingo of the Biccherna. 160 PAINTING IN CENTEAL ITALY [ch. likeness of Jaeobo di Eodilla, These four figures, interesting on account of their age and authenticity, are painted in tempera of much impasto on verde, shadowed in black, and tinged on the lips and cheek with dark red. They reveal no sensible progress in the craftsmen of the time.^ Vigoroso, too, is a painter of the thirteenth century, of whom we still possess an example at present exhibited in the gallery of Perugia. The subjects are the Virgin with the infant Christ in her arms, in a central panel ; at the sides, the Baptist and Magdalen, and St. John the Evan- gelist and St. Julian. In pinnacles, Christ giving his blessing, and four angels. On the lower border of the central panel is the name and the date of 1280, Though but a feeble production of tra- ditional Sienese shape, the altarpiece would be more interesting were it less dark and less injured by age. Vigoroso is not un- known to antiquarian research. His name is in records of 1291 and 1292, which connect him with the decoration of Sienese municipal ledgers, long before it was known that one of his altarpieces was in existence.^ Typical art at Siena begins, for the historian, with the works of Guido, which deserve all the more to be studied because a literary tourney has been held in respect of his labours and the chief incidents of his life.^ ^ A series of examples of this kind, originally in the collection of Mr. Ramboux at Cologne, has been dispersed to the galleries of Cologne, Dusseldorf, and Buda- Pesth. The series extended from the earliest times of Sienese art to 1492, In it we remark a portrait by Dietisalvi of Don Bartolommeo, paid at the rate of eight soldi, date 1278, now in the museum at Pesth ; a similar portrait of Guido, a monk, by Rinaldo, date 1279 (at Festh) ; a portrait dated 1282, assigned to Duccio on the strength of a record of the time (at Festh) ; a tavoletta of the year 1296, at Pesth ; finally, a figure of the " Eeggimento " of Siena, with persons around holding attributes, such as may be noticed later (date 1363). * I can find no record of a tavoletta painted by Duccio in 1283. The earliest payment made to him for painting one of the book-covers of the Biccherna is of the year 1285. Five of the tavolette of the Biccherna of Siena which were in the Bamboux Collection are now in the Konigliches Kunstgewerke Museum at Berlin. Two of these little pictures, those of the years 1367 and 1437, are of considerable im- portance. We shall refer again to them in this work. ° Perugia Gallery, Sala I., 32. The inscription runs thus : vigoeoso des siena, MCCLZXx, and consult Bumohr, Forseh., u.s., ii,, pp. 24, 25. ' We omit here a Madonna once assigned to Dietisalvi in the convent church of the Servi at Siena, but which was painted in the year 1261 by Coppo di Maroovaldo, a Florentine ; and a St. George of the fifteenth century in the sacristy of San Cristoforo at Siena, engraved by Bosini as the work of Salvanello, but probably by Giovanni di Paolo. v.] GUIDO DA SIEJSTA 161 The earliest picture connected with Guido is a half-length Madonna in the gallery of Siena. ^ The Virgin, of tall stature, sits on a large seat and points with her right hand to the Infant on her knee, who gives the benediction, and grasps a scroll in his left hand. Her round head, a Uttle bent, and supported on a slender neck, is disfigured by the clumsiness of its nose, which starts from a projecting angular root, terminating in a broad depression. The arched lines of the brow are but the continuation of a long curved lid extending towards the temple far beyond the outer corner of the eye. The canthus, instead of forming a loop as in nature, is drawn at a drooping angle. The iris is an ellipse, and conveys an unnatural expressioH of ecstasy. The mouth is indicated by dark strokes, and by two black points at the corners. Outlines, red in light, black in shadow, bound the form, which is mapped out in fliat tones of enamelled surface with little effort of blending. The hands are thin and inarticulate. The mantle, falling over a close cap to the shoulders, and partly covering a red tunic, shot with gold, is lined with mazes of angular and meaningless strokes. The nimbus is full of glass stones. The same features, design, and draperies mark the infant Saviour, whose ears are of an enormous size. This painting, if it be by Guido, would prove that he lived at the close of the thirteenth century, and the minute description which has just been given is necessary to elucidate a question which has long engrossed critical attention, and involves the rival claims of Siena and Florence, to the title of regenerator of Italian art. Guido is unknown beyond the walls of Siena. He remained a stranger to Vasari, and his existence is certified by an altarpiece bearing his name and the date of 1221, a work which was once in San Domenico, but is now in the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena. The state of the picture and the fashion of the signature^ both reveal a series of manipulations which excites suspicion. The date is too early for the painting. The painting exhibits a curious variety of handling in several of its parts. The subject is the Virgin Mary, of more than life size, seated on a ^ No. 16, Galleria di Belle Arti, Siena. Two angels in flight are in the spandrels of the aroh circnmsoribing the upper sides of the picture. * ^ It appears to us that the inscription is the most genuine part of the picture. I. — M 162 PAINTING IN CENTRAL ITALY [ch. cushion in an armchair decorated with mosaic patterns. Her head is wrapped in a white cloth which falls in drapeiy on the shoulders; a high-waisted red tunic is partly seen heneath a large blue cloak; and both are shot with gold. Her left arm and hand supports the infant Saviour, who gives the blessing as he sits on her lap, and she points with taper fingers to his face as he looks up at her. A clover-patterned arch, above the niche of the throne, is filled in the spandrels by six figures of winged angels in prayer. In a triangular pediment which belongs to the altarpiece, but hangs apart in the transept of San Domenico, the space is filled with a half length of the Bedeemer in benediction between two angels.^ The treatment of this picture reveals a Sienese artist of the close of the thirteenth century, who painted all but the head and neck of the Virgin,^ and the flesh parts of the infant Saviour. These are handled in the manner of the Sienese school of Duccio, Ugolino, or Simone. The variety lies in the spirit, as well as in the technical execution, which not only gives more regularity and nature to the features, but a better and softer run to the outlines. Another advantage displayed in these heads is the comparative lightness and blending, and the pleasanter tinge and transparence of the colour. The glaze of the old style has dis- appeared, and with it sombre tones and black contours. It has ' The tempera of this altarpiece is injured by retouching in oil, and a long split runs vertically down the right side of the Virgin. On a strip beneath the throne we read in one line : — ME GUIDO DE SENIS DIEBUS DEPINXIT AMBNIS QUEM XPS LENIS NULLIS TELIT ASBEB PENIS : ANO D'M<>CO XX I. Gaetano Milanesi, in Delia Vera EtA di Outdo (8vo., Siena, 1859), p. 7, aflBrms that there is room between moo and xx for an l, also room for letters between xx and i. He therefore thinks, and we agree with him to some extent, that the painter is Guido Gratiani, a Sienese of the close of the thirteenth century. The pinnacle was in its place when RtTMOHE wrote (see Forschimgen, i., p. 335). The whole altarpiece, according to Tizio, was on the altar of the Chapel de' Capaci to the left on entering the church of San Domenico, and had been previously in S. Gregorio. It was originally a triptych, and Tizio says that the wings hung apart from the centre on the walls of San Domenico. * It is quite a common thing to find a space between the hundreds and the tens and another space between the tens and the units in early painted inscriptions of this kind. There is nothing to show that this inscription has been tampered with. We have examined it carefully, and do not think that it affords any support to Milanesi's theory in regard to it. * '^ It seems to us that the whole picture has been repainted. Aliiiari, pho. MADONXA AND CHILP By Guido da Siena From an altarpiece, now in tlie Palazzo Pubblico, Siena I. — Tofaccpiuje 162 v.] GUIDO DA SIENA 163 been urged that work like this entitles Guido to a place in art above Cimabue. But the old parts of the picture are below the level of Cimabue, the new parts are above that level. The date is apocryphal, having been retouched after some of its letters had been obliterated. We may take it that the altarpieoe in its original state was painted by Guido of Siena, between 1270 and 1280, and restored by a later artist of the Sienese school of the fourteenth century.^ A patient search has failed to bring any records to light proving the existence of an artist called Guido in the earlier years of the thirteenth century.^ The name of Guido Gratiani* is entered in municipal accounts as the painter of a banner in 1278.* He superseded Dietisalvi in 1287, 1290, 1298, as limner of the books of the Biccherna.^ He completed in 1295 a "Majesty between St. Peter and St. Paul " in the public palace of Siena. In 1302 he pilloried twelve forgers in portrait on the front of the tribunal of Justice.* He was one of three sons of Gratiano, and lived in ^ That artists of the fourteenth century did not disdain to repaint pictures of earlier masters is proved by a record of the year 1335, in which Ambrogio Lorenzetti contracts to renew "the face, hands, and book of the Virgin of the Duomo" (MiLANESi, Doc. Sen., i., p. 195). Of several angels in the pediment, one to the right is repainted. * ' The diligent researches of successive generations of archivists at Siena have brought to light the names of only two painters who were active in Siena before the year 1235. But this does not prove that there were not several artists in the city. In fact such evidence as we have points the other way. The fact is that the existing documents relating to the social and artistic life of the Sienese before the year 1235 are comparatively few. There may have been two or three artists of the name of Guido living in Siena in that period. We know nothing of the painters of the best Sienese pictures of the age before Duccio. We do not know the name of the architect of the Duomo or of the sculptors who worked in Siena before the coming of Kiccola Pisano. In Milanesi's own large collection of documents relating to Sienese art, the earliest document is of the year 1259. * ' We know that there was at least one other artist of the name of Guido working in Siena in the thirteenth century. There may have been several of that name. There is nothing to show that Guido di Gratiano is identical with the Guido who painted the Madonna in the Palazzo Fubblico. * MiLANBSl, Delia Vera Etd,, etc., p. 9. ° IHd., and Bumohb, Foradwmgen, ii. p. 24. * In the late Ramboux collection at Cologne, under No. 24, there was a Nativity of the thirteenth century, the execution of which recalls that of the angels in the altarpiece of San Domenico by Guido. iThe composition is repeated by Duccio in the great altarpiece of the Duomo. 164 PAINTmG m CENTRAL ITALY [ch. the parish of San Donate ai Montanini. He brought up to his profession a son named Bartolommeo, or Meo,i who afterwards (1319) worked in Perugia. Guide's brothers, Mino and Guarnieri or Neri, were artists also.^ If we concede any value to the inscription on the altarpiece of Guido in San Domenico, we must suppose that the painter is Guido Gratiani, and that his work is later than 1221, and dates from the close of the century.' * ' There is an ancona by Meo in the Perugia Galleiy (Sala I. , i. ). The picture attributed to him at CittJi di Oastello is by Segna. ^ The former, in 1289, painted a. Virgin and Saints for the hall of the great council in the old Palazzo Fubblico of Siena. He worked in another part of the same edifice in 1293, and in 1298 produced the portraits of several false mtnesses. In 1303 he designed a St. Christopher in the Palazzo, and, 1329, disappears from the public records. Of Guarnieri nothing is known but that he left behind him three sons, Giaoomuccio or Muocio, TJgolino, and Guido, who in 1321 matriculated as a painter in the company of surgeons and grocers of Florence. See G. Milanesi, Delia Vera Etd, etc. , p. 9. * ' It cannot be too strongly asserted that the onus probandi of a theory like this of Milanesi rests with its promulgators. Style-criticism can tell us little or nothing as to the date of the picture, as it has been repainted. We can glean nothing from documents. The inscription is the only evidence we have. It is for those who agree with Milanesi to demonstrate that the inscription has been tampered with. Milanesi himself certainly did not prove his case, as we have shown in previous notes. The Oav. A. Lisini, however, has brought forward an argument somewhat weightier than any of those advanced by the learned editor of Vasari. He has found a picture in the Siena Gallery which bears an inscription similar to that on the Madonna of Guido. The inscription, or rather what remains of it, runs as follows : — . . . ^ . . . AMBNIS QVBM XPS LENIS NVLLIS VBLIT ANGBEE PBNIS ANNO MILLBSIMO DVCENTESIMO SEPTVAGBSIMO. This inscription does not differ from that of the Madonna of Guido' da Siena, except that in the latter the word angeee is written ageke. Lisini argues {a) that the two pictures are by the same artist, by Guido ; (&) that it is impossible that he could have painted the two pictures "at a distance of time of nearly fifty years " ; (c) that the Madonna of the Palazzo Pubblico must have been painted after the Madonna in the Gallery, because it is a better picture. Admitting for the sake of argument that the two pictures are by the same artist, it is not incredible that the one was painted in 1221 and the other in 1270. It is quite possible that Guido had as long an artistic career as that of Titian, or Watts, or even P^re Corot. It is easy to mention a score of distinguished painters of the nineteenth century whose period of work extended over more than half a century. The Madonna of the Siena Gallery, it is true, is painted in a harder, more conven- tional style than the Madonna of the Palazzo Pubblico ; but the graces and modernities — such as they are — of the more famous picture owe their origin, no doubt, to a later hand. For the faces and figures of the altarpiece of 1221 have, as we have said, been entirely repainted. v.] GUIDO DA SIENA 165 Siena can thus lay claim to no superiority in art during the thirteenth century. Mccola and Giovanni Pisano furnished the chief ornaments of her cathedral; and under the guidance of these and other strangers, the school of which Agnolo and Agostino were afterwards the ornaments, arose in 1300. The Sienese rivalled the Florentines after the time of Cimabue. Duccio, Ugolino, Simone, and Lorenzetti are entitled to well- deserved admiration, but their influence remained second to that of Cimabue and Giotto.^ Painting may be said to have followed much the same course at Arezzo as at Lucca, Pisa, and Siena. Crucifixes, portraits of St. Francis, and a few Madonnas were the staple of its production, and these were of a more decidedly repulsive character than the works of other Italian cities. A small crucifix, of the close of the twelfth century, at Santa Maria della Pieve, in which the Saviour is represented erect and open-eyed ; another, of the same character and date, in the chapel del Sacramento, contiguous to the Collegiata of Castiglione Aretino ; and a third, colossal, of a later period, in San Domenico of Arezzo, in which the feet of the Saviour are still separate, but the body is in a state of contortion — mark the progress of the same decline at Arezzo as elsewhere.^ Margaritone inherited and continued this degenerate style. He stood in the same relation to Arezzo as Giunta to Pisa, and would never have emerged from obscurity had not Vasari been moved by a laudable desire to rescue the art of his native city But because the Madonna of 1270 bears a similar inscription to the picture in the Palazzo Pubblioo, it does not follow that the two pictures are by the same painter. When art was so much of a handicraft as it was in the age before Duccio, when pupils were accustomed to copy patiently every detail of their master's pictures, when originality amongst painters was rare, and imitativeness a virtue, it is not at all inconceivable that an artist copied an inscription on an earlier altar- piece, an altarpieoe painted perhaps by his master, or even by his own father. We hold then that not only has it not been demonstrated that the date of the Madonna of the Palazzo Pubblico has been tampered with, but that no strong presumption has been established in favour of such a theory. * ' Of Tuscan masters whose pictures can be identified, Duccio was the greatest artist in the years preceding the rise of Giotto. The great Sienese master was em- ployed by the State as early as 1278. The writers have followed Vasari in placing Duocio's period of activity "after the time of Cimabue" ; but documents show that Vasari was wi-ong. * ^ This crucifix has much the character of those of Margaritone. The yellowish lights are painted over a gentle tone of verde. 166 PAINTING IN CENTRAL ITALY [ch. from oblivion. Margaritone was born early in the thirteenth century, and certainly was in his manhood in 1262.^ He is said to have laboriously finished frescoes in San Clemente of the Camaldoles of Arezzo; but they perished in 1547, and are certainly not to be regretted, if they resembled other productions from the same hand, of which we shall presently make a list, in order that those who should prefer to ignore pictures like playing- cards may know where and how to avoid them. London, National Gallery : The Virgin and Child and eight small pictures of (1) The Nativity; (2) St. John the Evangelist liberated from the Cauldron of Oil; (3) St. John raising Drusiana; (4) St. Benedict in the Thorns ; (5) The Martyrdom and Burial of St. Catherine ; (6) St. Nicholas exhorting the Sailors to throw away the Cup given to them by Satan; (7) St. Nicholas rescuing the Condemned; (8) St. Margaret and the Dragon — inscribed : mahgaritus de aeitio mb fecit — 2 feet 9 inches high by 5 feet 9 inches wide, gold ground. San Niccola, later in the Lombardi and Ugo Baldi collection at Florence: St. Nicholas in Cathedra, and four episodes of his life. Arezzo, Museum, Eoom 1. — A Virgin and Child from San Francesco, where it was seen by Vasari, dark in tone, iU drawn, and incorrect in movement. In addition to this Madonna, there are two other works in the same room attributed to Margaritone — a St. Francis, a signed work, and a crucifix. Sargiano, Convent of the Cappuccini. — St. Francis, facing the spec- tator in frock and cowl, one hand raised, the other holding a book, the stigmata on the hands and feet, which are models of bad drawing. We note the brown flesh tints, with the light put in with white hatchings, the shadows of a viscous oHve-brown, the cheeks and lips rouged. Inscribed : . . . kgakit. he aritio pingbbat. Castiglione Aretino, San Francesco. — St. Francis, with cross and book, and a cowl over his head. Inscribed : margarit . . . de aritio me fecit. Siena, Galleria di Belle Arti, No. 18.— St. Francis. Of stunted stature and staring eyes. Inscribed like the foregoing. Eome, Vatican, Museo Cristiano. — St. Francis. Inscribed: . . . DE . . . O ME FEOIT.^ ' A legal instrument made in 1262, in claustro Micaelis (of Arezzo) coram Margarita pictore filio quondam Magnami, records his origin (Annot. to Yasaki, ed. Sansoni, i., p. 359). * ' Other representations of St. Francis attributed to Margaritone were formerly to be found at S. Caterina at Pisa and at the Convent of the Cappuccini, near Sinigaglia. V.J MARGARITONE 167 London, formerly in the collection of the late Ealph "Wornum, Esq. — Virgin and Child, enthroned hetween St. Bruno, St. Benedict, and two Cistercian monks. Fairly preserved. Inscribed : margarit . . . eitio ME FECIT. Monte San Savino, Chiesa delle Vertighe. — Virgin and Child, with the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Assumption. Inscribed : mabgahitus ar . . . . mcc . . . xiii. In a predeUa, six figures. Florence, Santa Croce. — St. Francis, with twenty episodes of the saint's life in small framings, all on gold ground. Above these, and between two angels, a table of the genealogy of the Order, erroneously assigned by Vasari (ed. Sansoni, i., p. 249) to Cimabue. Pistoia, San Francesco, in the Bracciolini Chapel. — St. Francis, with sixteen episodes of the saint's life, falsely assigned to Lippo Memmi. Ganghereto by Terranova di Valdamo, San Francesco. — A St. Francis. If the inscription of the altarpiece of Monte San Savino could be restored, so as to give the date of 1294, and if we should accept Vasari's statement that Margaritone died at the age of seventy- seven, we might assume that the artist was born about 1216.^ His death before 1299 appears all the more probable because his name is not in the burgess roll of Arezzo in that year.^ Margaritone prided himself on the value of his works, and it is said that, as a token of gratitude for the spirit with which Farinata degli TJberti saved his country from ruin, he presented to the great Florentine a colossal crucifix. Farinata, it would seem, eagerly disposed of this treasure, which Vasari saw in Santa Croce. But the crucifix which is now shown as Margaritone's, in an antechamber near the chapel of the novitiate of that church, displays the manner of a second-rate painter of the fourteenth century, and not the style of Margaritone, which is more certainly observed in a crucifix, much damaged and darkened by age, in a passage leading to the sacristy of San Francesco at Castiglione Aretino. Here each limb of the Saviour is separately made fast with a nail, the Magdalen grasps the foot of the cross, and the usual episodes make up the ornament of the fatal instrument. Vasari vouches for another fact in respect of Margaritone, where he says that he executed the model of the Palazzo Comunale and the ' Vasaki, ed. Sansoni, i., p. 362. ^ Vasabi, ed. Sansoni, i., 367. 168 PAINTING IN CENTRAL ITALY [ch. faqade of San Ciriaco, at Ancona, and the tomb of Gregory X. in the episcopal palace of Arezzo. The palace of Ancona under- went a total change three hundred years ago, and the church of San Ciriaco dates from the tenth century; but the portal of the latter edifice is filled with heads of apostles which display the rudeness peculiar to the thirteenth, albeit nothing character- istic of Margaritone. The monument of Gregory X. — in the cathedral, and not in the episcopal palace at Arezzo — is in the style of the pupils of Niocola Pisano, and there is no resemblance between this monument and the sculpture of the portal of San Ciriaco of Ancona. Vasari, in the life of Arnolfo, notices Marchionne, who worked at Eome and elsewhere, and produced certain carved figures on the front of the cathedral of Arezzo, which rival in rudeness the paintings of Margaritone. Two names, not unlike in sound, may in this case have been confounded; but the mistake is difficult to pardon if we consider that the painter Margaritone and the sculptor Marchionne could not have existed at the same period.^ Whilst Margaritone and Marchionne thus stamp the art of Arezzo as inferior even to that of the cities in its vicinity, another painter, called Montano, did honour to the birthplace of Vasari. A study of Neapolitan annals reveals the influence which the house of Naples wielded in Italy at the close of the thir- teenth and rise of the fourteenth centuries, during the struggles of the Guelphs and Ghibellines. Charles I. and II. and Eobert the Wise played a conspicuous part in the politics of Florence. Niccol6, Arnolfo, and Giovanni are said to have been employed in the latter part of the thirteenth century in the construction or enlargement of the castles which overawed Naples. Churches were built and endowed, and painting was required to complete the adornment of both. Numerous as were the mosaists and sculptors of South Italy in the twelfth and ' The inscription on the front of the cathedral of Arezzo, which can only refer to the sculpture, as the greater part of the front and church are of 1300, runs as follows: ANNI D. MCC. XVI. Ms. MADII. MAKCHIO SCULPSIT PBB MATHS MUNEEA FULSlT i TPa. AEOHiPBi. z." Vasari also gave to Marchionne the tomb of Honorius III. in Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, which in his second edition he assigns to Arnolfo (Vasari, ed. Sansoni, i. , p. 288). v.] MARGARITONE 169 thirteenth centuries, art was clearly not successfully pursued at Naples. The oldest painting of the close of the thirteenth century in that city is a fresco on gold ground above the door leading out of the court into the church of the monastery of San Lorenzo Maggiore. The Virgin, a slender and small-eyed figure, holds the infant Saviour on her knees, and he, with not ungraceful motion, grasps a flower. The fingers of the hands are thin, but coarse at the extremities. A small figure kneels in prayer at the Virgin's feet. Montano d'Arezzo had more talent probably than the author of this piece. He painted in 1305 two chapels of the Castel Nuovo.i and in 1306 two chapels of the Castel del Uovo.^ He was much in favour with Philip of Tarentum, and on the death of that prince became the "familiar" of King Eobert, who (1310) knighted him and gave him lands near Marigliano.* A chapel in the monastery of Monte Vergine, near Avellino, for which King Eobert had a special reverence, was adorned with his painting, and he is, by tradition, the author of a Madonna at that shrine.* ' In the Eegiater No. 1,305, letter 6, folio 226, verao, of the Royal Sicilian Archives ia the following: "Magistro Montorio (} Montano) pictori pro pictura ditarum capellarv/m Oastri nostri Novi Neapolis et aliis necessariis ad pingendum capellas easdem, undarum V. Datum, Neapoli die 20 Augusti. Indict. III. an. 1S05." — In Lettere mlla Chiesa deW Incoronata, etc., by Giuseppe Angblitoci (8vo, Naples, 1846), p. 12. ' In the same records, Register folio 228: "Magistro Montano pictori pro pictwa duarum capellarum Castri noatri Om undarum VIII. Sub die ultimo Augusti. Indict III., an. 1306." — Ibid., p. 14. ' In the same records. Register letter E, folio 27, a tergo, an. 1310: "Robertus rex," etc. " Servitiis quse Magister Montanns de Aretio piotor familiaris noster nobis exhibnit et exhibere non cessat maxime in pingendo capellam nostram tarn in domo noatro Neapolis quam in £cc. B. Marise de Monte Yirginis, ubi specialem devotionem habemus eidem Magistro Montano et ejus eredibus ntriuaque aexus et ejus tempore legitime descendentibus natis, jam et in postea nasoituria in perpetuum de ea R. terra dim nemoris sen silra Laye quse eat in terra nostra comitatus Acerrarum, sita inter Maxilianum et Summam, quam silvam in toto trahi et extir- pari," etc. — Ibid., p. 15. The manner in which the foregoing has been altered for an evident purpose may be seen in the following extract from Prvoilegi imperiali, regi e baronali (folio, Naples, ii.): " 1310. Privilegio del Re Roberto con oui dona a Montanara d'Arezzo, pittore, una stanza di Maggia 100, site tra la Cerra e Marigliano per aver dipinto il busto del quadro di nos. Sign, de Montevergine e la cappella del D. Re in Napoli." * The head of the image is aaid to have been brought home from the Crusades 170 PAINTING IN CENTRAL ITALY [oh. The Virgin, enthroned, holds the Infant, who sits on her knee and grasps the dress at her bosom. Two small angels wave censers at the upper angles of the chair; six more are at the Virgin's feet. The smallness of the Infant and angels impairs the balance of the group. The Madonna is slender and not ungraceful. The head is of a regular outline, but, like that of the Infant and angels, cast in the old defective piould — a mixture of the manner of Cimabue and the Giottesques. The hands are long, and the slender figures are coarse at the extremities. The draperies, embroidered in gold at the edges, fall in comparatively easy folds, and are all shot with gilt threads. It is a work which may be classed betwixt those of Siena and Florence, graceful enough to remind us of the former without the breadth peculiar to the latter, but not so talented as to explain the high position of Montana at the Neapolitan court at a time when Giotto was already famous.^ A fabulous history of the head being a relic of the Crusades arose from a very natural desire to increase the reverence due to the shrine, but seemed confirmed by the fact that this part of the panel, being formed of a separate block, projected with its nimbus at an angle to the plane of the picture, a practice common in the schools of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. But besides the evident presence of the same hand in every part of the work, the projection is of the same wood as the rest of the panel. The record of Montano's knighthood in no wise supports the fable of a relic brought home from Constantinople, but merely states that the painter laboured at Monte Vergine in 1310. The picture seems to have been executed at that period, and may therefore be assigned to Montano, the more so as there are vestiges of painting of the same kind in one of the chapels of the church. but this fable is based on a fictitious reading of old records and a diligent concealment of all but the features under an ornament and diadem of jewelled silver. Nor would it have been .easy to form an idea as to the value of the picture, but for the circumstance that, not long since, the figure was laid bare for the sake of being copied, and it appeared that the whole altarpiece was the work of one hand, and that it corresponded in style to work of a painter living in the first years of the thirteegjh century. ' It must beBorne in mind that the picture has been rubbed down, so that in the heads of some angels the original drawing may be seen. The gold ground is gone, and the colour, now hard and raw, seems to have been thinly painted on a slightly primed panel. The shadows are still, however, warm in tone. v.] MONTANO D'AREZZO 171 In Naples little remains that recalls the style of a painter of large practice except a half figure of a bishop in episcopals, in the act of benediction, in the boys' dormitory of the Seminario Urbano. The figure is not without grandeur, and seems to be one of a series of three, the remainder of which have perished. Above the bishop stands St. Paul with the sword and book, of good features and somewhat Giottesque type. The contours are a little black, the colour rubbed down. Montano may possibly be the author. Though Neapolitan historians have neglected Montano, they have singled out other artists for praise whose claims to attention are probably spurious. The earliest of these dubious entities is Tommaso degli Stefani, of whom it is assumed that he was a contemporary of Cimabue and the painter of certain frescoes in the chapel of the Mimetoli in the Naples Cathedral. The subjects treated are scenes from the life of Christ, St. Peter rescued from prison, and his Cruci- fixion, the Decapitation of the Baptist, and the Death of Stephen. There are also portraits of members of the family of Mimetoli. No documentary evidence can be adduced in respect of these wall paintings. In their present state they only show traces of modem renewals, and it would be difficult to find any part of them that suggests work of the thirteenth century. Philippo Tesauro, who is supposed to have lived at Naples in 1270, is described as the painter of a picture in the Naples Museum, which proves that if he ever existed, he must have practised in the fourteenth and not the thirteenth century. The subject is the Virgin and Child, between St. John and St. Andrew, adored by St. Jerome, St. Peter Martyr, and St, Nicholas on their knees; the martyrdom of St. Nicholas being represented in a lunette. An earlier artist is the imaginary Tesauro who is supposed to have been a contemporary of the Emperor Constantine, to whom the Neapolitans have assigned a mosaic of the Virgin and Child between S. Januarius and S. Eestituta in the church of Santa Eestituta. Judging of this work by its appearances, we should think it a Byzantine production of the first quarter of the 172 PAINTING IN CENTRAL ITALY [ch. v. fourteenth century, as much on account of the dress as on account of the heavy crown on the Virgin's head and the archaic way of representing the Child in benediction holding the stem of a heavy cross in its left hand. It is strange that there should ever have been a doubt as to the origin of this mosaic, which is dated (? 1309 or 1322) and inscribed with the name of Lellus.^ The most famous name in Neapolitan pictorial' annals is that of Simone Napoletano, who is not known to have had any real existence, yet to whom pictures of different periods and varying styles have been assigned. We shall find occasion to class under their several heads paintings attributed to Simone Napoletano, which are distinguishable either as works of known artists or of obscure disciples of the Giottesques. We shall class under the Neapolitan Giottesques the frescoes in the refectory and the figures painted round the mortuary monument of Eobert of Sicily in Santa Chiara, and amongst the Umbro-Sienese of the fifteenth century a St. Anthony of Padua in San Lorenzo Maggiore. St. Louis of Toulouse, in the same church, must be given to its true author, Simone Martini, of Siena. We shall assign the Trinity with saints, in the Mimetolo Chapel of the cathedral, to Andrea Vanni ; the Virgin giving the breast to the infant Saviour, above the monument of the Countess of Mileto, and the Virgin of the Eose in the Villani Chapel in San Domenico, to Francescuccio Ghissi. ^ The inscription runs so : — ANNIS DATITE OLEVUS INSTAR PAKTHBN0PENSI8. MILLB TBEOENTENIS UNSENIS BISQUE KE . . . SIS, and on one side: hoc opus fec. lellu. p. m. Aeoording as we read "retensis" or "recensis," we must take 1309 or 1322 as the year of Leilus' labours, be they original or merely restoration. * Some authorities hold that it is a work of an earlier date than the fourteenth century, and was merely restored in 1322. CHAPTER VI GRADUAL RISE OF THE ART OF FLORENCE IF the progress or the decline of painting could be traced by other evidence than that of pictures, we should be able to throw some light on the arts as they were practised even so far back as the eleventh century at Florence. Unfortunately, records of painters, without knowledge of their works, are comparatively uninteresting, and Florentine mosaics or painting of the eleventh or twelfth century are no longer preserved.^ Fra Jacopo, who decorated some parts of the baptistery of Florence in 1225, has been described by the historian Baldinucci^ as a pupil of Tafi, to whom Vasari attributes the revival of the art of mosaics in the thirteenth century. But neither Vasari nor Baldinucci is to be trusted on this point, as may be shown more clearly hereafter; and Coppo di Marcovaldo must now be acknow- ledged as the earliest painter at Florence, whose extant work was executed before the first reformer amongst the Florentines had made for himself a name.* Strange to say, Coppo di Marcovaldo is only known by an altarpiece in the church of the Servi at Siena, which once ' Records exist of Eustico, a painter at Florence in 1066, and Girolamo di Morello, a painter of Florence in 1112. Marchisello of Florence is noted as the painter of an altarpiece in 1191 ; and it is stated that this picture was on the high altar of San Tommaso of Florence in the days of Cosimo de' Medici the elder. Fidanza, of 1224, and Bartolommeo, of 1236, are also painters whose names are in published records. The same may be said of Lapo, of Florence, who laboured at Pistoia in 1250, and Fino, who painted in the public palace in 1292. Compare Rumohk, Forsehwngen, ii., 28 and 191 ; Gaye, Garteggio, i., 423 ; Ciampi, u.s., p. 142; and Vasam, ed. Sansoni, i., 264-5. ^ Baldinucci, F., Opere (8vo, Milan, 1811), iv., p. 93. * ' Coppo di Marcovaldo was born in Florence about the year 1225. In 1260 he was present at the battle of Montaperti (Paoli,- II libra di Montaperti, p. 25). In the following year he painted the altarpiece of the church of the Servi, the Madonna del Bordone (Buondblmonti, Sioria della chiesa dei Servi, cod. of the 173 174 GRADUAL RISE OF THE ART OF FLORENCE [ch. bore the date of 1261 and the signature of "Coppus di Florentia." There are written records which show that he painted frescoes in the chapel of San Jacopo, and a Madonna and a crucifix in the cathedral, of Pistoia, between 1265 and 1275.^ But his picture plainly shows the depression from which Florentine art had not as yet recovered. The subject represented is the Virgin on her throne, with the infant Christ on her lap, and two angels in the upper comers of the panel. Though exhibited at Siena, the picture displays Florentine weight and breadth in the development of the figures. The colours of the flesh are darkly embrowned j those of the draperies are without harmony; the surface is rough throughout j and there is no charm of distribution, attitude, features, dress, or ornament.^ Coppo is not much above the level of Margaritone. But he is not greatly below that of Tafi, of whom we shall presently observe that he was born almost at the same time as Oimabue, whom he survived nearly twenty years. According to Vasari, Andrea Tafi was born in 1213, and learnt the practice of mosaics from AppoUonius, a Greek, whom he had served as a journeyman at Venice. Leaving Venice for Florence, seventeenth century, B. vii., 14, o. 9 ; Bbnvoglienti, Miscellanea, MSS., C. iv., c. 151, 152). Perhaps at the time of painting the picture Coppo was a prisoner in Siena. In the year 1264 or in 1265 Coppo di Marcovaldo settled at Pistoia ; and in the latter year be painted frescoes in the chapel of San Jacopo in that city (Arch, del Comune di Pistoia, Opera di San Jacopo, Filza i., carte 96'). In the year 1274 we find him still at Pistoia, when, with the co-operation of his son Salerno, he painted two crucifixes, a Madonna, a St. John, and a St. Michael for the church of S. Zeno, now the cathedral (Archivio del Comune di Pistoia, Opera di San Jacopo, filza ccclsxiii., carte 9). Of all these works in Pistoia only a crucifix remains. It was found by Signor Bacci in the Sagrestia dei Canonici. See Bacci, C<^o di Marcovaldo e Salerno di Coppo, in L'Arte, anno iii., 1900, fasc. i.-iv., pp. 32-40. A Madonna above the altar to the right of the choir in the church of S. Maria Maggiore at Florence has many of the characteristics of Coppo. Below the Madonna are two small scenes — an Annunciation, and the Three Marys at the Sepulchre. ' CiAMPi, U.S., 86 and 143; Tigki, Guida di Pistoia, 122, 138; Tolomei, p. 16. The frescoes in San Jacopo were removed to make room for others by Alessio d'Andrea and Bonaocorso di Cino in 1347, and the crucifix was dated 1275. ' Engraved in Rosini under the name of Dietisalvi of Siena ; but, according to the chronicle of the Servi, by Father Buondelmonte (cit. in VasAEI, ed. Sansoni, i., 266), and an anonymous description of Siena in the seventeenth century {ibid.), it is by Coppo di Marcovaldo, and formerly bore the inscription: M.CCLXI. coppus DB FLOKENTIA PINXIT. MADONNA AND CHILD By Coppo di Marcovaldo From an altarpiece in the Church of the Servi, Siena LoTtihardi, pTio. I. — To face p^ge 174 VI.] COPPO DI MARCOVALDO 175 both artists were engaged to decorate the baptistery of Florence, and AppoUonius not only taught his disciple how to burn mosaic stones, but how to fix them in stucco. During their joint labours the two men executed that part of the decoration of the cupola of the baptistery which comprises " the powers," " thrones," and "dominions" ; after which Tafi, having improved in skill, completed without help the figure of Christ, which is fourteen feet in height. The whole of this decoration Vasari describes as meritorious, considering the period in which it was executed, and sufficient indeed to give Andrea Tafi repute, and cause him to be employed with Fra Jacopo of Florence, and Gaddo Gaddi at Pisa, but ridiculous in its display of feeble design and feebler execution.^ Vasari only suggests the date of Tafi's birth. He supposes that Tafi died, aged eighty-one, in 1294 ; but as we are now aware that the artist was still living in 1320, when he was borne on the list of painters affiliated to the guild of surgeon apothecaries at Florence, under the name of Andrea olim Eicchi, commonly called Tafi, he must have been born as late as 1240, and he may have been born later, and have been exactly contemporary with Cimabue. Under these circumstances Baldinucci's theory that Tafi was taught by Fra Jacopo of Florence falls to the ground, equally so Vasari's theory that the secret of baking and fixing mosaics had been lost in Tuscany, and reimported by a Greek from Venice.^ The baptistery of Florence is an octagon, with an octagon cupola. Under the lantern in the centre of the cupola two stripes of decoration are let in — one a ribbon of ornament, the second a string of eight framings, with angels in each of them. Lower down there is less uniformity of spacing. Three sides of the octagon above the tribune are distributed so as to represent Christ in Majesty in the central space, * Vasaki, i., 281, 285. There are some doubts as to whether AppoUonius ever existed, though the commentators of Vasari (i., 288) quote a passage in an MS. by Del Migliore (in the Biblioteca Magliabeochiana at Florence), in which there is mention of a record describing AppoUonius as: " 1279 Magister AppoUonius pictor Florentinus." This would make AppoUonius a Florentine, and not a Greek. Bicha (Chiese Fiorentine, y., p. xlii.) quotes records of the same tenour, but only does so at second hand, and probably from Del Migliore. Del Migliore, on his part, quotes the records of the guild of the Calemala. But they were only known to him from calendars made after the originals had perished (see com, Yasabi above). We shall presently see that Tafi and Gaddo Oaddi were contemporaries. ^ Compare Vasaki (ed. Sansoni,) i., p. 336, with Baldinuoci on above. 176 GEADUAL RISE OF THE ART OF FLORENCE [oh. ■with three compartments on each side of him; to the left, children borne by aged men to heaven ; above them, the Virgin with six apostles ; and higher stiU, angels carrying the emblems of the Passion, or blowing the last trump. To the right, Satan in his realm; above him the Baptist, with six apostles and angels ; and above these again, angels with emblems of the Passion or blowing trumpets. On the five remaining sides of the cupola the space is divided into four stripes, giving four series of five compositions : (1) Old Testament scenes, from the Creation to the Deluge ; (2) ditto, with incidents in the life of St. Joseph ; (3) the Passion ; (4) the life of John the Baptist. The distribution of the subjects in the baptistery of Florence is probably as old as the twelfth century; but the execution is due to numerous artists of different periods, and it would only be possible to trace the hand and the time if the mosaics had been preserved from the destructive effects of age and restoring. Amongst the wreckage we can still distinguish some segments of the cupola of an older and less defective make than others. Amongst the scenes of the Creation there is one representing the Eternal, with his arms outstretched, creating the sun and moon, which displays a fair division of proportions. It is better and probably earlier in date than others of the series, yet still inferior to parts of the Last Judgment in the tribune. Amongst the scenes of the Passion we may single out the Crucifixion, in which we find the Saviour bound to the cross with three nails, contrary to the custom of the thirteenth century, which gives a nail to each limb, and other signs make it clear that the work is com- paratively modern. It is, therefore, probably consistent with historic truth to affirm that these and some other parts of the mosaic decoration were executed by men under the influence of Giotto's teaching, and we shall find additional reasons for accepting this belief because the later and more advanced Florentine style is also apparent in remnants of mosaic work between the windows, in which angels and prophets are depicted in the coloured orna- ment of the outer porticoes, facing the cathedral and the neigh- bouring hospital of the Bigallo. The feeblest, but also the most injured and restored fragment of the mosaic decoration of the baptistery, is the Christ in Majesty, which Vasari assigns exclusively to Tafi. It is equally remark- VI.] ANDREA TAFI 177 able for the over-size and grimness of the head, the deformity of the hands and feet, and the gaudiness of streaks of gold in drapery. Violent action trivially rendered marks the angels and apostles at the sides of Christ, showing the hand of an artist who clung to the traditions of earlier ages. But in Satan and his Eealm we observe the spirit and conception of the Giottesques, who liked to represent the Inferno with a figure of Lucifer sitting on dead bodies and loaded with serpents. Tafi may be classed as one of the last artists of the period which immediately preceded the revival of Florentine painting under Cimabue. His timid and superstitious ways are described with as much gusto in the Novelle of Sacchetti as his grotesque style in the pages of Vasari.^ No record has been kept of the works assigned to Tafi at Pisa, no trace of his practice in the execution of pictures has been preserved. His weakness, in contrast with Cimabue,^ only makes the progress of the greater master the more conspicuous.* It ' Feancesoo Sacchetti, Novelle (ed. G. Poggiali, 8vo, Milan), Nov. cxci. vol. iii., p. 136. Sacchetti's Novelle are stated to have been compiled about 1376. * The best edition of the Novelle is that of Gigli (Florence, Le Monnier, 1860). * ' We know of no existing works by Cimabue, save the mosaic in the Duomo of Pisa, which was not entirely by him, and which has been much restored. ' It might have been interesting to institute a comparison between Tafi's mosaic in the baptistery and the mosaics of San Miniato near Florence. On the front of San Miniato the Saviour is represented enthroned between the Virgin and S. Miniato. In the background the Evangelists are represented by their well- known symbols, and a border of birds and other animals is broken here and there with medallions containing apostles. A mutilated inscription contains the letters Ap . . . o DNi Mccxcvii. TEP, PCB P. P. . . . SLO OPUS (but Compare Ktjmohk, Forichungen, i., 354-5). This work, which is of the age of Cimabue's mosaics at Fisa, has been reset upon the old lines, and looks in consequence like a spurious antique. It cannot on that account be criticised, even though the restorers should have found the design contoured in red on the ground beneath the cubes, as Yasari says happened when Alessio Baldovinetti and Lippo restored the mosaics of the baptistery of Florence (Vasaei, i., p. 283). This is a peculiarity common to most mosaic work as well as to fresco. We find it in the mosaics of Cefald, the wall paintings of Assisi, and Benozzo Gozzoli's fresco in the Campo Santo of Fisa. In mosaics the cubes were laid according to the outline on the stucco. In wall paintings the original design was first transferred either to the raw surface of the wall, when the work was to be on one intonaco, or to the first intonaco when two were used. This was done by means of comparative squares, by which a small original drawing in the painter's hand was transferred in larger proportions to the space intended for it. After this transfer, the necessary improvements, having been made on the wall, 178 GEADUAL EISE OF THE ART OF FLORENCE [oh. seems clear that when art had been reduced to the state exemph- fied in the frescoes and mosaics or the crucifixes and pictures of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Italy, it had found the lowest level to which it could possibly descend. We have partly traced the reaction at Assisi. There and in Florence it was chiefly due to the action of the mendicant orders, whose generals were convinced that art in itself was a potent element of influence in attracting the masses at Florence, it led the Dominicans to adorn their convent church with pictures, and in the midst of these operations Cimabue arose and found the first incentives to progress. At Assisi it led to the supersession of Giunta by Cimabue,^ and later on to the supersession of Cimabue by Giotto and his numerous disciples. If we believe Vasari, Cimabue was of a noble Tuscany family, and born in 1240, and being an intelligent boy was sent by his parents to the Dominicans of Florence to prepare him for a clerk's career. He was put under the charge of the master of the novices at Santa Maria Novella, or rather at the old monastery of that name, which was demolished in after years to make room for the present convent and church. The Dominicans at that time were busy with the internal decoration of the walls, which Vasari says had been entrusted to artists engaged in Greece by the governors of Florence. Cimabue, instead of perusing his books, paid visits to the painters, and soon showed so much skill as a draughtsman that his parents apprenticed him to the Greeks, and he became their superior in the two principal qualities of design and colour.^ We observe that, according to Vasari, all the arts had decayed at the same time. Sculpture was restored by Mccola Pisano, architecture by Fuccio, mosaics and painting by Florentines were transposed as corrections to the original small drawing. The final intonaco was then laid on in portions and retraced with the assistance of the squares on the still uncovered parts and on the corrected design. The use of a single intonaco lasted to the close of the thirteenth century. Two were introduced at the time of Giotto, and continued by his successors, and it was not till the fifteenth century that cartoons were pricked and pounced. * ' It is impossible to say whether or not Cimabue worked at Assisi. The most important of the pre-Giottesque works there are, as we have seen, by Roman masters. " Vasaki, i., 219. VI.] CIMABUE 179 taught by Greeks. The revival is probably not due to Greeks. There are no records confirming the statement that the Florentine State ever sent to Greece for painters. Vasari is wrong in sup- posing that Cimabue was the descendant of a noble Florentine family. The register of receipts and expenses of the convent of Santa Chiara of Pisa, which has recently come to light, contains a contract to which we shall presently refer, from which it appears that Giovanni, or Cenni, bore the nickname of Cimabu, but was the son of one Pepi, and lived at Florence in the parish of St. Ambrose.! Wherever Cimabue was taught, he learnt something more than his immediate precursors. Though he did not raise the standard of art to a very high level, he certainly infused new life into old and worn conceptions. He threw a new energy and individuality into the empty forms of the older guildsmen, and he shed some- thing of poetry and feeling and colour upon a degenerate school of painting. The wonder is not that he clung to the models, out of which we can still see that he first shaped his designs, but that upon such a canvas he should have achieved the advance which gave him repute. We can find no Greek elements in the art, which he simply evolved out of the rough Italian materials which we have been examining in works of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and it is impossible to countenance the belief that better skill in painting could have been found amongst the Greeks than amongst the Italians of the age of Cimabue.^ ' See G. Fontana's Due docwmenii inediti rigua/rdanti Cimahue (Pisa, 1878). ^ Unfortunately for Vasari's theory of Greek painting practised at Florence, it is preyed that the present S. Maria Novella was only commenced forty years after Cimabue's birth. Succeeding authors have supposed that the paintings of the so- called Greeks were rude ones executed in the chapels of Sant' Anna and Sant' Antonio, in the old church beneath the sacristy of S. Maria Novella. These, repre- senting the birth of the Virgin and scenes from her life, were engi'aved by D'Agin- court, in ignorance of the fact that they were of the fourteenth century. Dblla Valle and Lanzi (p. 41), in the same path, fell back at last upon.some older paint- ings discovered beneath the foregoing, which they assigned to the Greeks of Vasari, but which merely exhibited the rude hand of one amongst the feeble artists common to Italy in the thirteenth century (see Vasaki, ed. Le Monnier, i., p. 220). * According to the authors, the present church of S. Maria Novella was begun about the year 1280. There is, however, little doubt now that a considerable part of the second church, begun in 1246, forms part of the existing church. It has been shown by Mr. Wood Brown that the Gondi chapel formed part of the second 180 GEADUAL EISE OF THE ART OF FLOEENCE [ch. It is sufficient that we shall be able to agree with Vasari in thinking that Cimabue was the first Italian who gave an impulse to progress in the arts of drawing and painting at a time when both were in the lowest state of decay. It may be that he was not only sensible of the necessity for a change, but proud of having helped to bring it on. We read in the Purgatorio how conscious he was of holding the field which Giotto afterwards wrested from him.^ A commentator, not older than the first half of the fourteenth century, says he was so zealous of his fame that if defects were pointed out to him in any of his works he would destroy them.'' The admiration of his contemporaries was such that we can hardly conceive the occurrence of this event. It is in contrast with the anecdote* according to which the Madonna Eucellai, when finished, was so admired that when taken to its place of exhibition in Santa Maria Novella, it was carried in procession, preceded by a band of trumpeters, after the mightiest lords and patricians of Florence had been invited to see it in the painter's rooms.* church. We know, too, that this chapel was formerly dedicated to St. Luke. And Fineschi, the historian of S. Maria Kovella, asserts, upon the evidence of early documents, that a Greek, Fra Ranieri, decorated this chapel. It is not, therefore, impossible that there may be some truth in Vasari's story. See Wood Brown, The Dominican Church of S, Maria Novella, Edinburgh, 1902, p. 60, and Finbschi's life of Bishop Saltarelli in the Archirio di Stato, Florence, MSS. dei Conv. Sopp.; S. Maria Novella, ' See, in the Purgatorio (canto xi., v. 94), the well-known lines: — " Credette Cimabue nella pintura Tener lo campo ; ed ora ha Giotto il grido Si, che la fama di colui e oscura." ' Vasaki, ed. Sansoni, i., p. 257. * ^ There is no early authority for this story. It is probably a corrupt, localised version of a Sienese historical narrative. Seepostea, pp. 192, 193. * * The authors do not show their usual critical acumen in preferring the testimony of a tradition which cannot be traced back farther than the early years of the sixteenth century, a tradition, too, that is first reported by untrustworthy witnesses, to the statement of one who may have seen Cimabue himself, and may well have conversed with those who knew him well. In estimating, too, the value of a story of this kind the prejudices of those who told it must be taken into account. The commentator on Dante could have had, as far as we can say, no ulterior motive in repeating such a story as he told, whilst Albertini and Vasari were impelled by their strong local patriotism to show that Cimabue was a very important person in his own day. vi.J THE RUCELLAI MADONNA 181 It is equally difficult to assign a date to the beginning of Cimabue's independent practice as a painter and to say when the Madonna of Santa Maria Novella was first placed on the altar on which it is even now standing.^ We must be content to accept the fact that, for the time in which it was executed, the Madonna Kucellai is a masterpiece. In this great and important picture the Virgin is represented in a red tunic and blue mantle, with her feet resting on an open-worked stool, sitting on a chair hung with a white drapery flowered in gold and blue, and carried by six angels kneeling in threes above each other. A deHcately engraved nimbus surrounds her head and that of the infant Saviour on her lap, dressed in a white tunic and purple mantle shot with gold. A dark-coloured frame surrounds the picture and its gables, which are deUcately traced with an ornament, interrupted at intervals by thirty medallions on gold ground, each of which contains the half figure of a saint. The face of the Madonna is marked by a tender and melancholy expression, the infant is well shaped and not wanting in animation, and the group displays a rare amount of maternal affection. The attitudes of the angels, the movement of the heads, and the elegance with which the hair is wound round the cinctures, falling in locks on the neck, are all pleasing. We are justly struck by the energetic mien of some prophets. To qualify this praise, we are bound to admit a certain loss of balance, caused by the overweight of the Virgin's head as compared with the slightness of her frame. The features are those to which the thirteenth century has accustomed us, softened, as regards the expression of the eye, by closed lids and an exaggeration of elliptical form in the iris. The nose starts from a bony protuberance, and is depressed at the end ; and the mouth and chin are, as usual, small and prim. In the Saviour, the same coarse nose wiU be • 1 It cannot be proved that a single picture attributed to Cimabue was painted by him. There is no documentary evidence of an earlier date than the sixteenth century that can be urged in support of the views of those who hold that the Eucellai Madonna and other works were by Cimabue. At that period Florentine writers, anxious to give all the credit of the revival of painting to a son of Florence, provided Giotto's supposed master with a heterogeneous list of works and a legend. With the exception of the much-restored mosaics of the Pisan Duomo, there is not one existing work that can be given to Cimabue. The evidence of documents and of style-criticism alike prove that the Rucellai Madonna is an early work of Duccio di Buoninsegna. We have discussed this question fully in an appendix at the end of this chapter. Seepostea, pp. 187-193. /! i 182 GRADUAL RISE OF THE ART OF FLORENCE [oe. found united to a half- open mouth and large staring eyes; and the features may be considered too masculine and square. The hands of both Virgin and Child are remarkable for the length of the taper fingers, their wide separation near the palm, and the stiffness of their articulations. The feet are quite conventional in shape. In the grouping of the angels, the absence of all true notions of composition is striking. Their frames are slight for the heads, though their movements are more natural and pleasing than those of earlier artists. In the setting of drapery, Cimabue shows no sensible progress ; but he softens the hard- ness of the fine engraved outlines, and he gives to the flesh tints a clear and carefully fused colour, and imparts to the surfaces some of the rotundity which they had lost, ^^ith him vanish the old contrasts of half tones and shades. He abandons line shadowing for a careful stippling which follows and developes form. He relieves the general verde underground with ruddy shadows and warm lights. A flush tinges, without staining, the cheeks and lips. Unity and harmony are given by a system of final glazes, which, having now in part disappeared, exaggerate the paleness of the flesh. ~l The draperies are painted in gay and transparent colours — reds, gently harmonising with the flesh, and brilliant blues and rosy pinks. In ornament, there is more taste and a better subordination than of old.^ From the date of this altarpiece the Florentine school begins to expand. Without it the superiority of Cimabue over his pre- decessors would remain unexplained, the principal link of artistic history at Florence would be lost, and Giotto's greatness would be difficult to understand.^ There are companion pictures to that ' Time has, unfortunately, not spared portions of this picture ; which, besides being longitudinally split in three places, is damaged as regards several of the saints in the border medallions. * ^ In the case of a great master it is not so important to know who his actual master was as to discover the chief influences that helped to mould his style. Giotto's own works reveal to us the fact that in his youth he had come under the influence of the leaders of two great artistic movements. We can trace in them the influence of Fietro Oavallini and the neo-classical Koman school, on the one hand, and of Niccola and Giovanni Fisano on the other. The Boman school had a lineage much clearer than that of Oimabue. It is possible, too, to trace the origin of the movement of which Niccola was the first exponent in Tuscany. Even if the Eucellai Madonna were by Oimabue, which it is not, it would help us little in explaining the origin and early history of Giotto. But that master's kinship with the gieat fresco painters and mosaists of Home and the sculptors of Fisa is obvious. Giotto's greatness, in fact, is less difficult to understand than it was a century ago. He owes something of his sense of form to Cavalliui and to Niocola Fisano. To the (^/tcca^oTiyn^a.- 8"- &A^c^. vi.J THE RUCELLAI MADONNA 183 of Santa Maria Novella — one at the Florentine Academy, another in the Louvre. For various reasons neither of them gives a just idea of the master. The altarpiece of the Academy of Arts may rank high as regards composition and the study of nature ; but the old types are too obstinately maintained in it, and the colour has been so altered from a variety of causes that the qualities of Cimabue can hardly be traced in it any longer.^ Cimabue here represents the Virgin of more than natural stature, enthroned with the Child in the act of benediction on her lap. The chair on which she sits is supported by eight angels, and her feet are on a stool resting on Tour arches, in which prophets stand. She is perhaps more natural in attitude and head than in the previous example, but Cimabue has not given as much care to her delineation as we should expect. The outlines are coarser, the frame more robust than else- where. But a wild energy characterises the two prophets in the central niche. 2 In the Madonna at the Louvre the old ornamented frame with its twenty-six medallions, containing busts of saints, is reminiscent of that of the Eucellai, and shares much of its character, though apparently more carelessly executed.^ Originally in San Fran- cesco of Pisa, this altarpiece may be taken as evidence of the painter's stay in that city, when at the close of his life he held the office of capo-maestro of the mosaics of the Duomo. But other pictures of Cimabue in Florentine churches and collections call for notice before we turn to the mosaics of Pisa. A large crucifix in the sacristy of Santa Croce at Florence is still attributed to him, because a work of the kind was noted as same masters he is largely indetted for his fine free manner of designing drapery. To the inspiration of Giovanni Pisano he owes some of his dramatic power. * ' The Madonna attributed to Cimabue is certainly not by the same hand as the Rucellai Madonna, and the crucifix at S. Croce is by a different hand to either. 2 Florence Academy, Sala dei Maestri Tosoani, Sala Prima, No. 102, on a chair supported by eight guardian angels; the throne upon a floor resting on niched supports, in which the four prophets stand who foretold the Saviour's coming; such is again the simple subject of the altarpiece of the Academy of Arts at Florence, whose gable form has been modernised into a rectangular one. ' Louvre, No. 1,260. Wood, m. 4.24 h. by 2.76. The glazes are removed and the surfaces are abraded. The draperies, originally shot with gold, are repainted, and the gold ground and haloes are regilded. Many of the medallions, too, are repainted. 184 GEADUAL KISE OF THE ART OF FLORENCE [ch. his by Vasari and Albertini.^ The antiquated character of the painting may point to the master's early time, and explain the pleasure with which the Florentines afterwards witnessed the more attractive art of the Madonna of Santa Maria Novella. An altarpiece which once stood in a chapel in Santa Croce now forms part of the collection of the National Gallery. It repre- sents the Virgin, over life-size, with the infant Christ on her knee, adored by six angels. It is a pity that time and accidents should have robbed this piece of many of the characteristics which mark Cimabue's style. But some fragments remain to justify the nomenclature.^ ^ Vasari, ed. Sansoni, i., p. 251 ; Albebtini, MemoriaUdimolte statue epitiwe che sono nella cittA di Firenxe (reprint from the original edition of 1510, by 6. and C. MiiANBSi and C. Guasti), Firenze, 1863, p. 15. ^ National Gallery, No. 565 ; tempera, wood, with gabled top, 6 feet 3 inches high by 5 feet 6 inches ; from the Ugo Baldi and Lombardi collection and Santa Croce. Vasabi, ed. Sansoni,i.,p. 250; BoooBi, Bellezze di Firenze (Virenze, 1591),p. 153; andCiNiLLi (do. 1677), p. 316. Before proceeding to notice other works assigned to Cimabue, we should state that the following, mentioned by Vasari, have perished, viz. the wall paintings in the hospital of the Forcellana (ibid., i., p. 2S0) ; St. Agnes, a panel with side pictures of the life of the saint, in San Faolo a Bipa d'Arno at Pisa (ibid., i. ,p. 251); wall paintings, with scenes from the life of Christ in San Spirito at Florence ; and paintings at Gmpoli (Vasaei, i., p. 254). In the Academy of Arts at Florence, a Virgin and Child (No. 46), from San Paolino of Florence, is assigned to Cimabue, but is evidently not by him. Vasari mentions as one of Cimabue's first works an altarpiece in St. Cecilia at Florence (i., p. 250), which has been thought identical with one in the Uffizi, formerly in St. Cecilia, and later in S. Stefano (No. 2 Catalogue of the TJffizi). It represents St. Cecilia enthroned. At the upper angles of the throne two angels wave censers. On each side are four episodes of the life of the saint. This picture is executed according to the methods of the beginning of the fourteenth century, and therefore in the Giottesque manner rather than in the style of Cimabue. Vasari assigns to Cimabue the St. Francis of Santa Croce, which has already found a place amongst the works of Margaritone. Eugler attributes to Cimabue a picture in a passage leading to the sacristy of S. Simone at Florence representing St. Peter. The date of 1307 on this piece excludes Cimabue. In the late Campana Gallery at Rome, and subsequently under No. 10 in the Mus^e Napoleon III. at the Louvre, was a St. Christopher, supposed to be that which, according to Vasari, was painted by Cimabue in his house -in Borgo Allegri at Florence (Vasabi, i., p. 225). This picture, extensively damaged, is evidently of the first half of the fourteenth century. No. 15 of the same museum at the Louvre represents the Virgin and Child with angels, and was assigned to Cimabue in the Campana collection. It is a Giottesque work. But these pieces are not now exhibited at the Louvre. Bioha (iv., p. 306) notices a crucifix by Cimabue in the convent church of S. Jacopo di Ripoli at Florence. At Christ Church, Oxford, there are a ^JAlMiXXA AND CHIT. 11 E\KLY SlE.N":£i: S.'HOOL FiMiii a jMOturo ill tlie Natinnal Gallery, l. — To J\'c<: i-vje 1^4 VI. J CIMABUE AT PISA 185 The exact time of Cimabue's arrival at Pisa is not known, but the books of the cathedral tell us that he was employed there in May, 1301,^ with Francesco of San Simone, Lapo of Florence, Duccio (? Siena), and other painters,^ in producing the Majesty, a large mosaic in the apsis of the Pisan Cathedral. In November of the same year Cimabue and his partner, Nucchulus Apparec- chiati, contracted to paint an altarpiece with a predella for the brethren of the hospital of Santa Chiara of Pisa ; and although it appears that the altarpiece was never executed, the mosaics are still in existence, and give a sufficient idea of the master's range of power.* That the Pisans should employ Cimabue to design the mosaics of their Duomo, and supersede for his sake their old capo-maestro Francesco, that the latter should not only yield to Cimabue, but labour in his company, is one of the strongest proofs which can be adduced to show that the Pisans were unable to find in their own school a master equal to the Florentine.* fragment of a, Virgin and a St. Peter, two panels assigned to Cimabue, but by some late Giottesque. There is also a Virgin and Child enthroned between six angels, with a kneeling donor in front. At the sides are Christ crucified between the Virgin and Evangelist, and St. Francis receiving the stigmata. These three pieces, assigned to Cimabue, are by some follower of Duocio of Siena. * The picture of St. Cecilia mentioned at the close of the first paragraph resembles in some peculiarities of composition and drawing the first and the four last of the St. Francis series in the upper church at Assisi. This has already been remarked by Mr. Fry. See Fkt, Giotto in the Monthly Bemew, December, 1900, pp. 156-157. Two panels in the Munich Gallery, which are attributed to Cimabue, are works of the Eoman school. See page 97 of this volume. * ^ Cimabue began to work on the Majestas on August 30th, 1301. * ^ Francesco of S. Simone, a Pisan painter, was the first to work upon the mosaic of the Majestas. He was succeeded by Cimabue. We have searched through the lAbri d'entrata e uscita of the Duomo, but can find no mention of Duccio in the years 1301 and 1302. There was Parduccius and a Pucoius, who assisted Cimabue. Probably Morrona, who gives Duccio as an assistant of Cimabue, mis- read one of the references to Parduccius and to Puocius. Parduccius could not have been Duccio, as he is referred to as " puer." Duccio must have been over forty years of age at the least in 1301. ^ In CiAMPi {Notizie, p. 144) is a record of 1302, Pisan style (equivalent to 1301 of our reckoning), in which Cimabue's name appears as receiving, in company of his "famulus," pay at the rate of ten solidos per diem, for the execution of the Majesty in the Duomo of Pisa. The document says: "Cimabue pictor magies- tatis sua sponte oonfessus fuit se habuisse . . . &c. lib. decern . . . de figura S. Johannis quam fecit juxta magiestatem." Thus he had already completed the Majesty when he commenced the figure of St. John. See also G. Fontana, Due Doeumenti, u.s., p. 5 and fol. * * That Cimabue superseded Francesco is true. But we can find no docu- 186 GRADUAL RISE OF THE ART OF FLORENCE [oh. vi. The Saviour enthroned in Glory between the Virgin and St. John Evangelist, in the apsis of the Duomo of Pisa, was probably the last of Cimabue's labours, as, according to Ciampi, the latter figure remaiaed unfinished. Unfortunately the mosaic has sufiered excessive damage. In the Saviour, the feet and other parts ; in the Virgin, the face ; and in St. John, subordinate portions have been deprived of their original character by restoring. Yet in the forms and features of these figures, and in the colossal overweight of the Saviour, the manner of Cimabue can be discerned. He gives the Redeemer a melancholy rather than a grim expression, and a certain majestic air of repose in the attitude and features. The head is of the circular shape, which had never been lost in Italy since it was first conceived by an artist of the Roman catacombs. The brow is stiU heavily projected and wrinkled, but the eyes have lost ■ the gaze of the degenerate period; and the features are not without regularity and proportion. Thus Cimabue, who had reformed the type of the Virgin, moulded that of the Saviour in a better shape. To the bending figure of the Evangelist he also gives a certain languid reverence peculiarly his own. Finally, as a mosaist, he proves himself superior to the artists of the baptistery of Florence and even to Gaddo Gaddi, whose works at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome are also evidence of the impulse given to Florentine art. Of Cimabue's death Vasari gives an incorrect account so far as he registers its occurrence in 1300. Fisan records prove his existence in November, 1302, of the Pisan year, which vrould be 1301 of the Florentine reckoning. After that date we lose sight of him. His residence and labours at Assisi, where many wall paintings in his style are preserved, cannot reasonably be called in question.^ But as the study of his works in San Francesco of Assisi involves the whole question of the rise of Giotto, it will be necessary to devote to this sanctuary a special chapter. mentary evidence to support the statement that they worked at the Majestas together. Since we consulted the Libri cPerUrata e uscita of the Duomo, Tanfani- Centopanti Noiizie di Artisti tratte dai Vocumenti Piscmi has appeared. The learned Pisa archivist has found no document in which Francesco is spoken of as working with Cimabue. See Tanfani-Obntofanti, op. cit., pp. 114-121. * ' Enmohr and other competent authorities of hia day have asserted that there is no trustworthy evidence that Cimabue painted in the Upper Church at Assisi. See RuMGHE, op. cit., torn, i., §8. Professor WickhofiF and Dr. J. P. Riohterare of the opinion that there are no existing paintings which can be definitely assigned to Cimabue. See Wickhoff, U^er der zeit des Ouido von Siena. In Mitthdlimgen APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI CIMABUE AND THE RUCELLAI MADONNA "VrOWHEEE does the local patriotism of Florentine writers more XI powerfully manifest itself than in their accounts of early Tuscan artists. Since the latter half of the fifteenth century there has been a succession of writers who have sought to prove that the whole credit of the revival of the art of painting in Italy belonged to Florence. "It became an axiom with Tuscan historians that every great artist" in Siena or "in northern Italy about whose artistic education they knew little or nothing must have been initiated into the art of painting in Florence,"^ and that every important early picture or fresco that could not be proved to be by an artist of another school was by a Florentine master. They were not content with hymning the mighty genius of Giotto, for Giotto had contemporaries of other schools, who, though lesser men, were also innovators. They were anxious to show that, in the thirteenth century, when all was darkness elsewhere, the new light was already shining in the city by the Arno. Consequently at the commencement of the fifteenth century it became the fashion to magnify Cimabue, to antedate his career, and to attribute aU early Tuscan pictures of merit to him. Cimabue was held up to admiration as the Father of Italian painting. The evidence of contemporary documents and early references to Cimabue do not at all justify the prejudiced statements of patriotic Florentines. The evidence of documents only proves that he helped to execute the much-restored Majestas of the Pisa Duomo, and that he painted a picture of S. Chiara at Pisa, a work which has since been lost. Dante indeed tells us that Cimabue held the field in paintiag before Giotto; but Dante, exile though he was, was deeply imbued with Florentinism, and was prone to exaggerate the achievements of his friends and of his friends' friends. If Dante did not know Cimabue des Institut/iir osterreichische GescMchisforschvmg, Innsbruck, 1895, and Eiohtek, Lectures on the National Gallery, London, 1898, p. 4. The first mention of Cimabue's labours at Assisi occurs in the Book of Antonio BilU, which was com- posed between the years 1506 and 1532. No two authoritative writers are agreed as to the works which are to be attributed to Cimabue at Assisi. ' BiCHTEB, Notes to Vasari's Lives of the Pairiiers, London, George Bell and Sons, 1892, p. 105. 187 188 CIMABUE AND THE RUCELLAI MADONNA [app.to personally, as an early tradition relates, he was a friend of Giotto, and both his Florentinism and his friendship with Cimabue's pupil Giotto led him. no doubt to magnify the importance of the older master's achievement. 1 Dante, like a true Florentine, had a strong prejudice against the Sienese and all their works. He probably knew little or nothing of the achievement of the few great masters of the Roman proto-Benaissance. Dante's mention of Cimabue proves nothing more than that that artist was the greatest Florentine painter in the years that immediately preceded Giotto's recognition as a great painter, that is, in the concluding years of the thirteenth century. The early com- mentators on Dante add but a little personal anecdote as comment upon the poet's brief allusion to the master. Ghiberti, writing a century after Cimabue's death, merely makes a passing mention of him as one of the painters in the Greek manner. It was not until the beginning of the fifteenth century that the Cimabue legend began to assume definite shape. At the time of the Renaissance, Florentines began to take a deeper interest in the achievements of great Florentines, began to write " Lives " of them in imitation of the classical biographers. And as the golden age of Italian art began to wane, the voice of the art-critic and the art-historian began to be heard in the land. Florence was eager to show that her sons had led the way in the revival of the art of painting. She soon gained the ear of the civilised world, and persuaded men to take the achievement of the early Florentine painters at her own valuation. Early in the sixteenth century Albertini gave the first hst of Cimabue's works, a heterogeneous catalogue of pictures by various artists, and the writer of the Book of Antonio BiUi put before the world the embryo Cimabue legend. Out of this material, and the scanty references of earlier writers, Vasari constructed his amazing biography of Cimabue. The earlier of the "Lives" of the Aretiae writer, his biographies of Giotto and Duccio, of Agostino di Giovanni, and Agnolo di Ventura, are full of inaccuracies, improbable anecdotes, and stories which have been proved to be inventions. But his life of Cimabue is the most unveracious of aU of them. He did not even know the painter's name. He did not know the name of his family. He did not know the date of his death. He did not know the date of his authentic works at Pisa. But to Vasari his imagination was a very present help in time of trouble. In his anxiety to exalt his hero by ' Cimabue waa perhaps Giotto's master ; but the forces that played the most important part in the formation of his style were the influence of the great Boman masters and the influence of Niccola and Giovanni Fisano. CH. VI.] VASARI AND CIMABUE 189 depreciating his contemporaries and predecessors, he began his biography with one of the most astounding of the many extraordinary mis- representations to be found in his great work. "The overwhelming flood of evils by which unhappy Italy had been submerged and devastated," he writes, "had not only destroyed whatever could properly be called buildings, but, a still more deplorable consequence, had totally exterminated the artists themselves, when, by the will of God, in the year 1240 Giovanni Cimabue, of the noble family of that name, was born in the city of Florence to give light to the art of painting." This sentence contains at least four errors upon plain matters of fact. To comment upon them is quite unnecessary. As we think upon Vasari's statement there rise before us the noblest works of the greatest school of architecture that modem Italy has produced, the school that arose in Vasari's own Tuscany, but not in Florence. We see Pisa Cathedral; the cathedral of Lucca and San Michele in that city ; and S. Giovanni Fuorcivitas at Pistoia. I see, too, the noble abbeys of Tuscany built under French influence, S. Galgano in the Valley of the Merse, and S. Antimo, near Montalcino. And not only had Tuscany produced great architects iu the Middle Ages : before Cimabue rose to pre- eminence there were flourishing schools of painting in Siena, Pisa, and Florence. Just as Neapolitan writers provided the legendary Simone Napoletano with a list of pictures, of works which belonged of right to Sienese and Florentine painters, so Vasari and other Florentine writers gave to their local hero Cimabue a number of works by the great early artists of Rome and Siena. So eager were they to add to his list of pictures that, as we have seen, even Margaritone was laid under contribution. Just as the Coronation of King Robert in San Lorenzo at Naples was filched from Simone Martini and given to a Neapolitan painter by his patriotic fellow-countrymen, so, in Florence, a great work of a foreign artist, Duccio di Buoninsegna, was assigned to Cimabue. That the Rucellai Madonna was painted by Duccio can be demonstrated both by documentary evidence and by connoisseurship. First, let us consider the documentary evidence for this attribution. In the Florence Archives there is to be found a copy of an agreement made by Duccio di Buoninsegna on April 15th, 1285, with the Rector and officials of the Society of St. Mary Virgin to paint a Madonna for their altar in S. Maria Novella. The Rucellai Madonna I hold is the picture referred to in that document. The Chapel of the Society of St. Mary was at that time the chapel 190 CIMABUE AND THE EUCELLAI MADONNA [app.to afterwards known as the Bardi Chapel, which is in the right transept of S. Maria Novella. When the Eucellai Madonna appears in the sixteenth century it is found by Vasari hanging on the wall of the church just outside the Bardi Chapel. How it was that Duccio's picture was re- moved from its original position to this spot is easily explainable. In the year 1335 the Chapel of St. Gregory passed into the hands of the Bardi of Vernio, who redecorated it, and no doubt provided it with an altarpiece of their own choosing. Consequently, the Madonna of the Confraternity of St. Mary Virgin was moved from the chapel. But as its members continued to meet in the right transept, the picture was placed near to its old position on the wall outside the Bardi Chapel, where Vasari saw it. It was subsequently removed into the Rucellai Chapel, and came to be known as the Bucellai Madonna. The two historians of S. Maria Novella, P. Fineschi, who wrote in 1790, and Mr. Wood Brown, who wrote in 1902, maintain, in defiance of popular opinion, that this picture is a work of Duccio. There is no mention of any work by Cimabue in any of the records of the convent. But the documentary evidence for this attribution would not suffice were it not supported by connoisseurship. Professor Wickhoff and Dr. J. P. Richter have both contended that the picture is a work of the Sienese school. Dr. Eichter, in fact, after a careful examination of the altarpiece, declared that it diifered in nothing from Duccio's great Majestas in Siena. The present writers can indeed detect some slight differences in style between the two pictures, but only such as one would expect to find in two works painted by the same artist at a distance of twenty-five years, in a period of rapid development in the art of painting. In its forms, in its colour, in its technique, the Eucellai Madonna is entirely Sienese. The altarpiece at S. Maria Novella is an early work, and thus the peculiarities of Duccio's early style. Some- thing of Byzantine stiffness and Byzantine convention is, of course, to be found in it. In the drawing of the drapery we do not find the same knowledge of the human form, the same freedom that manifest them- selves in Duccio's last great masterpiece. And whilst the child in this picture differs but little from Duccio's later representations of the divine Infant, the features of the Virgin remind us in some respect of his Byzantine predecessors. But these differences do not in any way affect our contention that the Eucellai Madonna is by Duccio. For in the Siena Gallery (Stanza i., No. 20) is an undoubted early work of the Sienese master in which are to be found these same peculiarities, the peculiarities of the artist's early MADONNA AND CHILD By DOOCIO 1)1 BCONINSEONA From a picture in the Siena Gallery Lomhardi, pho. l.—To face page 190 CH. vi.J THE RUCELLAI MADONNA BY DUCCIO 191 manner. This picture is most closely related to the Eucellai Madonna. In type and in posture the infant in the little picture in the Siena Gallery is identical with that in the S. Maria Novella altarpiece. We note the arrangement of the hair over the left temple, the left ear of the bahy, its mouth, its hands, its feet : in both pictures these features are the same. Especially noticeable is the curious posture of the left leg and foot. This is entirely characteristic of Duccio's early manner. In the representations of the Madonna the similarity between the two pictures is scarcely less marked. We note in them the chief characteristics of Duccio's early manner, the large elliptical iris to the eye, the mouth a little askew and turned down at the corners, the nose more aquiline than in his later works. The drapery too is stiffer and more angular in design than in the master's later works : we miss the sinuous, flowing lines of the robe of the Madonna in the Majestas. Yet more marked is the similarity betweeij the thrones in the two pictures. In each case the throne is made of wood, is seen from the side, and has a high footstool with a double arch in front. And if we examine the thrones closely, we find that there is a similarity in details of pattern. We see it in the ornamentation of the framework of the two thrones, in the finials of their front supports, in the leaf decoration in the spandrels of the arches of the footstool. These thrones, if not based upon the throne in the early Sienese picture of St. Peter Enthroned in the Siena Gallery, are at least derived from the same source. We see then that the few points of style in which the Eucellai Madonna differs from Duccio's Majestas, which Mr. Roger Fry, the latest defender of the traditional attribution, regards as the peculiarities of Cimabue, are in fact the characteristics of Duccio's early manner. Living in an age of rapid transition and in the city which Giovanni Pisano had made his home, it is but natural that Duccio's style underwent some modifications in the course of a quarter of a century. The artist studied more and more the structure of the human figure under northern influences. He became less Byzantine and more Gothic. The lines of his draperies become more graceful, more sinuous, his modelling stronger. His later Madonnas are less languid, less mournful than his earlier. Ihere is a marked difference, too, in the thrones he designs. In his jarher works the thrones are of wood. His later thrones — designed when the influence of sculptors like Arnolfo and Maitano was strong in Puscany — are of marble, and are inlaid with mosaic. Notwithstanding these differences, the relationship between the Rucellai Madonna and Duccio's latest work, his great Majestas, is un- 192 CIMABUE AND THE RUCELLAI MADONNA [app.to mistakable. There is, too, a close connection between the Eucellai Madonna and the works of some of Duccio's followers, such as Segna di Buonaventura, who, like some of Era Angelico's pupils, copied in some particulars their master's earlier manner. It would be easy to trace the relationship of the S. Maria Novella altarpiece to Segna's altarpieces at Castiglione Fiorentino and Citta di Castello, and to the Madonna of Duccio's school, a work which is attributed to Cimabue, in the National Gallery. The angels in the picture at London are of a similar type to those of the Majestas, and the infant resembles the representation of the Divine Child in the little Madonna of Duccio in the Siena Gallery to which we have already alluded. It is easy to account for the Florentine legend of the triumphal procession of the Bucellai Madonna from Gimabue's house to S. Maria NoveUa. The student of comparative mythology knows that a striking story, true or imaginary, belonging to one race was often borrowed altogether or in pa.rt by a neighbouring people. Now whilst we can find no earlier allusion to this alleged triumphal reception of a Madonna of Cimabue than that written by the author of the Book of Antonio Billi, an author who wrote about two and a half centuries after the event is supposed to have taken place, we have unimpeachable contemporary evidence that a triumphal reception similar to that described by Vasari was actually given to Duccio's great Siena altarpiece, when on June 9th, 1311, it was conveyed from Duccio's house, near the Porta a Stalloregi, to the Siena Duomo. On that day, a contemporary chronicler relates, a public holiday was proclaimed in Siena. All shops and offices were closed. "With great pomp the bishops and clergy of Siena, the priors of the Nine and other officials of the Republic, and a great concourse of citizens bore the noble ancona to its appointed place. The account of this event given by the anonymous chronicler is confirmed by contemporary documents (see Arch, di Stato, Siena, lAbro del Camarlingo del Comune, June, 1311 ; c. 261). This story of the procession of Duccio's Majestas no doubt reached Florence, and was told and retold there. In course of time the name of the Sienese artist was forgotten, but Cimabue's name was kept fresh in men's minds by Dante's eulogy of him. Ultimately, by a quite natural process, the name of the Florentine painter took the place of that of Duccio in the traditional narrative; and when, at the time of the Renaissance, the RuceUai Madonna was attributed to Cimabue, the transplanted story of the procession of the Majestas was naturally attached to that great picture. OH. VI. J THE CIMABUE LEGEND 193 Naples affoids an analogous example of theft. She also stole the story of the piocessioa of the picture and bestowed it upon her shadowy Simone Napoletano, to whom also she gave such Sienese works as Simone Martini's Coronation of King Bobert. And local patriotism was even stronger in Florence than in Naples. We conclude, then, that the EuceUai Madonna is a work of Duooio, and that to scientific criticism Cimabue as an artist is an unknown person ; and we believe that Giotto, the real founder of the Florentine school, owed more to Pietro Cavallini and the Roman masters, on the one hand, and to Niccola and Giovanni Pisano on the other, than to any early Tuscan painters. I.— o INDEXES INDEX OF PLACES Amalfi, Cathedral gates of, 59, 113 Paintings at, 59, 60 Vasari's reference to, 112, 113 Sculptors at, 119 Amiens, 123 n. ' Anagni, inscriptions at, 85, 86 S. Angelo-in-Formis. See Capua Ancona, S. Ciraco, fajade, 168 Palazzo Comunale, 167 S. Antimo, 189 Arezzo, the Cathedral, 168 S. Clemente, 166 S. Domenico, 165 Episcopal Palace, 168 S. Maria della Pieve, 165 Margaritone's works there, 165, 166, 168 Museum, 166 Aasisi, S. Francesco, the Lower Church, 96, 96 n., 147, 148 S. Francesco, the Upper Church, 74, 149-153, 178, 186 S. Maria degli Angeli, 74, 150 Benevento, 101 n. Berlin, Museum, 26 n., 27, 119 Eonigliches Kunstgewerbe Mu- seum, 160 n. Bologna, S. Domenico, 120, 130, 131 Buda-Pesth, Gallery, 160 n. Capua, 112, 113, 120 S. Angelo-in-Formis (near), 56- 60, 70 n., 102 S. Benedetto, 60 the Circus of, 116, 117 Museum, busts at, 117, 118 S. Cassiano, near Pisa, 99 Castiglione Aretino, 165, 166, 167, 192 OefalS, mosaics at, 61, 62, 64, 65 Chartres, 123 n. Citti di Oastello, 192 Civita Castellana, 84, 85, 86, 87, 91 n. Constantinople, 17, 29 n., 59, 64, 113, 170 Cortona, the Pieve di, 125 n. S. Margarita, 125 n., 126 S. Donnino, 140 Falleri, near Civita Castellana, 85 n. Ferrara, the Cathedral, 105 n. Florence, Academy, 183, 184 n. SS. Annunziate, 96 Baptistery, 76-78, 87, 175- 177, 186 Bargello, 105 S. Basilic, 96 Cathedral, 127 n., 128 n. S. Croce, 127 n., 167, 183 n., 184 n. S. Leonardo, 105 S. Marco, 43 n., 95 8. Maria Maggiore, 174 n. S. Maria Novella, 157 n., 178, 179 n., 180 n. Rucellai Madonna at, 180- 184, 187-193 S. Maria dei Servi, 96 S. Miniato-al-Monte, 177 n. Museo Nazionale. See Bar- gello S. Paolino, 184 n. S. Piero Scheraggio, 105 School of, 81, 83, 136, 173, 187, 193 S. Spirito, 184 n. UfBzi Gallery, 184 n., 185 n. Florentinism, 81 n., 82 n. Ganghereto, 167 Genoa, Academy, 153, 154 n. S. Michele, 153 S. Gemignano, S. Chiara, 158 Palazzo Comunale, 156 Greece, influence of, in Italian art, 17, 42, 44 n., 52 n., 63 n. Grottaferrata, the Badia, mosaics at, 66 n. Groppoli, S. Michele, 99, 100, 104 197 198 INDEX OF PLACES Ile-de-France, the art of, 114 n., 115 n. London, National Gallery, 166, 184 n., 192 Wornum collection, 167 Lucca, 103, 106 S. Alessandro, 140 Cathedral, 140 n., 142, 189 S. Cerbone (near), 142 S. Chiara, 141 S. Frediano, 99, 143 S. Giulia, 139, 140, 141 S. Maria dei Servi, 140 S. Martino, 104, 125, 126 S. Miohele-iu-Foro, 139, 189 S. Salvatore, 99 Marigliano, 169 Mensano, 100 n. Messina, Cathedral, mosaics, 66 S. Gregorio, mosaics, 66 n. S. Michele della Caperrina, 66 n. Milan, S. Ambrogio, 22 n., 48, 49 Biblioteca Ambrosiana, 35 S. Eustorgio, 154 S. Lorenzo, 34 n. Modena, Duomo, reliefs, 105 n. Monreale, Cathedral, mosaics at, 64, 65 gates of, 101, 114, 139 n. Montecassino, 59 Montevergine, near Arellino, 61, 169, 170 Munich, Gallery, 97 n., 185 n. Murano, S. Cipriano, 67 S. Donate, 67 Naples, early art at, 7, 8, 54, 168-172 Arnolfo Fiorentino at, 124 Baptistery, 10 Castel Nuovo, 169 Castel dell' TJovo, 169 Catacombs, 7, 8, 39, 54 Castles of, 112 Cathedral, Mimetoli Chapel,171, 172 S. Chiara, 172 S. Domenico, 172 S. Lorenzo Maggiore, 169, 172, 189 Museum, 61 n., 171 S. Eestuita, 171, 172 Seminario XJrbano, 171 Nepi (near), S. Elia, 53-55, 70 n., 145 n. Oryieto, Cathedral, 79 n. , 96, 104, 127 n., 128 n., 134 S. Domenico, 127 n., 128 Ostia, gates of, 59 Otranto, early art of, 60 Oxford, Christ Church Library, 184 n. Palermo, proto-renaissanoe at, 114 n., 115 a La Martorana, mosaics, 64 Palace, 63 Paris, Cluny Museum, 132 n. Louvre, 183, 184 n. Parma, 102, 106 Baptistery, 75, 76 Gallery, 76 n., 142 Perugia, S. Bernardino, 153 Fountain of, 124, 125 Gallery, 153 n., 160, 164 n. Pescia, S. Francesco, 140 S. Pietro-in-Civate, 52 n., 53 n. Pisa, in the thirteenth century, 83, 111, 112 Academy, 155 S. Anna, 146 n. Baptistery, 101, 103, 104 pulpit, 106-108 Campo Santo, 111, 132, 133, 145, 149, 177 n. S. Caterina, 132, 154 n., 166 n. Cathedral, 80 n., 134, 154, 155, 177 n., 185, 186, 187, 189 bronze gates of, 101 S. Chiara, 155 n., 179, 187 S. Crestina, 149 n. Hospital, 149 S. Maria della Spina, 132 S. Marta, 143, 144, 153 Museo Civico, 142 S. Michele-in-Borgo, 132 S. Paolo-a-Ripa-d'Arno, 184 n. S. Pietro-iu-Grado (near), 146, 147, 148, 166 S. Pierino, 145 S. Pieti'o-in-Vinculis. See S. Pierino S. Eanieri e Leonardo, 146, 149 S. Sepoloro, 101 n., 144 Sculpture of, in thirteenth century, 98, 105, 106 Pistoia, early works at, 99 S. Andi-ea, 99, 134, 135 S. Bartolommeo-in-Pantano, 99, 104 Cathedral, 153, 174 S. Francesco, 167 S. Giovanni Fuoroivitas, 99, 131, 135 S. Jaoopo, 174 S. Procolo, 153 Potsdam, Friedenskirche, 67 INDEX OF PLACES 199 Kayello, the gates of, 113, 114 the pulpit of, 118, 119, 120 Ravenna, 17 S. Apollinare in Classe, 28- 30, 78 S. Apollinare Nuovo, 30-34 Archiepiscopal palace at, 27, 28 Archives, 31 n., 32 n. Biblioteca Classense, 30 n. S. Giovanni-in-Fonte, 17-20 S. Maria-in-Cosmedin, 22, 37 S. Michele-in-Affricisco, 26 Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, 20, 21 Museum, 33 n. S. Nazario-e-Celso. See Mau- soleum of Galla Placidia S. Vitale, 22 n., 23-26, 28, 29, 33 Rheims, 123 n. Rome, early school of, 2, 16, 17, 36, 52 n., 53 n., 76 n., 81 n., 82 n., 83 n., 84, 94 n. S. Agnes, 41, 62 S. Alessio, 85 S. Antonio Abate, 91 n. Baptistery of the Lateran, 41, 42 Capitol, the, 87 Catacombs of S. Agnese, 5 Catacombs of St. Callixtus, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 38, 39, 54 Catacombs of SS. Marcellino e Pietro, 5, 6, 8, 16 Catacombs of S. Nereo-e-Achilleo, 7 Catacombs of S. Pontianus, 37^88 S. Cecilia-in-Trastevere, 37 n., 48, 82 n., 91 n., 92 n., 93 n. S. Clemente, 45, 46, 69, 77, 102 S. Cosmo-e-Damiano, 39, 46 n. S. Costanza, 9, 10, 78 S. Orisogono, 92 S. Francesca Romana, 68 S. Francesco-a-Kipa, 92 n. S. Giorgio-in-Velabro, 95 S. Giovanni-in-Fonte. See Bap- tistery of the Lateran S. Giovanni Laterano, 14 n., 44, 77n.,78 Christian Museum of, 6 n., 9 n., 53 n. S. Lorenzo-fuori-le-mura, 71 n. S. Marco, 16 n., 48 S. Maria Antiqua, 37 u., 52 n., 53 n. S. Maria-in-Araceli, 85, 87, 89, 92 n. Rome, S. Maria-in-Campitelli, 91 n. S. Maria-in-Cosmedin, 43, 44, 52, 91 n. S. Maria Maggiore, 11, 13, 15, 26, 34, 47, 50, 78, 79, 80, 83, 88, 168 n., 186 S. Maria-sopra-Minerva, 88, 89 S. Maria-in-Trastevere, 69, 77, 89, 90, 92 n., 93, 94, 95 n. SS. Nereo-e-Aohilleo, 44, 52 S. Paolo -fuori-le-mura, 14-16, 59 n., 68,70,71, 94, 97 n., 113, 128, 130 n. S. Pietro-in-Vaticano, 94 Grotte Vaticane, 43 n., 87 n., 129, 130 n. S. Pietro-in-Vinoulis, 42, 49 S. Prassede, 16 n., 46-48, 49, 87 S. Pudenziana, 11, 16 S. Saba, 52 n. S. Sabina, 13, 14, 49, 50, 51 Sancta Sanctorum, 86 S. Silvestro, 71 S. Stefano Rotondo, 42, 44 n., 78 S. Tommaso-iu-Formis, 86 S. Teodoro, 40, 49 S. Urbano-alla-Caffarella (near), 33 n., 50-52, 102, 139 n. Vatican, the, Museo Christiano, 9 n., 153, 166 Library, 34 n. , 35 n. ViUa Mattel, 86, 91 n. Salerno, 112, 113 Sargiano, 166 Sarzana, 144 Scala, near Amalfl, 113, 119 Siena, S. Ansano-in-Castel-Vecohio, 156 Arohivio di Stato, 83, 158 n., 159 n. Biccherna, 83 n., 159 n., 163 Cathedral, 120 the pulpit of, 109, 121-124, 136 n. S. Domenico, 161, 162 n., 164 S. Caterina, 149 Fontebranda, 120 n. Gallery, 157, 158, 161, 166, 190 S. Giorgio, 105 n. S. Maria del Carmine, 156 S. Maria del Servi, 160 n., 173, 174 n. Palazzo Pubblico, 161, 163, 164 n. School of, 76 n., 82 n., 158 Vasari's prejudice against it, 188 Sinigaglia, 166 n. 200 INDEX OF PLACES Spoleto, S. Ansano, 39 S. Giovanni-e-Paolo, 144 Strasbourg, 123 n. Subiaco, 71-74, 81, 85 Toledo, 115 n. Torcello, Cathedral, mosaics, 67 Toscanella, 74 Trani, Cathedral, gates of, 101 n., 114 Tenice, early mosaists of, 76, 77 Vercelli, 109 n. Vergelle, near Siena, 109 n. Yerona, S. Nazzaro-e-Celso, 39 Villa Dalpino. Su Groppoli, S. Michele Voltri, Villa Brignole, 134 INDEX OF PERSONS Accursio of Siena, 158 n. Aoquedotti, Fra Vitale, 30 n. Adeodatus, 99 Agatho, Pope, 42 Aginoourt, 6. B. L. G. ('Seroux d'), 34 n., 71 n., 151 11. Agnellua, 18 n., 23 n., 29 n. Agnolo di Ventura, 87, 165, 188 Agostino di Giovanni, 87, 165, 188 Albertini, F., 18 n., 180 n., 188 Albertus, 144 Aldighieri of Siena, 158 n. Alexander III., 64 Anohera, Cardinal, 87 Angelico, Fra, 95, 192 Anselmo da Campione, 105 n. Antelami, Benedetto, 102, 103 Antioohenos, Georgios, 64 Antonatius of Rome, 73 n. Antonio da Brandeglio, P., 142 n. Apparecchiati, Johannes, called Nuc- chulus, 185 AppoUonius, 145 n., 174 Arab artists In Sicily, 61, 63 Aristotle, 115 n. Arnolfo di Cambio, architect of S. Crooe, 127, 128 Arnolfo Fiorentino — assists Niocola Pisano, 121, 122, 124 his works at Orvieto, 127, 128 his works at Kome, 83, 87 n., 88 n., 127-129, 168 n. said to have been employed at Naples, 168 his influence, 191 Avendeath, Johannes, 115 n. Ayicenna, 115 n. Baldinucci, F., 96 n., 173, 175 n. Baldovinetti, A., 177 n. Bardi, The, 190 Barile of Pisa, 155 Barisano of Trani, 101 n. Bartolo of Siena, 158 n. Bartolommeo of Florence, 173 n. Bartolommeo of Foggia, 119 n. Bartolommeo, Don, of S. Galgano, 159 n. Bartolommeo of Siena, 158 n. Bartolommeus Piaanus, 119 n. Basil the Macedonian, 114 n. Belisarius, 23 Benedietus. &e Antelami, Benedetto Berlinghieri, Bonaventura, 140-142 Berlinghieri, Marco, 140 Bernardini Memmo, 158 n. Bernicoli, Sig. Silvio, 31 n., 32 n. Bertaux, E., 115 n., 123 n. Berthier, Father, 50 n. Biduinus, 99 "Biin, il libro di Antonio," 187, 188, 192 Bindo di Viva, 159 n. Bindus, 154 Bini, Telesforo, 140 n., 141 n. Bizzamano d'Otranto, pictures at Naples, Berlin, and Rome, 60, 61 n., 81 Boccaccio, G., 81 n. Bode, Dr. Wilhelm, 136 n. Bonaini, F., 108 n., 143 n., 154 Bouamicus, sculptor, 100, 101, 104 Bonanno, 101, 102, 139 n. Boniface VIII., Pope, 87 n., 129 n. Bonizzo, Abbot, 51 Bordone di Buoncristiano, 155 Bruno of Siena, 158 n. Buonamico of Siena, 158 n. Buondelmonte, P., 173 n., 174 n. Busceni, Abate, 63 n. Oagnassus of Fiea, 155 Catalani, L., 10 n. CavalcaseUe, Signer G. B., 37 n., 63 n., 110 n. Cavallini, Pietro — Vaaari's statement in regard to him erroneous, 82 n. Ghiberti's opinion of him, 82 n. his mosaics at S. Maria-in-Trastevere, 82 n., 91, 93, 94, 95 n. his frescoes at S. Cecilia-in-Trastevere, 82 n., 91 n., 92 n., 93 n. 201 202 INDEX OF PERSONS Oavallini, Pietro — not an assistant of Giotto, 94 n. works attributed to him at S. Oiorgie- iu-Velabro, 95 the Annunciation wrongfully assigned to him by Yasari at a. Marco, Florence, 95 frescoes of his school at Assisi, 96 n. pictures of his school in the Munich Gallery, 97 n. his place of burial, 97 n. a victim of Florentinism, 82 n. , 154 n. Giotto's debt to Oavallini, 182 n., 193 Cenni di Pepi. See Oimabue Charlemagne, 43 Charles of Anjou, 130 Charles I. of Naples, 168 Ciampi, S., 109 n., 149 n. Ciampini, G. G., 14 n., 91 n., 101 Cicognara, L., 84 n. Cimabue, 73, 82 n., 98, 154, 155, 163, 166, 170, 174, 177 his name and origin, 178, 179 works attributed to him, 180-184 his sojourn at Pisa, 185, 186 not the author of the Eucellai Ma- donna, 181 n., 187-193 Constantine, 9, 10, 17, 36, 171 Constantine IV., 29 Conte di Eistoro, 158 n. Conxolus, Magister, 72, 73 n., 81 Coppo di Marcovaldo, 83 taken prisoner at Montaperti, 150 n., 173 u. his picture at the church of the Servi, Siena, 160 n., 173 goes to Pistoia and settles there, 150 n. his crucifixion in the sacristy of Pistoia cathedral, 150 n., 153 n., 174 n. a Madonna in his manner in S. Maria Maggiore, Florence, 174 n. Cosmati, the, 53 n., 81, 82, 84-90, 115 n. Cosmas, son of Jacobus, 85 Cosmatus, Magister, 86 Cosmatus, Giovanni, son of Jacobus Cosmatus, 86-89 Cosmatus Jacobus, son of Laurentius, 84, 85 Cosmatus Jacobus, son of Cosmas, 85, 86 Cosmatus, Johannes, son of Jacopo, 87, 88 Cosmatus, Laurentius, 84 Cosmatus, Lucas, son of Cosmas, 85 Crowe, Sir J. A., 37 n., 110 n. Dante, 81 n., 180, 187, 188, 192 Delia Valle, 6., 79 n. 104 n., 119 n.,179 n. Deodatus, Magister, 91 n. Desiderius, Abbot of Montecassino, 55, 56, 60 Dietisalvi di Speme, 83, 158 n., 169, 160 n., 163 Donatello, 97 n., Ill, 126 Donate, pupil of Niooola Pisano, 127 Douglas, L., 83 n. Duocio, 82 n. , 83 n., 154 n., 157 n., 158 n., 162, 165 Eoclesius, Archbishop of Ravenna, 23 n., 24 Eleanor, Queen of Aragon, 66 n. Enricus, sculptor, 99 Erveo, Archbishop of Capua, 56 Eugenius III., 69 n. Fabriczy, C. von, 117 n. Farinata degli Uberti. See Uberti, Farinata degli Fazio di Dietisalvi, 158 n., 159 n. Felix III., 15 n. Fiacohi, P., 30 n. Fidanza of Florence, 173 n. Fieschi, Cardinal William, 71 n. Filangieri di Candida, A., 11 n. Fineschi, P., 180, 190 Flaminio di Parma, 32 n. Fontana, 6., 179 n., 185 n. Forster, E., 120 u. Francesco of Pisa, 154 Francesco of S. Simone, 185 n. Frederick II., 105 n., 112, 114, 115 n., 116, 117, 120 Frederick II. of Aragon, 66 n. Frey, Dr. C, 92 n., 127 n., 128 n. Fry, Mr. Roger, 185 n., 191 Fuccio, architect, 178 Fumi, the Comm, L., 127 n., 128 n. Gaddi, Gaddo, 80 n., 175 Gambacorti, Pietro, 133 n. Gavocoius of Pisa, 155 Gaye, Dr. J., 127 n., 173 n. Ghele di S. Margarita, 155 Ghiberti, L., quoted or referred to, 91 n., 92 n., 188 Ghirlandajo, D., Ill Ghissi, Franoescuocio, 172 Giacomo da Camerino, 79 n. Gilio of Siena, 82, 83 n., 158 n., 159 Giotto, 82 n., 83, 87, 91, 92, 93 n., 176, 180, 181 n., 182, 186, 187, 198 Giovanni di Guido, 158 n. Giovanni di Paolo, 160 n. Giovanni Pisano — his early training, 121 INDEX OF PERSONS 203 Giovanni Pisano — employed at Siena with his father, 121, 122, 165 assists his father at Peragia, 124, 125 and at Lucca and Cortona, 125, 126 his work as an architect, 132 his early sculptured work at Pisa, 133, 13i capomaestro of the Sienese Daomo, 134 not the author of the reliefs of Orvieto, 134 his Madonna in ivory at Pisa Cathe- dra], 134 n. his font at S. Giovanni Fuorcivitas at Pistoia, 134 his pulpit at S. Andrea, Pistoia, 134 his pulpit at Pisa, 13J characteristics of his style, 135, 136 traces of French influence in his works, 123 n., 134 n., 136 n. his influence over Giotto, 136 n. , 183 n,, 193 and over Duccio, 191 Giovanni da Pistoia, 97 Giovanni of Siena, 158 n. Giovanni Stefani, 120 n. Girolamo di Morello, 173 n. Giucoo di Bindo, 154 Giunta Pisano, 82 n., 88, 146 does not improve the degraded Pisan school of painting, 146 rude works of the Pisan school at S. Pietro-in-6rado, 147 in the Lower Church at Assisi, 147-149 genuine works of the master, 149, 160 frescoes assigned to him in the Upper Church at Assisi, 150-153 portrait of St. Francis attributed to him, 153 his supposed supersession at Assisi by Cimabue, 178 Gonsalvo, Cardinal, 88, 91 n. Goro of Siena, 127 Goths, invasion of, 15 Gozzoli, Benozzo, 133, 177 n. Greek artists in Italy, 17, 36, 49 n., 52 n., 53 n., 179 n. Greek artists in Sicily, 61, 63, 115 n. Gregorovius, F., 29 n. S. Gregory, 63 n. Gregorio of Siena, 105 n. Gregory IV., 48 Gregory VII., 53. Gregory IX., 72, 73 Gregory X., 168 Grimm, H., 117 n. Grisar, P., 50 n. Gruamons of Pistoia, 99, 100, 101, 102 Grugni, U., 165 n. Guarnieri di Graziano, 158 n. Gugliehno, Fra, 130-132 Guidectus, 103, 104 Guido da Como, 104, 108 Guido di Graziano, 158 n. Guido di Piero, 158 n. Guido da Siena, 158 n. his picture in the Gallery of Siena, 160, 161 his picture in the Palazzo Pubblico, 161-163 the question of his identity, 163, 164 the date bf the altarpiece in the Palazzo Pubblico, 164 n. Hermanin, F., 92 n. Heywood, W., 83 n. Honorius, the Emperor, 17, 21 Honorius I., 41 Honorius IIL, 40, 68 n., 71 n., 131 Ildobrandino of Siena, 158 n. Innocent II., 69 n. Innocent IIL, 49, 72 Innocent IV. , 71 n. Isaachius, the sarcophagus of, 33 n. Jacobus, Fra, 76-79, 80 n., 173, 175 Jacomo di Giraldo, 158 n. John IV., 41,72 John VII., 43 n. Julianus Argentarius, 23 n, Justinian, 23, 24, 26 n., 29, 31, 34 Kondakoff', N. P., 49 n. Krauss, Dr., 56 n. Kurth, Dr. Julius, 18 n., 19 n., 20 n. Lapo, pupil of Niccola Pisano, 127, 130, 185 Lellus, 172 Leo of Ostia, 55 Leo I., 14 Leo IIL, 43, 44 Leo IV., 45 n. Lisini, the Cav. A., 83 n., 158 n., 169 n., 164 n. Lorenzetti, A., 163 n. Lorenzetti, Pietro, 96 Louis of Anjou, 66 n. S. Louis of Toulouse, 172 Lucius IIL, 64 Ludwig, Dr., 37 n. Lysippus, 17 204 INDEX OF PEESONS Maitano, Lorenzo del, 191 Mamaoohi, T. M., 50 n. Manfredino d' Alberto, 153, 154 Mariotti, A., 124 n. Marohese, V., 131 n., 132 n. Marohionne d'Arezzo, 168, 169 Marohisello of Florence, 173 n. Margaritone of Arezzo, 82 the true reason of his notoriety, 165, 166 his works, 166-169 Martini, Simone, 83 n., 143 n., 189, 193 Marzo, Monsignor Di, 61 n., 63 n., 64 n. Massarello of Siena, 158 n. Matilda, Countess, 110, 111 Matteo d' Acqua Sparta, Cardinal, his tomb, 89 St. Maximian, Archbishop of Ravenna, 23, 26 n. Medici, Cosimo de', 173 n. Melanzio, 73 n. Melior, 76 n. Memmo di Filippuocio, 158 n. Meo di Graziano, 158 n., 164 Michael Angelo, 96 n., Ill Del Migliore, 175 n. Milanesi, G., 80 n., 109 n., 1-10 n., 120 n., 121 n., 127 n., 130 n., 162 n., 163 n., 184 n. Mino di Graziano 158 n., 164 Lo Monaco, M., 60 n. Montano d' Arezzo, 168-171 Morrona, A., 99 n., 101 n., 125 n., 133 n., 149 n. Murci, Jacobus, 155 n, Muntz, E., 9 n., 10 n. Napoleone of Siena, 158 n. Neon, Archbishop, 18 n. Niocola di Bartolommeo of Foggia, 118, 119 Niocola Pisano — affected by another influence, 94 n. his appearance in Fisa, 98, 99, 106 the pulpit of the Pisa Baptistery, 106 -108 the origin of his art, 108-120 the renaissance of sculptui-e in southern Italy, 112-120 his pulpit at Siena, 121-124 the fountain at Perugia, 124, 125 his Deposition tat Lucca, 125, 126 the monument of St. Margaret at Cortona, 126 his followers, 127-136 said to have been employed at Naples, 168 Niooola Pisano — influenced by French Gothic art, 123 n. his influence, 136, 137 Niccoli) del fu Antonio di Puglia, 131 Oderisius of Montecassino, 60 Orlandi Deodato, 142, 143 n., 156 Paganello of Pisa, 155 Pagliaresi, Aldobrandino, 159 Palmarmi, Signor, 114 n. Parabuoi of Siena, 158 n. Parducoius, 185 n. Parker, J. H., 38 n., 39 n. Pascal I, 43, 45, 46, 47 n., 48, 51 Paschal II., 45 Pelagius, 40 Peter II. of Aragon, 66 n. Petroni, the, 159 n. „> Phidias, 17 Philip of Tarentiun, 169 Philippo Tesauro, 171, 172 Piceiolino of Siena, 158 n. S. Pier Crisologo, 27 u. Pietrasanta, D. Lo Faso, 61 n., 63 n., 64 n. Piero di Dietisalvi, 158 n., 159 n. Piero of Siena, 158 n. Pietro delle Vigne, 116, 117 Praxiteles, 17 Puccius, 185 n. Fra Eanieri, 180 n. Raphael, 13, 73 n. Raymon, Don, Archbishop of Toledo, 115 n. Reparatus, Archbishop, 30 n. Reymond, M., 99 n., 102 n., 123 n., 136 n. Ricci, Dr. Corrado, 18 n., 27 n. Rioha, G., 96 n., 175 n., 184 Riehter, Dr. J. P., 186 n., 187 a, 190 Eidolfi, Prof. M., 140 n., 142 n., 143 n. Robert, King of Naples, 92, 169, 172 Robertus, 99 Rodolfus of Pistoia, 99 Roffredo of Beneventum, 116, 117 Roger of Sicily, 63, 64, 101 n. Rolando, Abate di S. Salvadore, 158 n. Rosini, 6., 174 n. Rossi, Prof. A., 125 n. Rossi, G. B. De, 91 n., 127 n., 130 n. Rumohr, Baron von, 16 n., 70 n., 109 n., 129 n., 149 n., 150 n., 162 n., 163 n., 173 n. Rustico of Florence, 173 n. INDEX OF PERSONS 205 Saooardo, P., 67 n. Sacohetti, F., 177 Salazaro, D., 117 n. Salerno di Coppo, 174 n. Salvanello, 160 n. Sandro di Guido, 159 n. Sangiorgi, P., 17 n., 19 n. Sardo, 101 n. Sohubring, P., 110 n. Sohulz, H. W., 92 u. Scot, Michael, 114 n., 115 n. Segna di Buenaventura, 159 n., 192 Sigilgaita Bufolo, 118 Simone Napoletano, 172, 189, 193 Sixtus III., 13 n., 50 n. Sodoma, 109 n. Sozzo di Stefano, 168 n.« Stemmatico, 73 Stefaneschi, Bertoldo, 91 StefanesoM, Cardinal Gaetano, 94 n., 95 Stefani Giovanni, 120 n. Strzygowski, Dr., 23 n., 35 n. Supino, Dr. I. B., 132 n., 134 n. Tafi, Andrea, 80 n., 145 n., 173-177 Tanfani-Centofanti, Signer, 110 n., 120 n., 155 n., 186 n. Tesaure, Philippo. See Philippo Te- sauro Theodora, 23, 24, 26 n. Theodorio, 23 Tiberio d' Assisi, 73 n. Tommase degli Stefani, 171 Torriti, Jacopo, 77 n., 78, 79, 80 Toschi, G. B., 102 n. Turretto, a moaaist, 80 n. Uberti, Farinata degli, 167 Ugelino of Siena, 143 n., 165 Ugolino di Prete Ilario, 96 Urban II., 64 n. Valentinian I., 36 Vanni Andrea, 172 Vanni di Boni, 155 n., 159 n. Vasari, G., 76 n., 80 n., 81 n., 82 d., 92, 94, 95, 96, 97, 100 n., 104 n., 108, 109 n., 110, 111, 112, 120, 124 n., 125 n., 127, 128 n., 129, 134, 145 n., 148, 161, 166 n., 167, 168, 173 n., 174, 175, 176, 177 n., 178, 179, 180, 184, 186, 188, 189 Venturi, Prof. A., 7 n., 12n., 35 n., 50 n., 110 n., 118 n. Ventura di Gualtieri, 168 n. Vigoroso of Siena, 83, 158 n., 160 Villani, G., 81 n. Wadding, Father, 149, 150 Wickhofif, Prof., 35 n., 186 n., 190 William II. ef Sicily, 63 n., 65 Wilpert, Monaignor, 2 n., 38 n. Witte, Karl, 84 n., 85 n. Wood Brown, Eev. J., 179 n., 190 PLYMOUTH WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON PRINTERS