EVOLUTIONIN
liSLIAN ART
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Evolution in Italian art,
3 1924 008 755 617
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
EVOLUTION IN
ITALIAN ART
BY
GRANT ALLEN
WITH SIXTY-FIVE REPRODUCTIONS
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
NEW YORK
A. WESSELS COMPANY
LONDON: GRANT RICHARDS
1908
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
" Evolution in Italian Art " was practically
complete at the time of the author s death, hut
its chapters have been revised and brought up
to date in the light of recent knowledge and
research, by Mr. J. W. Cruickshank.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ....
I. THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN
II. THE VISITATION ....
III. THE ANNUNCIATION .
IV. THE MADONNA AND CHILD
V. THE MADONNA AND SAINTS
VI. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI
VII. THE PRESENTATION .
VIII. THE PIETA
IX. THAT GREAT PAINTER, IGNOTO
X. OUR LADY OF FERRARA .
XI. THE PAINTERS' JORDAN .
CONCLUSION
PAGE
15
29
60
98
142
182
221
261
295
325
336
348
365
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
MADONNA AND CHILD Giovanni Bellini ... 4
Academy, Venice. Photograph: Anderson
MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN . . . Giotto 37
Madonna deli.' Arena, Padua. Photograph : Alinari
MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN . . . Taddeo Gaddi .... 41
Santa Croce, Florence. Photograph : Brogi
MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN . . . Fra Angelico .... 45
Uffi-zi Gallery, Florence. Photograph: Anderson
MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN . . . Raphael 49
Brera Gallery, Milan. Photograph : Anderson
MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN . . . Lo Spagna 53
Musee de Caen. Photograph : Giraudon
THE VISITATION Giotto 65
Madonna delP Arena, Padua. Photograph : Alinari
THE VISITATION Taddeo Gaddi .... 69
Santa Croce, Florence. Photograph : Brogi
THE VISITATION Ghirlandajo .... 73
Santa Maria A'ovella, Florence. Photograph : Anderson
THE MAGDALEN 13th Century 77
The Academy, Florence. Photograph : Brogi
THE MAGDALEN Titian 81
Pitti Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Anderson
9
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
THE VISITATION, WITH SAINTS . Pacchiarotto .... 85
The Academy, Florence. Photograph : Alinari
THE VISITATION Mariotto Albertinelli 89
Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Anderson
THE ANNUNCIATION Giotto 103
Madonna delV Arena, Padua, Photograph : Alinari
THE ANNUNCIATION Neri di Bicci .... 107
Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Anderson
THE ANNUNCIATION Fra Angelico .... hi
The Monastery of San Marco, Florence. Photograph: Anderson
THE ANNUNCIATION Fra Filippo Lippi. . . 115
National Gallery, London. Photograph : W. A, Mansell
THE ANNUNCIATION Botticelli 119
Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Photograph : W. A. Mansell
THE ANNUNCIATION Carlo Crivelli. ... 123
National Gallery, London. Photograph : W. A. Mansell
THE ANNUNCIATION Lorenzo di Credi. . . 127
Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Anderson
THE ANNUNCIATION Fra Bartolommeo . . 131
Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Alinari
THE ANNUNCIATION Paolo Veronese ... 135
Uffiii Gallery, Florence. Photograph: Anderso^i
THE ANNUNCIATION Andrea del Sarto . . 139
Pitti Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Anderson
MADONNA AND CHILD Giotto 149
Madonna del P Arena, Padua. Photograph: Alinari
MADONNA AND CHILD Botticelli 153
Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Anderson
MADONNA AND CHILD Fra Filippo Lippi . . .157
Pitti Gallery, Florence. Photograph: Anderson
10
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
MADONNA AND CHILD LuiNl i6i
Brera. Gallery, Milan. Photograph: W. A. Mansell
MADONNA AND CHILD Correggio 167
National Gallery, London. Photograph ; IF. A. Mansell
MADONNA AND CHILD Cima da Conegliano . 171
Doge's Palace, Venice. Photograph : Anderson
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH )
INFANT ST. JOHN | Perugino ,75
National Gallery, London. Photograph ; W. A. Mansell
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH -j
INFANT ST. JOHN. (Z^ ^f//« I Raphael 179
Jardiniere) J
Louvre, Paris. Photograph : IV. A. Mansell
MADONNA WITH SAINTS .... Andrea Mantegna . . 189
National Gallery, Londott. Photograph : IV. A. Mansell
MADONNA WITH SAINTS .... Fra Angelico .... 193
Academy, Florence. Photograph : Anderson
MADONNA WITH SAINTS .... Ghirlandajo 197
Uffizi Gallery, Floreftce. Photograph : Alinari
MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE . Ambrogio Borgognone. 201
National Gallery, London. Photograph : W. A. Mansell
MADONNA DELL' ARPIE .... Andrea del Sarto , . 205
Ufjizi Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Anderson
MADONNA ENTHRONED .... Fra Bartolommeo . . 209
Ufflzi Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Alinari
MADONNA WITH SAINTS .... Giovanni Bellini . . .213
Academy, Venice. Photograph: Anderson
MADONNA WITH SAINTS .... Cima da Conegliano. . 217
Pinacoteca, Parma. Photograph : Anderson
11
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
ADORATION OF THE MAGI . . . Giotto 229
Madonna delV Arena^ Padua. Photograph : Alinari
ADORATION OF THE MAGI . . . Don Lorenzo Monaco . 237
Uffi-zi Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Brogi
ADORATION OF THE MAGI . . . Gentile da Fabriano . 241
Academy, Florence. Photograph: Anderson
ADORATION OF THE MAGI . . . Ghirlandajo 245
Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Anderson
ADORATION OF THE MAGI . . . Andrea Mantegna . . 249
Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Anderson
ADORATION OF THE MAGI . . . Bonifacio Veronese. . 255
Academy, Venice. Photograph: Anderson
PRESENTATION OF THE VIRGIN ■) ^
IN THE TEMPLE j ^"'^^ ^^3
Academy, Ve^iice. Photograph : Anderson
PRESENTATION OF THE VIRGIN ■> ^
\ Tintoretto 269
IN THE TEMPLE /
Madonna delF Orto, Venice. Photograph : Anderson
PRESENTATION OF THE VIRGIN -» ^
y Giotto 273
IN THE TEMPLE / .
Madonna delF Arena, Padua. Photograph : Alinari
PRESENTATION OF THE VIRGIN 1 ^
^ \ Taddeo Gaddi . . . .281
IN THE TEMPLE /
Santa Croce, Florence. Photograph: Brogi
PRESENTATION OF THE VIRGIN ■> ^ „ „
„ „, ^ - Giovanni da Milano . 285
IN THE TEMPLE J ^
Santa Croce, Florence. Photograph: Brogi
PRESENTATION OF THE VIRGIN
IN THE TEMPLE . . .
Santa Maria Novella, Florence. Photograph :" Anderson
PIETA Giotto 299
Madonna deW Arena, Padua. Photograph : Alinari
1^
\ Ghirlandajo 291
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
DESCENT FROM THE CROSS . . Fra Angelico .... 303
Academy, Florence. Photograph : Anderson
PIETA CosiMO TURA 307
Louvre, Paris. Photograph : Giraudon
ENTOMBMENT Michael Angelo . . .313
National Gallery, London. Photograph : W. A. Mansell
PIETA Francia 317
National Gallery, London. Photograph: W. A. Mansell
CRISTO MORTO Bronzing 321
Ujffizi Gallery, Florence. Photograph : Alinari
ST. CATHERINE Umbrian School
National Gallery, London. Photograph : Morelli
ST. CATHERINE Raphael . . .
National Gallery, London
■327
MADONNA ENTHRONED .... CosiMO Tura 337
National Gallery, Londo?i. Photograph : Morelli
MADONNA ENTHRONED WITH^
ST. WILLIAM AND ST. JOHN ^ Grandi 343
THE BAPTIST J
National Gallery, London. Photograph : W. A. Mansell
BAPTISM OF CHRIST School of TaddeoGaddi 349
National Gallery, London. Photograph : Morelli
BAPTISTERY OF THE ORTHODOX, RAVENNA 353
Photograph : Alinari
BAPTISTERY OF THE ARIANS, RAVENNA 357
Photograph : Alinari
BAPTISM OF CHRIST Piero della Francesca 361
National Gallery, London. Photograph : W. A. Mansell
13
INTRODUCTION
Grant Allen, who has been described as naturaUst,
anthropologist, physicist, historian, poet, noveUst,
essayist, and critic, in the following pages applies
his versatile mind, the mind of an expert in natural
science, to kindred problems in artistic method. He
was not a specialist in the criticism of pictures,
yet a trained power of observation and a mind sensi-
tive to life in all its aspects, gives interest and point
to his attitude. He had the sympathetic imagination
of a born teacher; he was also a constant learner,
and the fact that he was not professionally a critic of
art, brought him in some ways nearer to the student,
and enabled him to understand the difficulties of the
beginner.
The present series of papers appeared originally in
the Pall Mall Gazette and the English Illustrated
Magazine. They were based on observations made
in Italian and other galleries, during many journeys
arising from the sad necessity of spending winters
abroad on account of ill-health. Many years before
these journeys were undertaken, preparation for such
studies had been made in an investigation into the
physiology of aesthetics, a treatise published in 1877.
The treatment of the present subject was not intended
15
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
as an authoritative criticism, it was rather a carefully
planned suggestion to help those who desire to have
some clue in the study of such a complex thing as
Italian art.
The object of this introductory chapter is to
suggest in brief outhne some of the forces affecting
the painters of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
centuries, so that the reader may be assisted to place
Grant Allen's detailed examination of the subjects in
a general view of the period.
§ 1. Exterior Influences affecting Italian Art
These were mainly three in number — (1) Byzantine
art of Constantinople, predominant between the sixth
and twelfth centuries. (2) French art, powerful through-
out the latter part of the twelfth and thirteenth cen-
turies. (3) Classical art.
(1) Byzantine Influence. — The Byzantine emperors
in Constantinople, from the year 476 up to 800, were
the only representatives of imperial power, and in this
character they claimed the right of the empire in Italy.
Their principal seat of government was at Ravenna,
and in that city the Exarchs represented the emperor
until they were driven out by the Lombards in 751.
The influence of Constantinople did not cease with
the extinction of political power ; the close connec-
tion of Venice with the East was continued for many
centuries, and, generally speaking, the authority of the
16
INTRODUCTION
higher Byzantine civiUsation over the more elementary
conditions in Italy was maintained until the thirteenth
century.
The art of Constantinople expressed the mystical
and philosophical feeling which resulted from the
influence of Neo-Platonism on Eastern Christianity.
Its aim was to express the passion for union with the
Infinite. Giving but slight heed to the world of
sense and to human emotions, it became abstract and
ascetic. Its neglect of the accidental and transitory
led to a rigid and impassive habit ; yet so deep was its
sense of relationship with the world of the unseen
that it seldom failed to be impressive. It touched
ordinary human nature most nearly in a passionate
love of technique. No skill, no labour was grudged,
and never did the imagination clothe itself in more
magnificent colour.
The church of Sta. Sophia, rebuilt by Justinian in
the sixth century, and the church of S. Vitale, at
Ravenna, of the same date, represent the earlier develop-
ment of Byzantine art.
In the eighth and ninth centuries, subsequent to
the Iconoclastic controversy, Byzantine art was neither
so imaginative nor so sympathetic ; it bears a more
distinct mark of non-classical feeling, yet it continued
to be the most civilised form of European invention.
The Menologium of Basil II., for instance, made at the
end of the tenth century, is one of the finest books in
existence, and the figure of Christ in the apse of the
church at Cefalu, in Sicily, dated in the middle of the
17
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
twelfth century, excels any Italian mosaic or painting
of the same period.
The actual workmanship of Byzantine artists is
comparatively rare in Italy, and it hardly exists in
any other part of the West. This work must
be carefully distinguished from native Italian work
modelled upon it. The mosaics in Roman churches,
the sculptures and most of the mosaics at S. Marco
in Venice and at Torcello, the frescoes of the Old
and New Testament series in the Upper Church at
Assisi, the frescoes in SS. Quattro Coronati in Rome,
many panel pictures of the thirteenth and early four-
teenth centuries in the Uffizi, the Museo Civico at
Pisa, and in the Gallery at Siena, together with
countless other early works commonly described as
Byzantine, were made by native craftsmen who were
deeply influenced by the art of Constantinople, but
their work has no claim to be called Byzantine in
any proper sense of the word. These works by
Italian craftsmen vary from the beautiful sculptures
at Torcello down to the panels that do not deserve
the name of fine art at all. The word " Italo-Byzan-
tine " has been used to characterise the former ; the
latter can only be described as examples of a rude
native manner.
(2) French Irijiuence. — The impressive influence of
Constantinople began to give place to that of France
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as that country
became the centre of spiritual and intellectual life in
Western Europe.
18
INTRODUCTION
The Norman conquest of Naples and of Sicily at
the end of the eleventh century, the settlement of
Cistercian monks in the middle of the twelfth century,
the Angevin conquest of Naples and Sicily in the
thirteenth century, and the frequent passage of French
knights as a consequence of the Crusades, brought
Italy and France into close contact. The new influence
is visible in the architecture of the Cistercian churches
(Fossanova was consecrated in 1208), and in the castles
built in the time of Frederick II. Later it appears
in the sculpture of Giovanni Pisano, and finally the
" sweet new style " received its specifically Italian form
in the painting of Giotto.
(3) Classical Influence. — ^In a certain sense classical
tradition lay behind all Italian art, but it did not
become predominant until the fifteenth century. In
the twelfth century it influenced the Romanesque
architecture of Pisa and the sculptures of the Antelami
at Parma. In the thirteenth century the sculpture of
Niccolo Pisano on the Pisan pulpit is an evident
attempt to reproduce the classical Roman style, but
the young Italian nation, descended alike from a
southern and northern stock, had to go through its
time of storm and stress, its wanderjahr was spent in
company with the brilliant transcendentalism of the
North. The study which Donatello and Brunelleschi
made of the remains of ancient Rome serves to mark
the impulse which Italian painters and sculptors found
in the ancient civilisation of their own country. This
impulse was twofold : it widened the sympathies of
19 B
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
men, it cleared many fettering preoccupations from
their thoughts, it gave a fresh impulse to learning, it
ennobled life with a new sense of power, and in all
such ways it reacted on art with immense effect.
On the other hand, where the influence of ancient
art was mainly archaeological — as in the school of
Padua — its effect was no less marked but much less
powerful, for classical preconceptions can no more give
life to art than the preconceptions of a civilisation
Byzantine or medieval.
§ 2. Design and Composition
Grant Allen's thesis was that the individual com-
position of a picture should be conceived as an organic
type evolving along lines of its own. He thought of
the art of composition as being in constant process.
The plain gestures, the unaffected pose, the simple
forms of the fourteenth century become an artificial
composition in the sixteenth century, in which gesture
expresses compUcated feehng, each figure signifies a
mood, and the design as a whole is the response to a
sensitive and characteristic emotion, the result of large
and vital experience.
This ideal of the early part of the sixteenth century
was too high for most of the followers of Michael
Angelo and Raphael. They were seldom able to
make action serve intention, gesture and movement
were frequently the instrument of rhetorical sentiment,
20
INTRODUCTION
the human form expressed a simulated passion, design
became theatrical.
Nevertheless, although the secondary artists of the
sixteenth century could not follow in the footsteps of
the great masters, the finer characteristics of the time
are well marked ; and if the visitor to Florence will
compare a series of the frescoes in Santa Croce with
the designs of Andrea del Sarto in the small cloister
of Lo Scalzo, the principles which guided the evolu-
tion of composition between the fourteenth and the
sixteenth centuries will become clear.
Leonardo da Vinci touches upon the most im-
portant of these when he says, " that figure is most
worthy of praise, which by its action best expresses
the passion which animates it."
Grant AUen devoted his attention primarily to
evolution in composition, but the reader will at once
perceive from his analysis that it is impossible to limit
the idea to any one point. Other changes incidental
to increasing knowledge and varying social conditions
were equally marked, and they were subject to the
same process as the changes in composition.
§ 3. The Effect of Increasing Knowledge
ON Painting
In the light of increasing knowledge the methods
of painters were in a state of continuous change. The
comparatively simple means of the fourteenth century
21
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
grew into the complex practice of the sixteenth
century. Men were always trying to express them-
selves more fully, and as likeness to nature is the
most direct means of attaining expression, there was a
constant effort in the direction of realism ; not because
the painter desired to imitate nature, but because in
the fullest realisation he found the most complete
means of reaching other minds. Hence every increase
in knowledge was seized upon, particularly among the
Florentine artists.
The knowledge of linear perspective was only in-
stinctive among the Giotteschi ; in the fifteenth century
it became scientific. The effects of light and shade
were hardly understood in the fourteenth century ; it
was not until the following century that Leonardo
and others perceived fully the importance of these
phenomena. The true relation of a figure to the
atmosphere through which we see it was even more
difficult to realise, and it was not until we reach the
fully developed art of the closing years of the fifteenth
and the early years of the sixteenth centuries that the
methods of the artist were perfected.
In addition to the increased knowledge of perspec-
tive, and of the phenomena of light and atmosphere,
the study of anatomy added greatly to the artist's
control over his subject. Leonardo, who was equally
great as an artist and as a man of science, carried his
studies to the length of becoming a practical anatomist.
He warns his fellow-artists that it is necessary to
understand the framework of the body in order to
22
INTRODUCTION
reach the full power of expression ; he also gives a
significant caution against the exaggeration which the
gain of such knowledge may lead to.
§ 4. The Influence of Social Conditions
The student of natural science treats existence as
a whole ; he places, therefore, the methods of art along
with all other signs of life. They are subject to the
same changes and the same general principles as other
phenomena. The rise and fall of schools, varieties of
method, are no matters of chance nor of individual
caprice, they follow the natural order of things.
Grant Allen confined himself to the Italian schools
of painting from the time of Duccio at the end of the
thirteenth century to the close of the period of the
great Venetians at the death of Tintoretto.
The changes affecting social life were pretty clearly
marked in each of these three centuries and they pro-
duced well-defined characteristics in painting. It has,
therefore, become usual to speak of these tendencies in
connection with the century to which they princi-
pally belong, although they overlap any chronological
arrangement.
(a) The Fourteenth Century. — The new art which
flourished throughout this century began with the
painting of Duccio in Siena. It was developed by
Giotto, whose most important work is the series of
frescoes in the K chapel of the Arena in Padua. It
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
ended with Spinello Aretino, who painted in the
sacristy at S. Miniato in Florence.
From one point of view the revival which led up
to the art of this century was influenced by a Roman
view of life. Orcagna, for instance, paints his saints
in Paradise in serried ranks like the legionaries on
Trajan's Column — the atmosphere is one of authority ;
the hierarchical spirit rules the whole conception.
From another point of view the life of the four-
teenth century was ascetic. Theologians regarded the
earth as a wilderness through which we advance to
a better home, the body was the prison-house of the
soul, humility was the basis of character, the con-
templative life leading up to ecstasy was the ideal
of perfection. The frescoes of the Giotteschi are in-
formed, on the one hand, by a holy calm and a spirit
of self-abnegation ; on the other hand, by awe of death,
of judgment, and of hell.
(b) The Fifteenth Century. — The current of life,
however, was too strong to allow the ascetic ideal to
have permanent control. Already in the middle of
the fourteenth century Petrarch and Boccaccio were
opening out new ways.
The Renaissance of the fifteenth century was due
to the Greek spirit, thus contrasting with the Roman
outlook of the previous century. ]\Ien felt the charm
of the independence of Greek ideals. They saw that
life on this earth was a marvellous thing, that the
world was no mere vale of tears ; they were seized
with an unconquerable desire to widen the horizon
24.
INTRODUCTION
of knowledge ; they were filled with a passion for
beauty. Plato became to the philosophers of Florence
what Aristotle had been to Dante and to St. Thomas
Aquinas.
Men valued strength of body, vigour of intellect,
greatness of personality ; fame became a ruling impulse.
The relative estimation of the terrestrial and celestial
was almost entirely reversed. DonateUo and Ghiberti
and Masaccio mark the beginnings of the Greek
Renaissance. Raphael's frescoes in the Camera della
Segnatura are among the last results of the Hellenic
impulse.
(c) The Sixteenth Century. — The secular spirit of
the fifteenth century, like the ascetic ideal of the
fourteenth century, proved inadequate. In Teutonic
Europe the original impulse of the Renaissance was
developed in the Reformation ; in Latin Europe the
Catholic reaction against Hellenic and secular feeling
took the form of a fresh assertion of papal authority,
and the invigoration of the principle of dogmatic
teaching.
In architecture St. Peter's is the embodiment of the
ideals of the sixteenth century. In painting, Titian
and Tintoretto, although far from being moved by the
ideals of the Catholic reaction, represent something of
the grandiose formality of Spanish manners. In the
later days of Italian painting, gesture became stately,
emotion was translated into terms of dignified reticence,
design was artificial and elaborate, the ideal of beauty
changed from the spontaneous freshness and the naive
25
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
charm of the fifteenth century to the middle-aged
magnificence and the composed mien of the sixteenth
century.
The genius of Michael Angelo, of Giorgione, of
Titian, of Paul Veronese, was unable to conquer the
inevitable. When the headship of Spain and the de-
crees of the Council of Trent became possible, the great
period of Italian art was at an end, there was no longer
a correspondence between the Italian organism and its
environment.
During these three centuries the development of
art was closely connected with the life of the people ;
racial distinctions, tendencies in politics, literature, and
religion reacted on the painters. In Siena and Florence
the beginnings of the new art coincide with the greatest
power and glory of the Republics. In literature like-
wise the greatest poets were contemporary with the
greatest painters. Dante and Giotto are supposed to
have been personal friends. Petrarch and Boccaccio
lived through the time of the men who covered with
frescoes the churches of Florence, the Campo-Santo
at Pisa, and the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena. Ariosto
was contemporary with Michael Angelo, Raphael, and
Titian ; the tragedy of Tasso's life ended a year later
than the hfe of Tintoretto, the last of the great painters.
The history of art ran concurrently with that of the
Papacy ; it sprang into new life at the time of the great
Popes who crushed the empire ; it flourished exceed-
ingly in the times of the Popes of the Renaissance,
men who were in sympathy with humanism, who were
26
INTRODUCTION
themselves scholars, founders of museums, and ardent
worshippers of classical ideals ; it died away in the
period when Popes such as Paul IV. and Sixtus V.
sat in the chair of St. Peter.
For the important sources of the impulse that pro-
duced the art of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
centuries, we must consider the slow unwinding of the
coil of circumstance in the " dumb centuries," i.e. from
the seventh to the eleventh. In the ninth and tenth
centuries organised society suffered eclipse during the
breaking up of the Prankish empire, and it was only
after the reforms of the Emperor Henry III. and the
revival under Hildebrand in the middle of the eleventh
century that modern life began to emerge. The twelfth
century was a time of great activity. The study of
Roman law was revived, classical literature once more
gave form to human thought, St. Bernard preached
afresh the love of God, the way was made straight for
the Mendicant revival. Politically Italian nationality
was asserting itself in the Lombard League, and by the
middle of the thirteenth century the Tuscan Republics
had reached to the height of their power.
The astonishing vitality of Itahan art was due to
the extraordinary power which enabled painters and
sculptors to synthesise so completely not only the life
of their own time, but the spirit which had moved
bygone ages. In classical life they found an ideal of
freedom and beauty ; from the Byzantine civilisation of
Constantinople came the love of symbolism and mysti-
cism ; from Rome came regard for law, a passion for
27
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
order, and the tendency to crystallise life into form ;
while the conception of love, of which asceticism is the
final term, sprang from Christian tradition, and brought
into being the emotional life of the Middle Ages.
As the panorama of the three important centuries
passes before our eyes, we see that its form is deter-
mined by the relative importance of one or other of
these forces, never by the entire suppression of any
of them.
28
THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN
I PROPOSE in the following chapters to trace a few
successive stages in the evolution of painting in Italy.
The development of the various products of man's
collective action closely resembles, in not a few respects,
the natural development of plants and animals. Phe-
nomena well known in the organic world have their
counterpart and parallel in the super-organic. Every-
body is now aware that this is true in the case of
languages, which can be traced back, like birds or
beasts, to a common origin ; but not everybody is
aware that it is equally so in the case of arts, of re-
ligions, of institutions, of ceremonies. In these papers
it is my intention to take certain products of early
ItaUan art, and show how closely their evolution re-
sembles that familiar process of " descent with modifica-
tion" which Darwin pointed out for us in fish and
insect, in fern and flower.
The epoch of Italian painting which began with
Duccio and culminated in Raphael, Michael Angelo,
and Titian, is in many ways a most favourable one for
illustrating this cardinal principle. In the first place,
the development of painting during that relatively short
29
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
period was rapid and marvellous ; art passed step by
step with accelerated haste through many successive
stages, so that every half-century of that brilliant time
marks a distinct advance upon the half-century that
preceded it. But in the second place — what is more
important still — the painters of that age exerted their
faculty for the most part upon a comparatively limited
range of subjects, the elements of which were rigorously
prescribed for them by religious convention. At the
present day the artist seeks his theme throughout the
whole wide world ; he paints at will a landscape or a
figure-piece, the Death of Ceesar or a Street Scene in
Cairo, the Defence of Metz, the Briar Rose cycle, the
Christian Martyr, the Matterhorn, the Derby Day. His
choice is unlimited. But in the Italy of Giotto and
of Filippo Lippi things were ordered quite otherwise.
There art was almost entirely religious in character,
and the subjects with which it dealt were few and well
specified. The artist received a commission from his
patrons for such-and-such a definite work — a Madonna
and Child, a St. Sebastian, a Transfiguration ; and he
produced a panel which resembled in all its principal
features similar pictures of the same subject by earlier
painters. Originality in design was strongly discour-
aged ; indeed, in many cases it was even expressly
stated in the bond that the painting agreed upon should
closely follow a certain treatment of the theme with
which it dealt by some previous hand in such-and-such
a church or such-and-such a convent. So many figures
were to be introduced for the money. It was also
30
THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN
stipulated with legal accuracy that the haloes should
be diligently gilded throughout, and that the jewels
and ornaments proper to saint or bishop should be
carefully designed in the most elaborate and correct
fashion.
These brief introductory remarks will serve to show,
I hope, the spirit in which I approach my subject. I
look at it rather with the eye of an evolutionist
than with the eye of an artist or a technical critic.
1 trust this plea will be held to excuse any short-
comings I may chance to exhibit in knowledge of
technique or aesthetic appreciation. I desire to speak
rather of the paintings as products than of the painter
as producer. I wish to show the stream of develop-
ment by which, through the hands of various artists
and various schools, the dry and lifeless picture in
the rude native manner was vivified and spiritualised
into the art of Fra Angelico, of Bellini, of Leonardo.
For this purpose I will take advantage of the oppor-
tunity afforded me by the set subjects of early Italian
art, and will trace the evolution in the treatment of each
particular theme from the earliest available examples
to the fuU Renaissance, exactly as one might trace the
variations in structure and function of an organ or
an organism. Other subsidiary principles to which I
desire to direct attention must appear one by one in
the course of our examination of the various subjects.
I begin my survey with the Sposalizio or Mar-
riage of the Virgin. This sacred theme comes almost
earliest in time among the more familiar moments
31
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
in the cycle which deals with the life of Christ and
His mother : for though the meeting of Joachim and
Anna at the Golden Gate, the Birth of the Virgin,
and her Presentation in the Temple are all anterior
to it in historical order, they are less frequent and
apparently less rigid in composition than this famous
subject, made familiar to us all by Raphael's exquisite
and poetical representation in the Brera at Milan. But
to judge Raphael's treatment in isolation, without any
knowledge of others that preceded it, is almost as futile
a proceeding as to judge an Egyptian or Assyrian statue
without reference to the mythology and art -products of
Egypt and Assyria generally.
When a fourteenth or fifteenth century Italian
painter received an order to produce a Sposalizio, what
were the elements which his patrons counted upon his
introducing into the picture, and without which they
would have considered themselves cheated in their
bargain ? What were the figures and incidents they
had learnt from the legends, or had seen before in
every Sposalizio with which they were acquainted —
the figures and incidents they expected to find in
the picture they had commissioned, as necessary parts
of a Marriage of the Vii-gin ? To answer this question
we must glance for a moment at the legendary story
whose details are embodied in every treatment of the
subject down to the latest period of sacred art in Italy.
For Art in these matters was but the servant of Faith,
and reproduced exactly the current spirit of Christian
tradition.
32
THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN
The basis of the tale is found in the two apocryphal
gospels of the Protevangelium and the Nativity of
Mary. We read there how " the Virgin of the Lord "
was brought up, like Samuel, within the precincts of
the Temple ; and how the High Priest summoned all
the widowers of Israel, as suitors for her hand, to a
singular ordeal. In order to decide which of them
should be betrothed to the chosen maiden, recourse
was had to a mode of divination similar to that em-
ployed in the case of Aaron in the Book of Numbers.
Every man of them was to take a rod according to the
house of their fathers ; and that man whose rod should
miraculously put forth leaves and blossom was thereby
shown to be chosen as husband of the Blessed Virgin.
When all the rods were laid up in the Temple for the
ordeal, behold, the rod of Joseph budded and bloomed
blossoms, even as the rod of Aaron yielded almonds in
the wilderness. It burgeoned miraculously into pure
white lilies. To him, therefore, Mary was solemnly
betrothed by the High Priest of Israel ; while the dis-
appointed suitors, thus baulked of their will, stood by
with their wands in their hands, or broke them in
their passion.
Now, representations of the Sposalizio are common
in Italian churches or convents, as part of the cycle of
the Life of the Virgin, and every one of them contains
innumerable references to this central legend. The
features all these pictures possess in common may be
summed up thus. The action takes place either
within or (more often) just outside the Temple. At
33
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
or near the centre of the picture stands the High
Priest, usually (and I think always) represented with
a long grey beard, a dignified man in his robes of
office. He wears on his head in most instances a high-
peaked cap, the Italian painters' idea of a Jewish mitre.
On one side of him stands Joseph, on the other Mary ;
and the High Priest is invariably represented as joining
their hands in the sacred grasp of betrothal. Joseph
holds in his other hand his budded staff, displaying as
a rule both leaves and flowers ; though sometimes this
detail is difficult to identify. Not infrequently a dove
sits poised upon its summit, representative, I take it,
of the choice and indication of the Holy Spirit. This
dove, says the story, was miraculously produced by the
staff as it budded. Behind Joseph are ranged the other
suitors, with their robes in their hands ; and one at
least of these, commonly known as the discontented
suitor, is engaged in breaking his rod in the extremity
of his indignation. Another, the passionate suitor, is
in the very act of striking Joseph. The earher painters
often show these faces as distorted with anger. In later
times the mien of the suitors is gentler, and their grace-
ful action scarcely more than symbohcal. Behind
Mary, again, stand the attendant virgins, with whom
the figure of St. Anne, the mother of Mary, is usually
associated. These are the chief necessary elements of
a Sposalizio, and they are probably all that were
allowed in the strict Byzantine representation of the
subject; though, as I have never seen a JNIarriage of
the Virgin of the earliest type, I speak on this point
34
THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN
under correction from those who may happen to have
been more fortunate. After Giotto, however, the
artists permitted themselves a somewhat wider Ucence
in introducing subsidiary or non-essential figures.
The earliest Sposalizio to which I will call attention
here is the fresco by Giotto in the Madonna dell' Arena
at Padua. It forms one of the great series representing
the life of Christ and the legend of His mother which
cover the entire walls of that most perfect monument
of early fourteenth-century painting. The chapel itself
is externally a plain and almost squalid little building,
not quite adequately lighted by its narrow windows ;
but within it is ablaze throughout with pure and
brilliant colour. Four of the pictures (as is usual in
this cycle) refer to the story of the Espousal of the
Virgin. In one, the rods are brought to the High
Priest ; in the next, they are carefully watched at the
altar ; in a third is represented the wedding procession
of the Virgin, and in a fourth her betrothal. The one
with which we are here especially concerned may be
ranked among the most charming pictures of the entire
series. It has not, it is true, the touching grace and
pathos of the world-renowned Pieta, which forms, to
my mind, the absolute high-water mark of Giotto's
pictorial achievement ; but it is spirited in its group-
ing, beautiful in its colour, and free on the whole from
stiffness or conventionality. Indeed, I may remark
here of all these Paduan frescoes, that so far as freedom
in drawing the figure is concerned, they are vastly
superior to the ordinary easel-pictures by Giotto or his
35 c
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
followers, through which alone most northern people
must necessarily judge him. In his Madonnas espe-
cially, and in the saints of altar-pieces, Giotto stiU
retains much of the conventional stiffness of Duccio
and his predecessors ; but when he gets away from
massive haloes and stucco backgrounds to such scenes
as these, he lets his hand have free play, and grows at
once comparatively naturalistic. Even so in our own
time painters scarcely dare to vary a detail in the
representation of the Crucifixion, while they give their
fancy untrammelled flight in less severely convention-
alised subjects. One may even say in brief of the
Florentine artists of the fourteenth century, that they
were essentially a school of fresco painters, who cannot
be fairly or adequately judged, save in their own
chosen medium in the churches of Italy.
In Giotto's treatment of the Sposalizio, the Temple
is represented by a sort of open tabernacle, with a
vaulted and richly decorated apse in the background.
Near the centre of the picture is the High Priest,
here represented without his mitre. On his right hand
stands Joseph with the budding staff and dove ; on his
left Mary, in the conventional flowing robe of her
Madonnahood. Down to Raphael's time, these posi-
tions are uniform. A little behind the Blessed Virgin,
her father, St. Joachim, looks on at the ceremony.
Close by are grouped the attendant women, with the
aged St. Anne, and possibly St. Elisabeth, though of
this I am doubtful. Behind St. Joseph stand the
rejected suitors, with their wands in their hands.
36
MARRIAGE OF THE WRGW : Mad,nnia JeW Arena, r.idiur.
37
THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN
Notice especially the attitude of one of them, breaking
his staff on his knee — an attitude both natural and
graceful, which recurs again and again in the treatment
of the subject down to the days of Raphael. The
suitor who advances nearest to St. Joseph has his hand
raised in air as if to strike him.
Judged by the standard of any previous painting,
such as the stiff and wooden saints in the rude native
manner, or even the quaint Old Testament scenes on
the walls of the upper church at Assisi, the grace and
vigour of this naive composition are truly remarkable.
Yet one may observe that the attitudes are still for the
most part monotonously upright and somewhat con-
strained. The limbs are chiefly concealed by masses
of straight perpendicular drapery, and little emotion is
displayed in the faces. The discontented suitor, for
example, looks calmly resigned ; and the passionate
youth, who raises his hand to strike St. Joseph, has so
little of anger in face or mien that he might almost be
mistaken for a priest in benediction. Giotto has here
reached the stage of original grouping and fairly ani-
mated action, but has not yet attained to the higher
power of dramatic and emotional expression which he
compasses in the latest frescoes of the series.
My next example is taken from a fresco usually
attributed to Taddeo Gaddi in a chapel of the church
of Santa Croce in Florence. And I may here remark,
in passing, that I do not propose to enter in this series
into any questions of attribution, because I am only
concerned with subject and time from the point of
39
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
view of evolution. It is the period, not the painter,
that matters for our purpose. In this animated
example some attempt has been made to give Oriental
tone to the background by the introduction of palms
and other Eastern vegetation. The wall at the back is
a feature which recurs in subsequent pictures. The
Temple is represented by a small square building, with
a loggia. All these points seem like innovations of
Gaddi's. Near the centre, as usual, stands the High
Priest in his mitre, joining the hands of the Virgin and
her betrothed. Joseph's rod with the dove is again
conspicuous. Behind the bridegroom, the angry suitor,
with upraised hand, is just in the act of striking Joseph.
The character of the rod-breaker, on the other hand, is
here duplicated. One suitor in the foreground breaks
his rod under his foot in a constrained and rather ill-
drawn attitude, where the artist has not quite success-
fully aimed at foreshortening. Another, a little behind
him, breaks the rod with his hands, without the aid of
a fulcrum. These points again recur in later pictures.
In the rear are musicians with bagpipes and with long
trumpets, which last frequently crop up again in repre-
sentations of the Sposalizio throughout the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries. They are additions to the
simple Giottesque model, though found in his previous
fresco of the bridal procession. To the right, besides
St. Anne and the attendant women, who are there as of
necessity, several children are introduced in the fore-
ground as picturesque accessories. Taddeo, however,
has been very unsuccessful in giving them childish
40
: MARRIAGE OF.THE VIRGIN : Sa„/,x Ctv,-e, Florence.
TAUDEO GAllDI
41
THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN
features or figures. They are simply dwarfish men and
women, on a smaller scale than the other personages of
the picture.
As a work of art, this fresco is far less interesting
than Giotto's at Padua. It has little beauty. Never-
theless, we may trace in it many distinct marks of
upward evolution. Besides the purely formal one of
the accessory figures, there is a note of advance in the
greater variety and plasticity of the attitudes and in
the expression of the features. The suitor with up-
raised hand is more obviously engaged in the act of
striking ; the personage with demonstrative hand to
the left is evidently remonstrating with his tall neigh-
bour ; the faces in many instances are clearly portraits.
There is spirit in the puffed cheeks and bent neck of
the bagpipe-blower ; while the attitude of the Virgin
implies some consciousness of the gravity and spiritual
importance of the ceremony in which she forms the
principal figure. As a whole, the composition is dis-
tinctly alive, and may be accepted as a typical specimen
of the followers of Giotto.
Fra Angelico's exquisite Sposalizio in the Uffizi at
Florence marks an immense advance in grouping and
in treatment. (Of course the reader must understand
that I select a few salient examples alone, omitting
many intermediate stages.) The elements of the
picture remain the same as ever; but the life and
movement are totally different. The confused crowd
which fills Taddeo Gaddi's foreground gives place in
the measured work of the monk of Fiesole to an orderly
43
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
and simple arrangement of distinct figures. The action
here has its scene outside the Temple ; the steps of the
building form a foretaste of the later conceptions by
Perugino and Raphael. There is still the garden-wall
of Taddeo's treatment, overtopped by quaint palms of
the painter's imagination. Landscape as yet is not
studied from nature. But the High Priest's robes have
become more costly. Fra Angelico's innate love of
decorative detail is shown in the borders of St. Joseph's
garment, as in those of St. Anne and the attendant
maidens. Yet the saintliness of Joseph's face and the
pure innocence of the Virgin belong essentially to the
Prate's own delicate and exquisite character. The
figures and expressions of the women who surround
St. Anne are sweet and touching ; the attitude of the
children to the extreme right of the picture breathes
Angelico's tender and trustful nature. Observe, too,
the clenched fists and vigorous pose of the assaulting
suitors, rarely full of action for this holiest of painters.
As in Taddeo's case, the suitor who breaks his rod is
duplicated ; one, as before, snaps it under his feet, while
the other does it with his hands unimpeded. But what
could be more charming than the figure of this last, in
his Florentine hose and his daintily painted coat, hke a
herald's tabard ? All the formal factors of the scene
are still retained : the budding rod and dove, the waU,
the children, the long trumpets to the extreme left ;
everything is there as in Taddeo's picture, and in the
selfsame order. But the soul is Angelico's. The
longer we look at it, the more we love it.
44
THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN
Passing over a great gap the two next instances to
which I would direct the reader's notice are the famous
SposaUzio by Raphael in the Brera at Milan, and the
Sposalizio now attributed to Lo Spagna in the museum
at Caen in Normandy. The latter picture has been
traditionally ascribed to Perugino, and we owe the
correction to the keen critical insight of Mr. Berenson.
The Caen Sposalizio was preserved in the Duomo
at Perugia until 1797, when the French removed it.
Raphael's Sposalizio, painted in 1504, is now in the
gallery of the Brera at Milan. In both works the main
outline of the arrangement is the same ; in both the
background is occupied by a small polygonal temple,
" a charming forecast," says Springer, " of Bramante's
buildings." The central group in each includes the
long-bearded High Priest, who joins the hands of the
bridal pair. In each, Mary is attended by St. Anne
and the bevy of women ; Joseph by the suitors in
jacket and hose, well displaying the figure of the dis-
contented lover, who breaks his wand across his knee
after the Giottesque prototype ; in each there is a
suggestion of a wide hilly landscape, such as was
natural to those who looked down on the spreading
valley of the Tiber from the walled height of Perugia.
This largeness of open-air view with citied hill-tops is
extremely characteristic of Umbrian painting.
The probability is that Lo Spagna had the picture
of Raphael in his mind, and yet it is noteworthy how
the grace and beauty of the one becomes in the other
commonplace and fantastic detail. Another point of
47
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
interest is that Raphael, contrary to the tradition of
Giotto and also of the Umbrian school, has placed the
Virgin to the spectator's left of the High Priest. It
has been suggested that this change may have been due
to the influence of Raphael's first master, Timoteo Viti,
who had worked under the painters of Ferrara and
Bologna.
In other particulars the difference is also marked.
Lo Spagna's figures almost always stand, as if in reverie,
very distinct from one another ; even their draperies
impinge as little as possible upon the draperies of their
neighbours. They can contemplate and reflect ; they do
not act. They seem, so to speak, mere saints in the
abstract. There is no attempt to throw them into any
real dramatic relation to one another. The grouping is
purely symmetrical and formal. It is quite otherwise
with Raphael even in this early picture painted while
he was under the influence of Perugino. His figures
are grouped with exquisite grace and skill into con-
sistent and picturesque dramatic concert ; and they
exhibit a tenderness, a poetical delicacy, far above Lo
Spagna's affected prettinesses. True, the work is still
essentially Umbrian in type ; it was painted in the very
year when Raphael was to go to Florence and acquire
the third of his four manners. The Virgin is but
poeticised Perugino in style, so is the dainty hooded
lady just beside her ; so is the young man (said to be
Raphael himself) close behind St. Joseph. But the
ease and naturalness of the whole is utterly beyond
Perugino's reach ; nothing the placid Umbrian master
48
MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN : Brera Gallery, Milan.
RAPHAEL
49
THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN
ever painted was half so alive as the principal characters
in this dainty little drama. It holds us spellbound.
We are still far from the astonishing vigour of action of
Raphael's Roman manner ; but we are almost equally far
in the opposite direction from the comparatively static
and dreamy personages whom Perugino painted, doing
nothing in particular save existing beautifully in rapt
contemplation on the walls of the bright little Cambio
at Perugia. Much as Raphael was to learn at Florence
and Rome, he was Raphael in germ before ever he set
foot beyond his native Umbria. At least so it seems
to the evolutionist, in whose eyes potentiality is already
half performance.
The National Gallery in London possesses two
specimens of Sposalizio paintings, which I have not
reproduced here, because it is comparatively easy for
any English reader whom I may have succeeded in
interesting in this subject to drop in at Trafalgar Square
any afternoon and look at them. Both of them hang
on the entrance wall of the Sienese room, and both are
interesting from the point of view of our present in-
quiry. The first is attributed to Niccolo Buonacorso,
a painter of Siena in the fourteenth century. It is
earlier in type than the earliest of those I have here
described, and is extremely rude in execution. Yet, as
often happens in the school of Duccio, there is a certain
attempt at naturalistic drawing and at Oriental scenery.
Notice, for example, the palm trees, as in Taddeo Gaddi
and Fra Angelico ; also the dusky-faced player on the
kettledrum, who is rather Indian than Syrian in char-
51
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
acter. Comparison of the Temple and other adjuncts
with the illustrations here given will be interesting and
instructive. The second is by a somewhat later but
nameless Sienese, and is chiefly interesting for the frank
anachronism of its Gothic architecture. A careless
observer might fail to notice the figure of the suitor
who breaks his wand ; but if you look close to the
frame on the left-hand side, you will find he is there,
though little conspicuous.
In organic evolution one can best understand the
close inter-relations of genera and species when one
examines a large number of allied forms in a single
museum. It is the same with pictures. One can only
grasp the close affiliation of one form on another when
one takes a number of contemporary or closely successive
specimens. For the purposes of this chapter I have been
obliged to confine myself to a very few selected cases :
if I had allowed myself twenty or thirty illustrations
instead of five or six, the gradual nature of the evolu-
tionary process would have been far more conspicuous.
As it is, I have been compelled to suppress many in-
teresting intermediate stages. These the reader must
take upon trust, or supply for himself from his own
observation. The relation of the Raphael to the Spagna
is the normal relation of each chief work to its imme-
diate predecessor. Modification is only in detail. Even
in the earlier instances, if you compare the groups in
the Fra Angehco with the groups in the Taddeo Gaddi,
from the children on the far right to the musicians on
the far left, you will find they follow without a single
52
MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN': Mnsiic de. Caeti
LO SPAGXA
53
THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN
exception precisely the same conventional order. The
best way for those who may interest themselves in this
aspect of art is to take up one or two separate subjects
during an Italian tour, and make as wide a collection as
possible of illustrative photographs.
And now a few words as to the general method.
There are two fundamentally different ways of regard-
ing nature and the works of man. They are usually
found in different persons. Some men have the eye for
likeness ; some men the eye for difference. Of course,
in the strictest sense, both are always, to some extent,
combined in every personality ; for there can be no
cognition of any object without a simultaneous per-
ception of its resemblance to some things and its
difference from others. Every mental act requires a
consciousness of likeness to be combined with a con-
sciousness of diversity. But in some men the one
faculty immensely preponderates, and in some men the
other. I think it is usual for the artist and the art-
critic to be most deeply impressed with the differences
of things ; while the man of science is more deeply
impressed by their likenesses.
The perception of hkeness in the midst of diversity
is fundamental, indeed, in the scientific intellect ; it
forms the very basis of the evolutionary spirit. Classi-
fication depends upon it ; so does the idea of descent
with modification. The biologist looks, for example, at
a whale, and sees at once that, in spite of apparent
differences, it is really allied to the horse and the cow
rather than to the shark and the salmon. Deep-seated
55
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
resemblances strike him more than superficial diver-
sities. AU his schemes of nature are built up out of
such rapid recognitions of similarity. Homologous
organs appear to him related under the densest dis-
guises. He overlooks the outer mask, and sees beneath
it to the structural identity. The artist, on the other
hand, must catch at the surface diversities of things ;
the touch is all in all to him : his education is almost
entirely an education in perceiving and registering the
minutest shades and tones of difference. "Effects"
are his stock in trade. He is great on light and shade,
on texture, on surface. From this fundamental dis-
tinction of aim distinctions of judgment must invariably
arise ; and the man of science must be from certain
points of view almost inevitably a bad critic of artistic
performance.
Yet there is a sphere, it seems to me, where this
peculiar habit of the evolutionary mind may cast a
certain amount of light upon the products, if not on the
processes, of artistic genius. For the artist and the art-
critic, carefully trained to discriminate schools and
masters, to look for the special signs which mark the
work of this or that painter, to note in detail the
minutest differences, may sometimes be less impressed
by the underlying identity of structure and composition
in a whole series of works from the most unlike hands
than by their differences of treatment. The evolutionist,
on the other hand, coming to art with the preconcep-
tions formed in very dissimilar fields of study, may some-
times see certain unessential yet interesting aspects
56
THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN
of art more vividly than they are seen by the artist
or the art-critic. It is this perception of likeness in
difference which I venture to plead as my excuse.
I am concerned not so much with treatment as
with subject. From the first day when I began to
look with interest at Italian art, the singular simi-
larity between the course of its evolution and the
course of evolution in animal and vegetable life struck
me most forcibly. During many successive Italian
tours, many visits to Paris, Munich, Florence, Venice,
I have collected facts and examples in the same direc-
tion ; and I am emboldened now to lay my results
before the world, because I believe I have certain
neglected aspects of the case to present which are
relatively new, and which may prove interesting even
to connoisseurs by virtue of being taken from a fresh
point of view of the subject at issue. I do not mean,
of course, to assert that the idea of evolution or of com-
parative study in art is new ; but I do believe that the
conception of the individual composition as an organic
type, evolving along lines of its own, is a new and
fruitful one, and on that conception I base the claim
to an impartial hearing.
Put briefly, I would say, every subject or theme in
Italian art starts, like an organic type, from a special
central form, Byzantine or Giottesque, as the case may
be ; and varies therefrom by descent with modification.
And the resulting varieties are produced by diversities
of type in the environment. The Umbrian and Sienese
forms, influenced by the pietism of St. Francis of Assisi
57
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
and St. Catherine of Siena, vary in the direction of
spirituality, fervour, a purely religious aim, a certain
almost affected daintiness of composition. The Floren-
tine, more cultivated, and tinged from the first with
humanism, vary in the direction of grace, a sense of
beauty, poetry, the ideal. The Venetian, as one might
expect from a great commercial community, work out
their own worldlier evolution in the direction of rich-
ness, luxuriance, an opulence of colour, a voluptuous
wealth of female loveliness. The Lombard type is
gracious ; the Paduan, scholastic, as befits the denizen
of a university city. But still, as in organic forms
derived from a common origin, we can affiliate all on
a single ancestor. We find in every school the elements
of the structure in each subject remain ever the same,
while all the parts can be directly traced back as in-
dividual variations upon the corresponding parts of the
primitive type to which they owe their origin. In
the present case I have striven only to show persist-
ence of type ; in subsequent instances I shall strive
to point out differentiation of varieties.
Mr. Herbert Spencer's formula is justified even
here : each step in the evolution shows greater hetero-
geneity, greater coherence, and greater definiteness
than the stage that preceded it. Indeed, the closer
one looks into the character of this correspondence,
the clearer does it become that the prime form
essentially resembles an organic ancestor, and that
the variants follow the selfsame laws as evolving
animals. The picture may be regarded as a parent
58
THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN
type, giving rise to a family of differentiated de-
scendants.
To enforce these ideas, I have thought it best to
begin with a comparatively unfamiliar subject, like
the Sposalizio, instead of beginning with a familiar
one, like the Annunciation or the Madonna and Child.
In the latter cases, it is true, the unity of type is
throughout much greater, and the course of evolution
more absolutely unbroken. But the subject is there
beset with preconceptions. Now, I desire rather to
unfold my principles by gradual stages ; and for this
purpose it is best to begin with a simple and rela-
tively unknown scene, and to lead up by slow degrees
to more strictly conventionalised yet more complex
problems.
59
II
THE VISITATION
The group of related pictures with which we dealt
in the first chapter of this series, representing the
Sposalizio, or Marriage of the Virgin, belongs to the
legendary cycle of the Life of Mary, and of her devout
parents, St. Joachim and St. Anna. It is but one
out of a numerous family, based on the uncanonical
Protevangelion and the apocryphal gospel of the Birth
of Mary. The whole of this cycle has suggested
subjects for representation in art, almost as fixed and
constant in their elements as the one which I have
already selected for illustration. The chief moments
in the series thus characterised are these : Joachim's
offering rejected by the High Priest ; Joachim retires
to the sheepfold ; Joachim's sacrifice ; the meeting of
Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate (a particu-
larly well-known specimen of which may be seen in
the little fresco attributed by Ruskin to Giotto, but
more probably by a follower of his school, in a lunette
of the cloisters of the Spanish chapel at Florence) ;
the Birth of the Virgin (a very frequent theme, one
of the most familiar examples of which is Ghirlandajo's
masterpiece in Santa Maria Novella) ; the Presentation
60
THE VISITATION
of the Virgin in the Temple; the four stages in the
episode of the miracle of the rods ; and the Marriage
of the Virgin. All these incidents are represented by
Giotto on the walls of the Madonna dell' Arena at
Padua — a little church which forms a perfect museum
of Giottesque art, absolutely indispensable to the
student of evolution in Italian painting. I would
say to those who visit Italy for the sake of serious
study of her art in its developmental aspect, " What-
ever else you see or omit, do not fail to see the Giottos
at Padua."
The subject which we have here to deal with,
on the other hand, is taken direct from the actual
gospel narrative. The details are suggested by the
very words of Scripture. It is Luke, the historian
of the infancy, who tells us the graphic episode of
the Visitation or Salutation of Elisabeth. " And
Mary arose in those days," says the painter Evangelist,
" and went into the hill country with haste, into a
city of Juda ; and entered into the house of Zacharias,
and saluted Ehsabeth." And thereupon Elisabeth
answered with the words already spoken by the Angel
of the Annunciation, " Blessed art thou among women."
And Mary broke forth into the well-known hymn of
the Magnificat, which has been sung ever since by
generation after generation in all the Churches of
Christendom. The moment chosen by the Itahan
painters for the representation of this impressive scene
is always the one where Elisabeth steps forward to
greet the Blessed Virgin with the famiUar words,
61 D
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
" Whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord
should come to me ? " That sentence strikes the key-
note of the composition.
From the nature of the situation, the " Visitation "
occurs more often as one of a connected series of
frescoes than as an easel picture, a panel, or an altar-
piece. For the latter purposes donors usually pre-
ferred a Madonna and Child, a Santissima Trinita,
or a figure of their own patron saint, in martyrdom
or otherwise — a St. Sebastian, a St. Dominic, a Santa
Lucia, a St. Catherine. And it must always be borne
in mind that almost all early Italian pictures were so
commissioned by a particular donor for a particular
shrine or altar or chapel. The painter could not freely
choose his own subjects and incidents ; he was strictly
conditioned by the necessities of space and by the
name-saint or selected episode of his special patron ;
the terms of his contract bound and cramped him.
In the case of frescoes, however, which were often
employed to decorate the walls of a loggia or a cloister,
and to cover entire spaces in church or chapel, the
choice of subject was often wider. Such works were
frequently commissioned by the monastery, the church,
or the civic authorities ; and they generally bore the
character of a consecutive narrative, like Benozzo
Gozzoli's charming suite of Old Testament episodes
in the Campo Santo at Pisa. Thus a whole series
of stories representing the life of a saint is often
painted on a single wall, as in the case of Andrea
Mantegna's cycle of the history of St. James in the
62
THE VISITATION
Eremitani at Padua, or Spinello Aretino's of the
history of St. Benedict at San Miniato al Monte.
Florence is full of such pictured bibles and saintly
histories. From a very early date, frescoes of this
type often possess far greater freedom, individuality,
and vigour than the conventionalised Madonnas and
Saints, with their richly gilt haloes, represented by the
selfsame painters on wood or canvas.
In the ordinary treatment of the Visitation, the
constant elements are only three. In the first place,
the background is formed by a loggia or arcade, which
is often square in the earlier pictures, but consists
almost invariably of a round Roman or Renaissance
arch in the later ones. In the second place, we have
the necessary figures of the Virgin and St. Elisabeth,
in the act of embracing or saluting one another.
Most often, St. Elisabeth, a grave and dignified
personage, bends forward in an attitude of studied
humility ; the Blessed Virgin, though meek as always,
stands slightly more erect, as if conscious of the natural
superiority of her position. Of course Elisabeth is
represented as a woman a generation older than Mary.
In most instances the arch is seen just behind the
heads of these two principal characters ; its summit
forms, as it were, a round-topped frame for their figures,
the upper part of which is beautifully silhouetted
against the sky in the background. Additional figures
of attendants or spectators may be added or not, ac-
cording to the taste and fancy, not of the painter, but
of the person to whose order he produced his picture.
63
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
Giotto's "Visitation" in the Madonna dell' Arena
at Padua is one of the smallest of the beautiful series
with which the great founder of Florentine art adorned
the little church in the deserted amphitheatre. It
occupies a narrow space on the wall of the choir arch,
just beneath the figure of the Virgin in the " Annun-
ciation," of which a reproduction will be given here
when we come to reach that more difficult subject.
As a work of art, this fresco possesses peculiar evolu-
tionary interest. Giotto began his series with the
legendary history of the Madonna's birth and child-
hood ; and he had therefore painted fifteen out of
the forty frescoes which composed the cycle before
he reached this episode of the Visitation. But he
was learning as he went — teaching himself by practice.
He gained every day in knowledge of action. The
earlier fi'escoes, which constitute the upper row, have
still much of the stiffness and quaintness of early
tradition. This " Salutation," the first of the lower
set, presents a distinct advance in drawing and in
spirit on the previous works of the cycle. Compare
the ease and naturalness of St. Elisabeth's attitude
in this beautiful scene with the lifeless uplifted hand
of the angry suitor in the " Sposalizio," reproduced
from this church in the first chapter. Or again, con-
trast the delicate expression of hope and trust on
the elder woman's face, with the abstract unconcern
of the principal actors in the " Marriage of the Virgin."
You can see at a glance from these two specimens
what it was that made Giotto into the father and
64
THE V1>1TATIC)X : .l/,i,;.i/i«,i ■;', V An,.:-,. Pad,,,,
THE VISITATION
prophet of the art of the Renaissance. Mr. Quilter
says well of this particular picture : " It is almost
the first fresco where Giotto's full powers are seen.
I know no two figures finer in their way than those
of the Virgin and Elisabeth. Here the plainness of
Mary's face seems quite obscured by the beauty of
its expression. And every line of the two figures
helps to tell the story." The scene is real ; the
actors in it are living characters.
Of the formal elements in this picture, I will only
call attention to the delicate arabesque work on the
temple in the background, and to the round arch in
the wall behind, which, though so little conspicuous
here, becomes a main feature in such later work as
Pacchiarotto's and Albertinelli's. It is an " antici-
patory rudiment." Such first appearances of a detail
afterwards highly elaborated are always interesting
from the evolutionary standpoint. Notice also the
sohd Giottesque haloes round the heads of the two
saints ; the dainty embroidery on the Virgin's robe,
which foreshadows Fra Angelico ; the very charac-
teristic faces of the attendants behind the Madonna,
with a roundness of outline most typical of their
painter ; and last of all, the manner in which the
figures are still to a great extent enveloped and con-
cealed in perfect sheets of drapery. This is particu-
larly conspicuous in the turbaned attendant behind
St. Elisabeth. Indeed, while the two principal per-
sonages display a vigour of action hitherto unknown
in Italian art, the arms and hands of the turbaned
67
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
attendant are almost as lifeless as a Roman mosaic.
Giotto took great pains with his Virgin and his St.
Elisabeth, but appears to have made no special effort
to give life and reality to these accessory personages.
They were mere make-weights.
The next example of the " Visitation " to which
I shall call attention here is a curious little fresco
by Taddeo Gaddi in the Baroncelli chapel at Santa
Croce in Florence. It occupies a quaint and irregular
corner on one side of a pointed window, the opposite
side being taken up by the sister subject of the
Annunciation ; and its peculiar shape is therefore
necessarily dependent upon the form of the space
between the outer arch and the actual glass-work.
But its composition in other respects shows us how
closely Taddeo followed in his master's footsteps.
Observe in particular the attitudes of Mary and
Elisabeth : the Virgin to the left, as before and
always ; the elder saint to the right, in much the
same position, save only that here she kneels instead
of merely bowing. Observe also the position of the
hands and arms, and the grouping of the attendants.
But, above all things, notice the building in the
background, now becoming more conspicuous, and
with its round arch slowly leading up to the later
and far more elegant arrangement in Pacchiarotto
and Mariotto Albertinelli. The development of this
round arch is to my mind one of the most instructive
points in the evolutionary history of early Itahan art,
and I hope my readers will pay proper attention to it.
68
THE \'IsnATION: Sn„/,t Civcf. l-lcrcn^:
lAIUiEO GADDI
THE VISITATION
There is a "Visitation" by Ghirlandajo in Santa
Maria Novella at Florence which illustrates certain
tendencies of later or intermediate Florentine art,
but which comes less well into the main line of our
present series. I introduce it merely as showing
the amount of variation that the Middle Renaissance
painters permitted themselves in dealing with such
conventionalised subjects. Here the central group
consists of a Madonna and Saint Elisabeth, whose
features and figures may be instructively compared
with Giotto's on the one hand and Pacchiarotto's on
the other. There are also two attendants, as in the
Giottesque model ; but their position has been trans-
posed, and their drawing is of course of Ghirlandajo's
period. Yet it is interesting to note, even so, in
the roundness of their faces a distinct reminiscence
of the Giottesque model. The rest of the fresco,
which is large and filled with figures, consists of
contemporary spectators, regarded as bystanders, and
introduced, after Ghirlandajo's fashion, out of compli-
ment to his employers. Conspicuous among them
(and shown on the right in the portion of the picture
I have selected for reproduction here) is the portrait
of the stately Giovanna degli Albizi, so familiar to
most of us from the portrait by Ghirlandajo, executed
no doubt as a study for these very frescoes, and lately
lent by Mr. Willett to our National Gallery in
London. These frescoes of Ghirlandajo's at Santa
Maria Novella form a double series of the Life of
the Virgin and of St. John the Baptist : they were
71
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
executed by order of Giovanna's father-in-law, Gio-
vanni Tornabuoni. Her portrait occurs in no less
than three of them, always as a mere onlooker at
the central action. As for the round arch, it occurs
even here ; but Ghirlandajo has thrown it into the
background of the work, and has made no use of it
as a frame or setting for the two principal figures.
Before passing on to the next " Salutation " of
our series, I shall dart back at a tangent, as it may
seem at first, to a totally diiferent subject, which
nevertheless will be seen in the end, I trust, to cast
no little light both on Pacchiarotto's " Visitation," with
which we must presently deal, and on other subse-
quent groups of pictures. Everybody has heard that
with Giotto begins the great upward development in
Florentine painting. Those Northern people who
only know the father of Tuscan art from the stiff
and heavily-gilt Madonnas and Saints in English or
French galleries can hardly understand the enthusiasm
which he kindles in the minds of those who have
learnt his handicraft at Padua and Assisi, Santa Croce
and Santa Maria Novella. But the true explanation
is twofold. In the first place Giotto's frescoes, for
the most part representing scenes and actions, are
immensely superior in drawing and in dramatic force
to his isolated saints, which for the most part repre-
sent mere abstract figures, still largely influenced by
Byzantine conventions. In his gilt Madonnas Giotto
went as far as he dared, no doubt, in the direction
of naturalness : a Florentine or Paduan congi-egation
72
THE VISITATION
of the early fourteenth century would have been
shocked at too grave a departure from the wooden
Vh'gins with which their childhood had been so long
familiar. It was only when he got away from altar-
pieces, and painted in fresco living scenes from the
Gospels or the legends of the saints, that he could
give free flight to his growing power of dramatic
representation. A supreme example of this power,
in the zenith of its development, I shall reproduce
later on when we come to deal with the treatment
of the Pieta. In the second place — and this is the
point to which I desire to direct special attention —
we can only gauge Giotto aright by comparing him
with those who went before him, not with those
who came after him. We must never forget that
spectators of the fourteenth century, who gazed at
the frescoes in the Madonna dell' Arena at Padua
or in the Lower Church at Assisi, had never before
seen anything like so truthful, so living, and so
moving a representation of human activities. The
quaintness and occasional stiffness which we now
perceive in Giotto's work were not there at all to
critics of that period. Where we say, " How odd ! "
they said, " How lifelike ! " Where we say, " How
constrained ! " they said, " How natural ! " We must
bear in mind Mrs. Browning's warning against those
who should —
" Because of some stiff draperies and loose joints,
Gaze scorn down from the heights of Raphaelhood
On Cimabue's picture."
75
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
The fact is, before the early Sienese and Florentine
schools, nobody had ever attempted to make a saint
look really human at all ; till Giotto came, nobody
had ever succeeded in making an attitude really
express the action it was intended to indicate. A
certain homeliness in Giotto's episodes made them real
to his contemporaries. Whoever wishes to under-
stand this may examine the pictures by Duccio of
Siena in the National Gallery ; for Duccio performed
for Sienese art much the same revolution as Giotto
inaugurated for the art of Florence.
In order to mark the greatness of this advance, and
also to illustrate another principle necessary for the
full comprehension of Pacchiarotto's "Visitation," I
shall step aside, as I said before, for a moment from
my main subject, to give an illustration of a saintly
figure of the rude native manner in all its unmixed
stiffness and woodenness. There is a " Mary Mag-
dalen " at the Belle Arti in Florence which admirably
exemplifies this earliest stage in the evolution of
Italian painting. It is a rude figure of the penitent
saint, upright and ungainly, clad from head to foot in
nothing save the waving masses of her own impossible
and wildly luxuriant hair. The primitive artist who
drew it had to represent the Magdalen as nude — a
penitent in the wilderness after her legendary flight to
Provence ; but his sense of her saintliness would not
allow him to do more than suggest the inevitable fact
of her nudity. Therefore he draped her in her own
falling tresses as in a cloak or mantle ; and the figure
76
THE MAGDALEN: Tlu Acadimy, Florence. I311I CENTURY
THE VISITATION
which he produced, itself copied from some earlier
painting, was copied in turn by dozens of unknown
craftsmen after him. Can we wonder that a public
brought up upon such uncouth and lifeless images as
this should have gazed with delight, admiration, and
astonishment at the easy movements and natural
attitude of Giotto's "Visitation"? Centuries seem
to separate these almost contemporary pictures/
But that is not all. The long mantle of hair
became the symbol and, if I may be allowed so irre-
verent an expression, the trade-mark of the Magdalen.
Whenever we see a female saint more or less lightly
clad, or absolutely nude, enveloped in masses of
luxuriant hair, we know it is the figure of the peni-
tent sinner. Often enough she holds in her hands the
alabaster box of ointment, very precious, which she
broke in the house of Simon the Pharisee ; but often,
too, she is represented without it. As an example at
' At the risk of digression, I will venture to add a short identification of
the side-episodes in this picture, beginning from the top and passing from
left to right alternately. (1) The Magdalen anoints the feet of Christ : the
canopy marks that the action takes place in a house ; the tower, that its scene
is a city. The other figures are St. Peter, St. John, and the Pharisee. (2)
The Raising of Lazarus. An attendant is naively represented as holding his
nose. (3) '^ Noll me tangere" : Christ and the Magdalen, in the garden, after
the resurrection. (4) The Magdalen preaches the Gospel at Marseilles : the
tower again indicates a city. (6) The Magdalen, retiring to a cave in the
wilderness (the Saiute Baume in Provence), is lifted daily by four angels,
and beholds the beatific vision. She is now, as penitent, clad in her own
hair only. (6) An angel brings her the holy wafer to the Sainte Baume.
(7) The Last Communion of the Magdalen. St. Maximin brings her the
viaticum. (8) The Burial of the Magdalen : canopy and tower indicate the
interior of a church in a city. For the legend see " Lives of the Saints," or
Mrs. Jameson's "Sacred and Legendary Art."
79
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
the opposite end of the scale, I give here a reproduction
of Titian's " Magdalen." In this picture you will see
at once that the central idea remains unchanged — a
woman sheltering her modesty under the copious
masses of her own rich hair. But while the early
artist is engaged in producing the image of a saint,
Titian, after the fashion of the later Venetian painters,
is anxious only to display his art by producing a beauti-
ful picture of a beautiful woman. He conceals just so
much of the figure as his reticence demands, and dis-
plays just so much as a delicate sense of the becoming
permits him. You might trace the evolution of the
" Magdalen " through a hundred stages, from my
nameless picture in the Belle Arti to the (doubtfully
authentic) Correggio at Dresden, and yet find in all
that these essential features by which we recognise the
type were faithfully adhered to.
Every saint had thus his or her distinguishing
symbol, by which each was instantly recognisable,
during the ages of faith, to every beholder.
And now, having settled this initial point, we may
go on to the consideration of our Pacchiarotto. Ob-
serve, in the first place, that here, as before, Mary
occupies the left side of the picture, while the right
invariably belongs to EUsabeth. This arrangement of
the figures is, I think, universal. Notice, too, that the
attitude largely recalls Giotto's ; and compare it with
the other attitude in the Albertinelli which we wiU
shortly examine. But observe again how the archway,
of which we had in Giotto a mere anticipatory rudi-
THK MAGDAI.EX : I'illi Gallery . Floreiui.
THE VISITATION
ment, as a biologist would say, and in Taddeo Gaddi a
more advanced form, has now become a prime element
in the composition. The triumphal arch, of which it
forms a portion, marks Pacchiarotto's position in the
history of the Renaissance. I need hardly say that
many intermediate stages, unrepresented here, had
intervened between Giotto or Taddeo and the Sienese
painter. This triumphal arch is partly Roman, partly
Renaissance, in character ; like the similar arch in
Ghirlandajo's "Adoration of the Shepherds," in the
same gallery, it testifies to the growth of the anti-
quarian spirit among Italian painters. The horses on
its summit have been suggested by, though not actually
copied from, the bronze horses on the portico of St.
Mark's at Venice, which are believed to have originally
adorned the triumphal arch of Nero at Rome, and
which were afterwards transported to decorate that
of Constantine at Constantinople. Their introduction
gives a note of antiquity to the picture. Giotto and
the Giottesques frankly represented biblical scenes in
fourteenth-century surroundings ; the early Renaissance
strove to give some semblance of Greco-Roman rather
than Oriental culture. It is worth while to notice the
skill with which Pacchiarotto builds up his composition
from the figures and heads of the two chief characters,
through the mass of the arch, to the Holy Spirit
brooding above over the entire picture.
But what are these attendant personages on either
side ? Why, in place of the female retainers in Giotto's
work, have we this incongruous collection of Christian
83
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
monks and martjrrs and bishops ? Clearly Pacchiarotto
could not have conceived them as being actually
present at the moment of the Visitation. If you
want clear proof of this, observe that the figure in the
foreground on the left is St. John the Baptist himself:
he holds the reed cross and bears the scroll with JEcce
Agnus Dei, which are the recognised symbols of the
last of the prophets, who exclaimed " Behold the Lamb
of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." But
St. John could not have been present as a spectator at
this scene, which preceded his birth ; for we all know
that "when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary,
the babe leaped in her womb ; and Elisabeth was filled
with the Holy Ghost," which we see in this picture in
the form of a dove descending upon her from the
heavens in the distance. The fact is, in such a com-
position as this, the later saints are regarded as looking
on at the action represented much as you or I might
do. They stand outside the central theme of the
artist. Giotto's commission was for a "Visitation"
only; Pacchiarotto's was for a " Visitation " with cer-
tain saints looking on, to be painted for the church of
S. Spirito in Siena. Probably these saints were the
patrons of the donor and sundry members of his family.
Sometimes, indeed, the donor himself is represented as
assisting at the scene : for example, in the Ghirlandajo,
or again in a representation of this same subject by
Ilogier van der Weyden, a Flemish artist, in the
gallery at Turin, where the person who presents the
picture looks on in adoration. INIore frequently, how-
84
THE VISITATION, WITH SAINTS: The Academy, Florence.
PACCHIAROTTO
85
THE VISITATION
ever, the donor and his family are represented by their
patron saints. Thus the figure kneeUng on the right,
with the fetters in his hands, is known by that pecuHar
mark to be St. Leonard ; whence we may with great
probabiHty infer that Leonardo was a family name in
the household of the donor. So again the bishop
behind, with the three balls in his hand, I take to be
St. Nicholas of Bari, the same saint who appears with
the same tokens in the Blenheim Madonna, by Raphael,
in the National Gallery : it is possible, accordingly, that
the picture was partly paid for by a Niccolo, or that
the donor had received some spiritual or temporal
benefit through the intercession of St. Nicholas. In
any case, the assemblage of saints in such a picture
is never accidental : wherever we can trace the whole
history of the work, we always find every one of the
figures is there for a good and sufficient reason. To
take an example from early Flemish art, one of the
most wholly satisfactory pictures in the National
Gallery (Room XL, No. 1045) is a Gerard David of
a Canon and his patron saints, from the Collegiate
Church of St. Donatien at Bruges. The Canon's
name was Bernardino de Salviatis ; therefore the
principal saint is St. Bernardino of Siena. The church
was St. Donatien's ; therefore the second saint is
Donatien in person. The Canon was an almoner ;
therefore the third saint is St. Martin, who shared
his coat with the beggar. I will recur to this
subject when we come to examine the common
representation of the Madonna con vari Santi, — Our
87
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
Lady surrounded by just such a group of holy
personages.
If you have a commission for a " Visitation " alone,
you paint a " Visitation," and nothing but it ; if you
have a commission for a " Visitation with various
saints," of course you fulfil your employer's order. This
distinction is very well seen in the next " Visitation " to
which I will direct your attention — the beautiful and
graceful one by Mariotto Albertinelli which now hangs
in the gallery of the UfRzi at Florence. If you cut out
the centre of Pacchiarotto's work, omitting the saints
and the top of the triumphal arch, you have, in essence,
the composition of Albertinelli's. Compare the two
with Giotto or with any of the intermediate forms
which you find at Florence, at Siena, or at Perugia,
and you will notice at once the close likeness of type in
the two later paintings. Thus both Pacchiarotto and
Albertinelli give their Virgin and their St. Elisabeth a
sort of snood or hood, which is absent in Giotto's treat-
ment. The face of St. Elisabeth has many features in
common in all the three : it is modelled on a single
original conception, no doubt Byzantine ; but while the
Sienese painter represents both faces three-quarters
towards the spectator, in the three Florentines, Giotto,
Ghirlandajo, and Albertinelli, they are both in profile.
The Florentine painters, too, resemble one another
more closely in the nature of the embrace ; though
Albertinelli combines the clasping arms of Giotto with
the grasped hands of the Sienese artist. Other varying
points of resemblance and difference, with their curious
88
THE VISITATION: L'ln^i C.iUoy, Florcna.
MARIOTTO AI.BERTIXKLI.I
S9
THE VISITATION
cross-relations, I leave to the reader himself to deter-
mine, lest I should grow tedious. I will only add this,
that the longer one compares such successive pictures
of different schools, the more do strange points of
likeness and diversity come out between them.
Albertinelli's picture is extremely interesting to us
from another point of view. Its painter is but a
second-rate figure in the mighty age of Florentine art
which included Leonardo, Michael Angelo, Raphael.
Indeed, if we count Andrea del Sarto and Fra Barto-
lommeo as setting the standard for the second class, we
shall have to relegate Albertinelli to the third rank of
importance. Yet such is the power of the great epochs
of art to beget noble work, that men of this third order,
inspired by the teaching and companionship of the
giants of their age, often blossom out unexpectedly
into such isolated masterpieces as this " Visitation " or
Ridolfo Ghirlandajo's " Miracles of St. Zenobio." So
in the great age of Venetian art a Paris Bordone or a
Rocco Marconi often astonishes us with a " Dosfe and
Fisherman " or a " Descent from the Cross " of surpass-
ing magnificence. Albertinelli was a pupil of Fra
Bartolommeo, who is said, indeed (on what authority I
know not), to have designed the original cartoon from
which this picture was painted. It richly deserves,
however, Burckhardt's commendation of being com-
posed " with real feeling for harmony," and being a
work "of which only the greatest master could be
capable." It is, as Hare calls it, " a most simple,
grand, and beautiful picture." Indeed, the simplicity
91 E
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
has resulted in a far more beautiful effect than that
produced by the crowded composition of the Sienese
master. I would call special attention to the increase
of beauty gained by the greater height and space of the
open archway, and by the unsymmetrical throwing for-
ward of St. Elisabeth's head and shoulders. Alberti-
nelU's whole management of the space between the
sides of the arch is absolutely masterly, and can be
best brought out by deliberate comparison of photo-
graphs of each with the original of the other. This
exquisite work was painted on commission for the
congregation of San Martino at Florence.
I have not called attention to the evolution of
purely technical details, such as perspective, chiaro-
scuro, texture, anatomy, treatment of drapery and so
forth, because the advance made in these may be partly
perceived at once by every observer, while it is partly
to be appreciated only by the practical artist or the
trained critic. Still less have I dwelt upon questions
of colouring or of the medium employed, whether
tempera or oil ; because these questions can only be
adequately discussed before the original pictures, and
by those who possess a far greater knowledge of tech-
nique than I can pretend to. My treatment is neither
pre-Morellian or post-Morellian : it is simply evolu-
tionary. But I think comparison of the various types
even in black and white may yield in many cases
unexpected results to the student. For example, it is
not a mere accident that both in Pacchiarotto's and
Albertinelli's treatment the top of the picture is
92
THE VISITATION
rounded. Other like points of detail, such as the steps
in the foreground and the parti-coloured marble of the
inlaid pavement, I will leave to the ingenuity of my
readers to discover.
It is interesting to note, at the same time, that the
character of a particular painting is not always a safe
guide to its age. A more archaic type of art may
sometimes be contemporary with or even subsequent to
a more advanced one. Raphael's work is from the
beginning more modern in style than Perugino's ; yet
Perugino outlived his marvellous pupil by several years,
and continued to the end of his days to paint in the
selfsame Peruginesque manner, uninfluenced by the
extraordinary development of art which was taking
place all round him, through the example of Leonardo,
Michael Angelo, and their followers. Indeed, there is
a singularly interesting fresco at Perugia, begun by
Raphael in early manhood, and completed after
Raphael's death by Perugino. In this composition
the pupil's work is far more perfect and far more
modern in tone than the master's ; the young Raphael
knew more about the essential principles of art than
Perugino could acquire in his whole long lifetime. It
is the same in the case of the two artists with whom we
have here to deal. Pacchiarotto and Albertinelli were
born in the selfsame year ; and the Sienese master long
outlived his Florentine contemporary. But Pacchia-
rotto's " Visitation " is distinctly archaic in character ;
it might have been painted half a century earlier than
Albertinelli's. It is important to remember this dis-
93
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
tinction between relative age and relative evolution.
Pictures newer in date may be older in style ; and
when this is so, for the purposes of our present sub-
ject they must be considered as if they belonged to
an earlier epoch. Put in one word, Pacchiarotto's
work is essentially pre-Raphaelite, Albertinelli's post-
Raphaelite.
Furthermore, it is worth while to observe that with
the gradual increase of technical power — the advance in
drawing, in modelling, in perspective, in chiaroscuro —
between Giotto and the great Renaissance painters,
there went to some degree a falling off in reality and in
underlying naturalness. Albertinelli's figures are, of
course, in point of skill and delineation more lifelike
than Giotto's Virgin and St. Elisabeth. Their embrace
is more real ; the lines of the arm and the folds at the
elbow more closely resemble the truths of nature. In
matters of technique it were absurd to compare them,
save as examples of totally different planes of know-
ledge. But look at the faces : look at the scene as a
whole. You feel that while Albertinelli was concen-
trating his energies upon the production of a beautiful
and graceful picture, Giotto was concentrating his
energies upon the vivid realisation of a scene which
he felt and believed to have actually happened. That
homely and aged woman with the deep-lined face and
the bent back, who leans forward to embrace the
Mother of her Saviour — how true she is ! how vivid !
how genuine 1 how unaffected ! In a certain sense
there is more actual fidelity to life and humanity in her
94
THE VISITATION
than in the gracefully-hooded and refined lady whose
draperies Albertinelli arranges with such delicacy and
dignity. There is more earnestness and truth in the
gentle attitude of Giotto's Virgin than in the half self-
conscious poise and pose of AlbertineUi's too meek
Madonna. The earlier painter is absorbed in his theme,
the later in his art : the earlier is thinking how the
Blessed Virgin looked, the later is thinking how he
can best dispose two heads and profiles against the
background of sky seen through the rounded arch-
way.
This is the Nemesis of progress. As Ruskin has
somewhere pithily put it, " In early times, art was
employed for the display of religious facts ; in later
times, religious facts were employed for the display of
art." And in the almost equally striking words of
Morelli, " When a nation's culture has reached its
culminating point, grace comes to be valued more than
character." I think it is impossible to compare Giotto's
" Visitation " with AlbertineUi's and not to see that,
while the earlier artist thinks of character before
everything, grace is the one absorbing concern of the
later one.
The five specimens given here fairly exhaust the
chief types in the presentation of their subject. Most
others are mere transcripts of the central ideas em-
bodied in these pictures. For example, there is an
"Annunciation" by Girolamo del Pacchia in the
Academy at Siena, with Mary and Elisabeth in the
background, which is almost a direct reproduction of
95
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
Albertinelli's picture. I may add that the student will
always do well to look for these little episodes in the
background of main themes, which often aid in forming
a clear conception of the evolution of a subject. They
are introduced as a rule without the slightest regard
to historical sequence, merely in order to diversify the
composition.
Our National Gallery has no " Visitation " of any
impoi'tance for purposes of comparison ; but the tourist
in Italy will find many examples of no small interest
from our present standpoint. An excellent specimen
of the Venetian mode of treating the subject will be
found in the picture in the Accademia at Venice
usually described as the earliest work of Titian, though
Sir J. Crowe denies that it can have been painted by
that master at any stage in his evolution. In any case,
however, it shows the manner in which the "Visita-
tion " envisaged itself to the rich and luscious Venetian
imagination. At Paris there is a further specimen of
Ghirlandajo's treatment of this theme in a work at the
Louvre, much praised by Kugler ; Avhile another good
example for comparison is Pontormo's admirable em-
bodiment of the scene in the glass-covered cloisters of
the Annunziata at Florence. Nor can I quite pass by,
as a Lombard example, Gaudenzio Ferrari's work in
the Turin gallery. Finally, the visitor to Assisi should
take with him into the Lower Church a photograph of
the " Visitation " at Padua for comparison Avith the
other " Visitation " there, attributed by Dobbert, as by
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, to Giotto in person. It is
96
THE VISITATION
scarcely more than a repetition of the one in
the Madonna dell' Arena ; but it contains several
more figures and has a more elaborate background,
though the action is less free and the draperies
stifFer.
97
Ill
THE ANNUNCIATION
In the Pitt-Rivers Anthropological Collection, at the
Oxford Museum, many separate objects of human
handicraft, such as weapons, pottery, boats, ornaments,
and implements, are arranged side by side in the pro-
bable order of evolutionary development. In somewhat
the same way I am endeavouring here to arrange certain
subjects of early Italian painting. Such arrangements
are most effective and instructive when a very large
number of allied specimens can be placed together in
successive rows, in sufficiently close connection to get
rid entirely of the idea of breaks, and to show a practi-
cally imperceptible gradation of forms which shade off
by slow degrees into one another. The evolution of
the knife, the hatchet, the arrowhead, the spear, can
thus be traced in detail through hundreds of specimens.
In art, such collections of examples in every stage
of development are difficult to procure, and still more
difficult to reproduce, owing to their size, variety,
number, and complexity. Sometimes the total tale
of surviving specimens is relatively small ; as in the
case of the Sposalizio, only a few dozen treatments of
which now remain, all told, and those for the most part
98
THE ANNUNCIATION
in Italy itself, where alone they can be compared to
any advantage. Even these few are chiefly frescoes,
only a very small number of easel-pictures of the sub-
ject having ever been painted. But with our next
subject, the Annunciation, the case is quite different.
Here, it would be possible for a diligent inquirer to
make a collection of many hundreds of examples ; and
the difficulty is rather that of selection and reproduc-
tion from so vast a number. Even a single Northern
museum, like our own National Gallery, wiU supply
the student with several interesting examples for com-
parison ; while the churches and palaces of Italy itself
would afford materials for years of study. If one could
reproduce fifty or a hundred successive "Annuncia-
tions " for inspection, side by side, the spectator would
gain a clear and consistent view of the evolution of
the entire subject. StiU better, if it were possible to
arrange copies in a long series of divergent rows from a
central Byzantine original, the student might follow
the variants on that primitive type as they differentiate
themselves in the different schools — Tuscan, Umbrian,
Lombardic, Ferrarese, and Venetian. All that I can
do here, however, is to give a few salient examples out
of dozens that occur to me, and thereby to suggest a
line of study which may be undertaken in detail by
readers for themselves in London and Paris, in Munich,
Venice, Milan, Florence, Siena.
The subject-matter of the Annunciation is taken, of
course, from the Gospel according to St. Luke. " And
in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God
99
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin
espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the
House of David ; and the virgin's name was Mary.
And the angel came in unto her, and said. Hail, thou
that art highly favoured ! the Lord is with thee : blessed
art thou among women. And when she saw him, she
was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what
manner of salutation this should be." The moment
chosen for the representation of the Annunciation is
always the one when the essential words, " Hail, thou
that art highly favoured ! " are being spoken to the
Blessed Virgin. The inscription " Ave Maria gratia
plena " often appears on a scroU in the angel's hands ;
sometimes, as in the Duccio in the National G-allery,
the Madonna holds a book inscribed with the words,
" Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son."
As regards the formal elements of the composition,
I would mention first that the action almost invariably
takes place in a loggia — an arcade or cloister. Quite
invariably, too, the angel Gabriel occupies the left-
hand side and the Blessed Virgin the right-hand side
of the picture. In almost all cases a lectern or reading-
desk (perhaps rather a prie-dieu) stands in front of or
beside the Madonna. The angel usually holds in one
hand in early works a sceptre ; later on this is replaced
by a spray of the common white garden lily — the An-
nunciation lily, as it is still called in Italy. These are
the chief necessary elements of the scene ; other points,
which vary more from picture to picture, will come out
in our subsequent description of individual examples.
100
THE ANNUNCIATION
In many early specimens the heavens are opened ; a
hand or a glory, or even the Eternal Father in person,
appears in the sky ; and a dove, representing of course
the Holy Spirit, descends from this point towards the
heart or head of the Virgin. This feature is admirably
seen in a quaintly beautiful though very much decorated
Carlo Crivelli in the National Gallery (Hoom VIII.,
No. 739). As a rule the dove descends in a ray of
light, which enters the loggia through a window on
one side ; and even when the dove itself is wanting,
this heavenly ray frequently forms a marked element in
the picture. The angel Gabriel's wings are generally
composed, in the earlier works, of peacocks' feathers ;
in later ones, they tend to be either white or rosy. In
most cases the angel is entering somewhat hastily as if
from without, and behind him is seen an open-air back-
ground of landscape or city. This vista often occupies
the centre of the picture. The Virgin, on the other
hand, sits or kneels in the interior of the loggia, fre-
quently with a bedchamber opening out behind her.
One curious feature found in many " Annunciations,"
and more or less present in all under various disguises,
is this : the Madonna is to a greater or less extent
distinctly separated by a waU or partition from the
announcing angel. Ruskin, in discussing the Carlo
Crivelli in the National Gallery, already mentioned,
throws out the idea that, as Mary is there represented
kneeling in her chamber, while the angel is invisible to
her in the court outside, this treatment " may be in-
tended to suggest that the angel appeared to her in a
101
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
dream." But if we examine a large number of instances,
we shall see that such an explanation, besides its in-
herent improbability in the ages of faith (when Scrip-
ture facts were accepted in the most literal sense), fails
to cover the majority of the cases. For while in some
instances the wall is continuous, in others it is broken
by a door or archway, and in yet others again is merely
represented by a colonnade or row of pillars. I shall
suggest hereafter an explanation of this singular feature
which seems to me at once more reasonable and more
evolutionary.
The earliest " Annunciation " to which I shall call
special attention here is Giotto's, in the Madonna dell'
Arena at Padua. As far as possible I illustrate Giotto's
work from the little Paduan church, because there,
more than anywhere else, critics seem to agree that we
have the undoubted handicraft of the master ; and also
because almost every one of the subjects I have selected
for treatment in the present series is there represented.
But in the chapel of the Arena, the group of the
Annunciation is not treated in a single coherent pic-
ture ; it is made the subject of two separate frescoes.
These frescoes are divided from one another by the
intervention of the choir arch ; the angel of the Annun-
ciation kneels to the left of the arch ; the Madonna
kneels, facing him, to the right, but separated from
him by the whole width of the choir. It is in this
peculiarity, I believe, that we must trace the origin of
the wall or barrier which so often marks off the figure
of the Virgin from that of the angel Gabriel.
102
THE ANNUNCIATION
In order to understand this point, again, we must
look back to a curious architectural use of the Annun-
ciation. Over the principal portal of almost every
church in Paris, from Notre Dame and St. Germain
I'Auxerrois to the tympanum of the Madeleine, you
will find a sculptured relief of the Resurrection and the
Last Judgment. Throughout Northern France (as for
example again at St. Denis and Amiens) this rehef was
considered the proper one for the decoration of the
main doorway of churches. In Italy, on the other
hand, the Annunciation was the subject always so
employed at the entrance of churches. For instance,
we find it in the mosaic by Ghirlandajo over the north
door of the Cathedral at Florence. Most often, how-
ever, the Annunciation is employed for this purpose
in the form of a divided relief, on either side of the
principal door, — the angel to the left, the Madonna
to the right, and the doorway between them. It may
so be seen in half the churches of Italy ; every one
will remember it, to particularise a well-known case,
on the front of the Lower Church at Assisi. North of
the Alps, even, the usage was not uncommon ; and an
example survives (restored, of course) on the west front
of Salisbury Cathedral.
From this architectural use, so common that, once
it is pointed out to you, you will see it everywhere, it
came about, as I think, that the Annunciation grew to
be regarded as the proper subject for the decoration
of the blank space beside an archway. At any rate,
from a very early age, both inside churches and outside
105
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
them, reliefs and frescoes of the Annunciation are con-
stantly so represented, with the figures separate and
divided from one another by the empty space of the
intervening archway. Hence arose a custom of divid-
ing the treatment, as it were, into two separate halves,
which are regarded as having little or nothing to do
with one another. In a Fra Bartolommeo at the Uffizi
in Florence the picture is actually cut in tAvo as panels
of a shutter ; while in a Paolo Veronese, in the same
collection, the Madonna and angel are separated from
one another by the whole width of a quite empty
corridor.
To return to our Giotto : the two halves of this
divided picture are strictly symmetrical, and in each
the loggia where the Annunciation takes place is repre-
sented by two little projecting arcaded boxes, like the
loges of a theatre. To the left is the angel, half kneel-
ing, with unusually fine sweeps of drapery for Giotto,
quite unlike the straight up-and-down folds of his
predecessors ; a scroll is in Gabriel's hand, originally
inscribed, no doubt, " Ave Maria, gratia plena," though
these words are (to my eyes at least) no longer legible.
Round his head is the usual solid-rayed Giottesque
halo ; pencils of light radiate on every side around him.
To the right, the Madonna, with a similar halo, receives
his salutation in the same attitude. Her hands (ill
drawn) are devoutly clasped on her breast, in a position
which already was or became conventional. In front
of her is the usual prie-dieic, or reading-desk. Rays of
glory from an unseen source fall on her face from
106
THE ANNUNCIATION: L'/Jizl Gallery. Florence.
NERI 1)1 lilCCI
107
THE ANNUNCIATION
behind one of the boxes which form the loggia. Her
features are sweet and resigned, but have none of that
air of fear and astonishment which Vasari tells us
Giotto gave to the Virgin in an " Annunciation " he
painted at Florence. However, there is a Giottesque
" Annunciation " in the Uffizi which fully makes up
for any such dejficiency ; I commend it to the attention
of those who wish to see the rudest work of this school
in its first vain struggles after the expression of
emotion.
Subsequent pictures of the Annunciation are exceed-
ingly common, and fall at once into three main types.
In the first place the subject was often employed alone,
inside or outside the principal portal of churches, or
divided in the same way on either side of the choir
arch. In the second place it formed, as a fresco, one
of the common series both of the Life of Christ and
the Life of the Virgin. In the third place it was often
the theme of a votive picture or altar-piece, especially
as one of the series known as the " Seven Joys of
Mary." This diversity of use fully accounts for the
frequency of the subject.
An " Annunciation " by Neri de' Bicci, also in the
Uffizi, of which I give an illustration, is a fair specimen
of the types of these earlier easel pictures. I introduce
it here out of chronological order because it really
represents a pure survival of the Giottesque model
in a later generation. It contains a double colonnade
like a small cloister ; this double colonnade recurs in
many Giottesque pictures, and is essentially similar in
109
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
type (though not in architectural order) to that in the
Paolo Veronese already mentioned. To the extreme
left is a door by which the angel would appear to
have entered ; above it stands a little window, through
which in many instances (though not in this) a ray
of light falls on the Blessed Virgin. Gabriel advances
with hands clasped on his breast, a common later alter-
native to the saluting attitude of Giotto's angel : notice
his peacock wings, and the delicate pattern on his robe
and fluttering ribbons. He is erect, not kneeling. To
the right is the Madonna, seated, with hooded head,
and hands uplifted in an attitude of astonishment.
There is no reading-desk, but a book lies on her lap ;
the management of her halo is less adroit than in
Giotto's treatment. Behind her hangs a curtain —
which is also a feature of Giotto's picture ; a httle
to her right, through an open door, we get the remote
suggestion of a bedroom. Above, the heavens are
opened, and the Eternal Father, in a circle of radiant
glory, with outstretched hands, looks down upon His
handmaid. Rays from His breast fall in the direction
of the Virgin's bosom : a dove is descending on them,
as on a path of light, towards the Mother of the
Saviour. Through the open door to the left, and
through the arcade behind the angel, we obtain vistas
of a formal landscape, with trees and terraces in
incorrect perspective. These trees and terraces are
conventional features. Neither in this picture nor in
Giotto's treatment is there any white lily. Otherwise,
Neri's work, in spite of its date, may be accepted
110
THE ANNUNCIATION
as a very central and typical specimen of an early
" Annunciation."
Fra Angelico's treatment, in that lovely fresco on
the walls of San Marco, is in some ways simpler, yet
far more beautiful than Bicci's. As before, the scene
is a cloister, not wholly unlike that of the Frate's
own monastery, but still more closely resembling the
court of the church of the Annunziata at Florence.
The columns and arches are handled with a great
advance in technical skill on the early Giottesque, and
their capitals deserve no little study. Observe also
the comparatively realistic garden on the left — the
nailed palings, the trees of the background. The
angel has just entered from this garden front ; he is
dropping on one knee, with hands folded over his
breast, as in Neri's picture and so many others by the
earlier painters. Notice the peacock wings, divided,
as in many later instances, into distinct parallel belts
or regions. Notice also the embroidery on his sleeve
and bosom, a feature which recurs in several other
Gabriels. As to his face, that is girlish and Fra
Angelico all over ; it breathes the very spirit of that
peaceable convent. To the right, the Virgin is seated
on a rough wooden stool ; her aspect is troubled ; her
arms are folded on her breast ; but the disposition of
her robe is almost identical with that of Bicci's picture.
(Compare also the easel picture attributed to Fra
Angelico, and lately added to the National Gallery,
Room II., No. 1406.) There is point in even so minute
a correspondence as the cut of her inner garment at
113 F
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
the neck — a detail which may be observed again and
again in Tuscan and Umbrian "Annunciations." To
her right, as with Bicci, a door opens to a bedchamber,
as simple and bare as one of the little whitewashed
cells at San INIarco ; the tiny window is there, though
no ray pours through it. Comparison of the loggias
and windows in these first three examples is full of
instructiveness. But Fra Angelico's Madonna is not
reading ; his angel holds no lily ; and no hint appears
of the dove descending upon the chosen maiden.
Our next example is the exceedingly beautiful
"Annunciation" by Filippo Lippi in the National
Gallery, Room IL, No. 666. The original being, in
this case, so very accessible to English readers, I will
enter into fuller details than usual -nath regard to its
composition. The picture is painted to fill a lunette,
and therefore the loggia can only be indicated, instead
of being represented in full, as in Fra Angelico's fresco.
For the same reason tlie figures are almost necessarily
represented as kneeling and sitting, because there
would have been no room for them to stand up
erect in so small an area. Lippi's even more beautiful
and brilliant companion picture, in the same room,
also lunette-shaped, similarly represents the Medici
family saints as seated on a bench in a dainty and
exquisite garden. (Go and look at both in Room
II. , next time you are passing the National Gallery.)
St. Cosmas and St. Damian are there — tlie blessed
physicians, who were patrons, of course, of the whole
Medici family, and more particularly of Cosmo de'
114
THE ANNUNCIATION
Medici, who founded its greatness : you may know
them by their red gowns and boxes of ointment. St.
Lawrence is there, with his gridiron, to represent
Lorenzo ; and St. Francis with the stigmata ; and
St. Anthony to balance him ; with St. Peter Martyr,
proud as ever of the signs of his martyrdom. These
two pictures were painted, in fact, for Cosmo de'
Medici, and no doubt filled originally the spaces over
doorways in his villa near Fiesole. They were there-
fore necessarily conditioned by the size of the interval
between door and ceiling, so that only short seated
figures could be introduced into them. I mention this
fact because you will always find several treatments of
a subject like the Annunciation, each equally persistent,
but differing among themselves according as the space
to be filled was a wall for a fresco, a lunette above
a door, or a panel in an altar-piece. And note once
more the prevalence of the feeling that the Annuncia-
tion is a subject especially fitted for placing above a
doorway. The particular picture with which we are
now engaged has Cosmo de' Medici's crest, three
feathers tied together m the Medici ring, on the
pedestal of the parapet which supports the vase with
the Annunciation lilies.
Except in so far as the necessities of space compel,
the resemblance of Filippo Lippi's picture to Bicci's
and Fra Angelico's is very close in every particular.
Of course the sweet boyish angel is beautiful and
graceful, with a robust beauty and a vigorous grace-
fulness which Lippi could compass far more fully than
117
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
any of his predecessors. But the details are still
surprisingly based upon earlier pictures. Gabriel has
the same peacock wings, the same ornaments on his
robes, the same embroidered yoke and wristbands
and sleeve-pieces. Even the scintillating jewel on
his breast, scattering rays of light, is precisely the
same as in earlier pictures. He kneels in a flowery
garden which recalls Angelico ; behind are the same
trees, the same marble terraces as in Bicci's picture.
He bears for the first time in our series (though not
by any means in the history of art) the Annunciation
lily, which, is duplicated in the vase on the exquisite
parapet. (Compare here the Duccio in the National
Gallery, Room II., No. 1139.) Notice that the vase
is inaccurately drawn, especially at the bottom. The
Madonna is seated, as often, on a raised dais ; a book
lies on her lap, as in Bicci's treatment ; to her right
is a bedchamber and the entrance to the doorway ;
the curtain at her back still remains conspicuous. But
observe how different are the rich decorative details
which Lippi, painting for his wealthy patron, throws
into the scene, from the monastic bareness and ascetic
feeling of Fra Angelico's background. One is ornate
and elaborate, as becomes the palace of the wealthy
Medici ; the other simple and severe, as becomes the
Dominican cloisters of San Marco. Nothing could
be more redolent of the two artists' spirits.
The earlier painters often represented the dove as
launched by the Eternal Father, visible in His glory.
With Lippi the conception reaches a higher point of
118
THE ANNUNCIATION: Uffizi Gallery, Flore
BOTTICELLI
THE ANNUNCIATION
poetry and reticence : only a hand is seen issuing from
a cloud above, and the dove descends upon the Virgin's
lap in faintly-marked concentric rings of radiance.
Other points of resemblance and difference, too numer-
ous to mention, the student can observe for himself by
close inspection of the original pictures. Indeed, I will
here repeat what I have already said, that the best way
to pursue this study is to accumulate photographs of
many representations of a single subject, and compare
them with other originals in the churches or galleries
where they actually occur.
The Botticellian "Annunciation," in the Uffizi, differs
more widely than any of its predecessors from the estab-
lished model. It is marked, indeed, by more than
the usual amount of Botticellian affectation. (And in
saying this, I hope I shall not be misunderstood ; for I
am a sworn admirer of the greatest of the Florentines,
though my admiration does not blind me to the fact of
his occasional lapse into extremes of his own good
qualities.) We have still the loggia, or something like
it ; still the square inlaid pavement of Filippo Lippi's
treatment ; still the garden, with its marble parapet ;
and still one tree, which does duty as a last relic for the
grove of the earlier painters. But the background is
now a wide Italian landscape ; the angel's wings have
ceased to be made up of peacock's feathers, and are
rather swanlike ; his halo is managed with more artistic
skill ; his hair, his flowing robes, his pellucid veil, his
attitude, his expression, are unmixed Botticelli. Those
diaphanous tissues were dear to the spiritual painter's
121
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
soul. The lily is still there, no longer stiff and
straight, but curved in accordance with Botticelli's
instinct. Compare the folded hands of Bicci's or Fra
Angelico's Gabriel with the two open fingers of Lippi's
charming angel, and the expressive and dainty outspread
hand of Botticelli's earnest seraph, fully conscious of the
iTQomentous message he bears to the Virgin. This treat-
ment of the hand is peculiarly Botticellian ; he loves to
twist fingers into curiously graceful, yet somewhat
affected attitudes. I^ippi's Gabriel is placid and com-
posed ; Botticelli's has hurried through space, his veil
still flying, and is big with the mighty news he bears to
humanity. His tone is ineffable in plain English prose :
Rossetti might have expressed it. As for the Madonna,
her attitude is Botticelli in his most characteristic
moment ; yet even here, transfigured as she is by the
ascetic painter's volcanic imagination, we recognise the
cloak, the collar, the embroideries, the book and reading-
desk of earlier representations. But the dove has dis-
appeared ; to Botticelli the tale has become spiritualised
and etherealised.
Very different indeed is the conception of the
Annunciation by that decorative, half Venetian, half
Paduan painter. Carlo CriveUi, in the interesting though
overloaded picture which hangs on the walls of the
Paduan room at the National Gallery, Room VIII., No.
379. I reproduce it here in full, but it is impossible
to form a proper conception of the extraordinary
mass of detail, far beyond even what is usual with
CriveUi, from a reproduction on such a small scale.
122
THK ANXUN'CIATHIX : Xatioiial C„iU,ry. Zf.«,/,>,
ARI.Ci L'RI\i:i I 1
THE ANNUNCIATION
Readers interested in the subject must look at it for
themselves in Trafalgar Square. It is a labyrinth of
wholly extraneous ornament. In Lippi's and Botti-
celli's treatment, which form the final flower and pure
efflorescence of the Tuscan ideal, the angel and the
Madonna constitute, as it were, the entire picture : they
fill the foreground ; the rest, beautiful as it is, serves
merely for background to the figures, as it ought to
do. But in Crivelli, who was rather a painter of fruit,
flowers, and decorative adjuncts than of truly religious
scenes, the background is the picture ; the figures are
there as scarcely more than accessories. His whole soul
revelled in jewellery and upholstery. To the right, as
ever, we have the Madonna, with her crossed hands,
kneeling at her reading-desk, a book open before her.
On her right, again, is the open bedchamber ; the
curtain still hangs much as in Giotto's embodiment.
From the glory in the heavens the dove descends in a
ray of light, through a little round -arched window, on
the head of the Madonna. Without, in the street, and
separated from her as usual by that strange dividing
wall, kneels the angel Gabriel. In figure and feature
he is very unlike the Florentine angels : there is a
definiteness and precision about him, a sharpness and
clearness of outline, which recalls Mantegna and the
school of Squarcione. Yet, with all the difference in
type between the two angehc conceptions, observe still
the wings, divided as of old into definite regions ; observe
the white lily, the jewel on the breast, the curious
shoulder-ornaments, as in Lippi's representation, only
125
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
twisted, Crivelli-fashion, into marvellous foliation :
observe the floating ribbons w^hich recall Neri de' Bicci,
and which were etherealised by Botticelli into his cloud-
like drapery. By the angel's side, a mere spectator of
the scene, kneels Emidius, the patron saint of Ascoli,
holding in his hand a model of the city. (Ascoli is a
town on the Adriatic where Crivelli passed the greater
part of his life, and where he painted for a local com-
mission this picture, with its aggressive and speaking
motto of Libe7'tas Ecclesiastica.)
But these figures, as I say, though essential to the
work from the point of view of the patrons who com-
missioned it, were merely its occasion from the point
of view of that extraordinarily painstaking and detaU-
loving creature, its painter. Of course there are an
apple and a gourd in the foreground : Crivelli could do
nothing without fruit and flowers. Of course, also,
there is endless profusion of decorative work : elaborate
arabesques on the pilasters of the Madonna's lordly
house ; elaborate capitals, elaborate loggias, an elaborate
cornice. The grain of the wood on her reading-desk is
carefully painted ; so are the planks in the wall of her
bedchamber. Observe her dainty bodice, her jewelled
hair, her counterpane ; her decorative pillows, the pat-
tern on her curtain, the fretted plaster-work on the
diapered ceiling : notice the peacock above, the relief
behind him, the open arcade with its gorgeous roof;
the dove, the caged bird, the rug, the basin of flowers,
the jug with the plant in it. Notice even the cherubs
on the side of the house towards the street and the
126
THE ANNUNCIATION
angel. And then observe that we have still in the
background the steps, the trees, the formal garden.
How Paduan is the medallion of a Caesar by the arch !
how Venetian the quaint touch of everyday life in the
figure of the chubby child who peeps round the corner !
Besides the endless interest of its decorative work, this
picture is useful as marking the difference between the
spiritual and ideal motives which dominated Florence,
and the worldly motives of richness and splendour
which dominated Venice. Do not omit to go and look
at it, and compare its purely adventitious detail with
the poetical background of Filippo Lippi's " Annun-
ciation." In the Florentine, the detail is there for the
sake of the picture ; in the Venetian, the picture is there
for the sake of the detail.
Lorenzo di Credi's " Annunciation," once more in
the Uffizi, is a grateful relief from the tweedledum and
tweedledee of Crivelli's elaborate and too ornate treat-
ment. The Florentine painter gives us a Gabriel more
fully in accordance with Renaissance sentiment. His
face is gentle and slightly Leonardesque ; his hair hangs
in curls less vagrant than Botticelli's ; he is calm and
restrained with the restraint that is habitual in all
Lorenzo's painting. No passion here, but the calm and
masterful work of a consummate craftsman. Gabriel
kneels as of old in a flowery garden ; behind him is the
loggia, the colonnade, the marble parapet. But beyond,
the landscape has become increasingly naturalistic : it
resembles in general effect the upper valley of the Arno.
The angel's wings still display distinct regions, as of
129
EV^OLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
old ; his left hand holds the Annunciation lily ; his halo
has dwindled to a mere floating ring, seen in accurate
perspective. The uplifted right hand seems to beckon
the Madonna. The drapery has lost its mediteval orna-
ment, and is fairly on the way to the mere massive
folds and textureless tissues of later painters. In early
times much pains are spent over the accurate represen-
tation of particular stuffs ; from Leonardo onwards the
robes are nothing more than abstract sheets of indeter-
minate fabrics. Between Gabriel and the Madonna
spreads that mysterious wall of partition, just pierced
by a door, as one may see from the light on the floor in
front of Our Lady. The A^irgin herself, to the right
as always, kneels at her reading-desk, with the bed-
chamber behind, and the curtain and the window. But
her attitude is one which would have been wholly
impossible to earlier painters : partly reminiscent of
Botticelli, the hands are yet free alike from the affected
twist which he gives to fingers, and from the lifeless
stiffness of preceding artists. As a whole this picture
is an admirable example of Lorenzo di Credi's art : its
simplicity, when compared with the mediaeval detail of
most previous " Annunciations," is immediately obvious.
But it also illustrates in an admirable degree the curious
tendency to represent the " Annunciation " as consisting
of two equal and parallel pictures.
This peculiarity is even more noticeable in the
divided panels by Fra Bartolommeo in the Uffizi,
which carry the twofold arrangement of the subject
to a singular pitch nowhere else observable. Here
130
THE ANNUNCIATION: Cffizi GalUiy. Fhyena.
FKA EARTOI.OMMEO
131
THE ANNUNCIATION
we have the same simple portal as in Lorenzo di
Credi's picture, and somewhat the same disposition
of the dais and the bedchamber. The angel bears
still the Annunciation lily, but, to say the truth, he
is employed for the most part as a mere study in
drapery. The Madonna kneels gracefully by her
shadowy reading-desk, with book half open in her
hand ; the curtain and other essential properties are
there, as usual. But virtue has gone out of the
thing ; it is no longer really the Mother of the
Saviour, but an Academy model in an admirably
arranged mantle. The aftected pose of the left hand,
half reminiscent as it is of earlier attitudes, has now
something theatrical and unreal about it. You feel
in a second that Fra Bartolommeo is not trying to
produce an impression of a scene which he believes
to have actually occurred, but is concentrating his
energies on drawing a couple of figures in graceful
poses and with correct draperies. The art of the
thing is all in all to him — the event is nothing ; and
in becoming thus conscious, the art itself has lost
half its charm for us. Better Neri de' Bicci's simple,
childlike faith, than the Frate's conscientious and
conscious efforts to be before all things an artist.
As an example of the final stage in the evolution
of the subject at the high tide of the Renaissance, I
would select an " Annunciation " by Paolo Veronese
in the Venetian room of the Uffizi. This picture is
interesting for the most part only by way of con-
trast. Its angel is a well-developed Venetian model, as
133
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
little angelic as one can easily conceive, remarkable
chiefly for his fine and somewhat too exuberant
physical development, like a Titian gone to seed and
lapsed into pure voluptuousness. He might have
sat for a Bacchus or a young Silenus. Save that he
wears a pair of somewhat perfunctory wings, and
still carries by pure force of habit an Annunciation
lily, nobody would ever know him for an angeUc
messenger. On the opposite side kneels a Venetian
lady, full-faced and amply developed, in the character
of the Madonna. Fra Angelico, or even Bellini,
would have hesitated to represent Our Lady as such
a mere fashionable Venetian beauty ; but Paolo
Veronese had no such scruples. He treated the
Annunciation, or any other sacred scene, only as an
opportunity for the display of a charming and any-
thing but spiritual model. Both angel and Madonna
are thoroughly theatrical ; and, except for its name,
and the conventions in its treatment, there is nothing
at all of sacred art in the picture.
Yet, even in Veronese's voluptuous scene, observe
how many traces still remain to us of the traditional
"Annunciation." The past died hard. The action
takes place in a loggia or colonnade, no longer
medieval, but frankly and obtrusively classical, with
fluted columns, and volutes on the capitals of the
distant pilasters. Gabriel is still separated from the
Blessed Virgin by an empty space, here specially
marked by the intervention of two rows of columns.
At his back are reminiscences of the old formal garden
134
THE ANNUNCIATION
and the trees and marble terraces which long formed
the necessary elements of the pictorial legend. Even
the traditional black-and-white marble floor, in alter-
nate squares, has not been forgotten ; nor the vista
behind, nor the Madonna's clasped hands, nor the
book, nor the reading-desk, nor the uplifted finger of
the announcing archangel. From the centre above,
the glory of the Eternal Father still shines from the
clouds ; and in the place of the concentric rings of
light of earlier painters, little cherubs are descending
(almost playfully) upon the Virgin Mother. Veronese
has tried to the best of his comprehension to realise
the scene in much the same terms as earlier art
realised it. But oh, in how different, in how debased
a spirit !
For it is all a vain pretence. He was not painting,
he could never paint, a real " Annunciation." The
great Venetian colourist was perfectly at home in such
scenes as the " Family of Darius before Alexander "
in our National Gallery (Room IX., No. 294), or the
" Supper at Cana of Galilee " in the Louvre, which
is really a sumptuous banquet in a rich man's house,
far fitter to grace an imperial dining-hall than the
refectory of a monastery, for which purpose it was
painted. His work at the Doge's Palace is admirable
for its object — large, princely, expansive, begotten of
ancient wealth and the spacious family and ceremonial
life of a mighty, aristocratic, commercial city. But
when he comes to try his hand at an " Annunciation,"
there is nothing of saintly, nothing of pure or virginal
137
EVOLTTTION IN ITALIAN ART
in his vulgar conception. The angel is just a handsome
theatrical messenger; the Madonna just a beautiful and
voluptuous Venetian lady. Purity and humility are the
very last attributes one v^^ould dream of associating
with her. The deceitfulness of riches had corrupted
and destroyed Venetian painting : art committed
suicide by becoming a mere appanage of wealth and
worldly splendour.
Other " Annunciations " exist in the National
Gallery which it will be well worth the reader's
while to compare on the spot with the Lippi and
the Crivelli. One by Duccio of Siena gives an inte-
resting idea of the subject as treated by that pioneer
of original art in Tuscany. Another, m the Umbrian
room, by Giannicolo JNIanni (Room VI., No. 1104),
Perugino's pupil, who painted the chapel of the
Cambio at Perugia, well illustrates the later Umbrian
style, and has some quaint arabesques on the Virgin's
reading-desk, very characteristic of their painter. Some
singular examples, most strangely divided, may be seen
in the Early Tuscan room in the Gallery. I need not
mention the Fra Bartolommeo at the Louvre, nor the
exquisite Andrea del Sarto at the Pitti Palace —
perhaps the loveliest embodiment of the scene we
are considering by any painter of the High Renais-
sance. These and countless other examples will occur
at once to all readers who have seen them ; and the
specimens already described will suffice, I think, to
convey an idea of the chief types of treatment in the
Florentine school at least, if not in the sister provinces.
138
THE ANNUNCIATIOX : Pilti Gallery, Florence.
AM'REA llEI. SARTO
THE ANNUNCIATION
For those who desire to make a collection of
illustrative photographs, there is no better subject to
begin upon than the " Annunciation." It is more
varied and more interesting in type than the "JNIadonna
and Child " ; its evolution is more marked ; and the
theme exists in almost equal numbers of examples.
Copies may be collected and arranged according to
schools and affiliation, with a cross - division into
frescoes and easel-paintings, separate or united com-
positions, and lunettes or arch-pieces. Photographs
of sculptured " Annunciations," architectural or other-
wise, and of others in mosaic, della Robbia ware, and
so forth, will help to make the collection completer.
A good arrangement of one or two such groups of
subjects in an accessible room in London would be
of untold benefit to students of evolution in design
and composition.
141
IV
THE MADONNA AND CHILD
The evolution of the Madonna is a far more subtle
and difficult problem than any of those we have
hitherto considered in the present chapters. I do not
merely mean that the number of Madonnas in existence
makes the subject unmanageable, and that a complete
collection of specimens representing its treatment in
all ages of Italian art must extend to at least several
thousand examples. From one point of view, this
very abundance of material for the history of the type
makes the evolutionary treatment of the theme all the
easier. It would be possible, indeed, to accumulate
copies of various INIadonnas so as to form a continuous
series which would melt by almost imperceptible grada-
tions from the earliest and rudest efforts of Christian
art, through the tender grace of Lippi and Botticelli,
to the full flower of the Renaissance, and the pro-
gressive insipidity of Correggio, the Caracci, and the
eclectic painters. It would be possible, too, so to
arrange one's groups of Madonnas in divergent lines
as to represent their differentiation into the diverse
schools — Florentine, Sienese, Umbrian, Lombard,
Paduan, Venetian. Nowhere else is the continuity
142
THE MADONNA AND CHILD
of specimens so perfect ; nowhere else is the line of
affiliation so clear and so unbroken.
But the simple composition of the Madonna and
Child is lacking in that definiteness and variety of
circumstance which one gets in most other sacred
subjects. A Mother and a Baby — that is all that one
can say is essential to the subject. So simple and
natural is the little group, indeed, that in the museum
at Ghizeh, near Cairo, one may see, side by side,
ancient Egyptian representations of Isis and Horus,
and early Coptic Christian representations of the Virgin
and Child, so closely similar in aspect that only the
presence or absence of certain symbolic signs, like the
cimx aiisata on the one hand or the alpha and omega
on the other, enables one to distinguish the heathen
from the Christian figures. Nay, it is even believed
that in sundry early transitional images the two merge
into one another in inextricable confusion. A Mother
and Child, especially if reverently conceived as objects
of adoration, can differ but little, relatively speaking,
from representation to representation. There are
Buddhist examples that an unskilled eye might take
for Christian. It is this want of definiteness and
symbohc consistency in the very nature of the subject
which has led me to postpone its consideration till
my readers had gained from more salient types some
rough idea of the general principles which underlie the
course of artistic evolution in Italy.
Furthermore, while the subject of the Madonna and
Child is in itself so simple as to be vague and elusive
143 G
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
by reason of its very simplicity, it is on the other hand
much comphcated by the fact that it shades off by
degrees on every side into other scenes, whose evolu-
tion must be separately traced along lines of their own
with equal minuteness. Several khids of Madonnas were
popularly recognised as themes for distinct pictures.
The central subject consists of the " Madonna and
Child " alone, most often represented in three-quarter
length, seated. This is the type or starting-point.
Most closely allied to it is the figure of the " Madonna
Enthroned," generally with a baldacchino or canopy
surmounting her head. Next in order of complexity
comes the group of the " Madonna and Child with the
infant St. John," a subject which admits of greater
variety of attitude and dramatic interest than the
simpler one of Our Lady with the Holy Infant on her
lap or clasped to her bosom. This last group of three
passes readily into the familiar subject of the " Holy
Family," by the addition of St. Anne, or St. Joseph,
or both of them : the INIotlier and Child ; the Father,
Mother, and Child ; or the Grandmother, Father,
Mother, and Child respectively. On a slightly dif-
ferent line of development, representations of the
" Madonna and Angels " form a separate system : these
may be as varied in type as the mere circle of seraphim
round Duccio's Virgin in Santa Maria Novella at
Florence on the one hand, and the charming little
cherubs with mandoline and guitar, who discourse
sweet music to the sleeping babe in that exquisite gem
by Alvise Vivarini, in the sacristy of the Redentore at
144
THE MADONNA AND CHILD
Venice, on the other. The " Madonna Enthroned,"
again, passes readily into the " Madonna in Glory."
Another great group of infinite diversity, which I
reserve for separate treatment here, is the " Madonna
and Saints," where the latter component figures may
be infinitely varied in number and character, accord-
ing to the name or patron of the donor. As to the
" Assumption " and the " Coronation of the Virgin,"
they belong, of course, to wholly different cycles.
This brief enumeration of the principal variants
will suffice to show the complexity of the subject. I
propose, then, to deal almost exclusively with the
theme of the Madonna and Child in its simplest and
commonest form of two figures only. Even here,
however, great distinctions must be made between the
treatment of Our Lady in fresco or on panel, as
cabinet picture or altar-piece. In fact, the subtlety
and elusiveness of the subject is so great, that on
first consideration I was almost inclined to shirk it
as an element in our purview. On second thoughts,
however, such a course seemed cowardly ; and I have
decided to include it, if I may so say, experimentally,
not because I think I can deal with it at all finally, or
do anything hke full justice to so vast a subject, but
because I may perhaps be able to throw out some
general suggestions for a fine of observation which the
reader must fill in for himself in detail. Besides, as the
Madonna and Child form an integral part of many
other subjects, such as the Nativity and the Adoration
of the Magi, it would be impossible to treat of the
145
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
synthetic whole before one had considered the com-
ponent part analytically.
Traditionally, the earliest representations of the
Madonna and Child were painted by St. Luke, the
limner evangelist. Several specimens of his reputed
liandicraft still exist, the most famous of which is the
ancient Virgin preserved at the Madonna di San Luca
on the hill-top by Bologna — in reality a Byzantine
picture of considerable antiquity, brought hither from
Constantinople in 1160. Historically, the earhest
known Madonnas are those of the Roman catacombs :
only once, however, in those primitive monuments, are
the A^irgin and Child represented as such (in the cata-
combs of St. Priscilla, where St. Joseph also forms part
of the composition in a fresco of the second century,
so that strictly speaking this must rather be regarded
as a Holy Family) ; in all other cases the figures of the
Wise Men are added, so that the work must be treated
in our formal classification as an Adoration of the Magi.
For other early Christian Madonnas in Italy we must
look chiefly to the mosaics and frescoes of the older
churches in Rome, in Ravenna, and in Venice. The
study of these ancient mosaics, indeed, is quite beside
our present purpose ; but I cannot refrain from observ-
ing here that, without some knowledge at least of the
most primitive forms thus represented, it is impossible
to gain a complete conception of the evolution of the
thirteenth and fourteenth century IMadonnas in Italy.
Whoever wishes to follow out the subject in detail
should at least compare the earlier mosaics at St. Mark's
146
THE MADONNA AND CHILD
in Venice and in the basilicas of Ravenna with the early
Madonnas elsewhere in Italy, and with Duccio's Virgin
at Santa Maria Novella in Florence. It should also be
noticed that the Madonna plays a far smaller part in
early Christian art than is assigned to her from the
beginning of the fifth, and still more markedly of the
eleventh century.
Our own proper subject, however, must be held to
commence with Duccio, from whom we must date the
great upward movement in the Italian art of the later
middle ages. Up to this time the mystical Byzantine
Madonnas, almond-eyed and grave of aspect, were re-
peated by one artist after another with hardly any
alteration ; most of them, indeed, are mere twice-told
copies of some old and revered miracle-working original.
Gilt backgrounds are universal. A certain strange aloof-
ness and gloominess of expression characterises the faces
of these primitive pictures ; the Byzantine artist shrank
from giving a smile to Our Lady's hps, and feared to
compromise the sanctity of the Divine Child by repre-
senting Him as a happy human baby. The oblique
Mongolian eyes, the thin and sulky mouth, the sharp
and attenuated nose, the stiff wooden attitude, all
suggest rather the idea of angry malevolence than of
gentleness and benignity. It was from Madonnas such
as this that Duccio began to revolt ; and, harsh and
severe as his famous Virgin in Santa Maria Novella
appears to us nowadays, it was yet to those who saw
it for the first time a wonderful revelation of unsus-
pected possibilities of goodness and sweetness.
147
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
So much has already been written from many points
of view about this most epoch-making of pictures that
I shall treat of it here in very brief terms only so far as
it strictly relates to our own special subject. It hangs
in a somewhat gloomy and ill-lighted corner of Santa
Maria, the Ruccellai chapel, and can only be seen to
advantage in its present position in exceptionally clear
and brilliant sunshine ; so that visitors to Florence
should choose a cloudless spring morning on which
to visit it. But originally its dingy colours must have
been bright and beautiful. According to the well-
known but probably apocryphal story, when Charles
of Anjou was passing through Florence, he was taken
to inspect this work. All Florence crowded in after
him. The people stood awestruck before the revolu-
tionary picture. Nothing like it had yet been seen in
Tuscany. When finished, it was carried in solemn
procession to the church by the whole population. It
is true, the tale has been shown to present some slight
historical discrepancies ; but it is good evidence at least
for the popular feeling that this particular Madonna
formed a special turning-point in the history of painting.
" The type," says Lord Lindsay, " is still the Byzan-
tine — intellectualised, perhaps, yet neither beautiful nor
graceful ; but there is a dignity and a majes>.y in her
mien, and an expression of inward pondering and sad
anticipation rising from her heart to her eyes as they
meet yours, which one cannot forget. The Child, too,
blessing with its right hand, is full of the Deity, and
the first object in the picture — a propriety seldom lost
148
MADONNA AND CiilVD : I\Iailoniia deir Arena, I'adiia
149
THE MADONNA AND CHILD
sight of by the older Christian painters. And the atten-
dant angels, though as like as twins, have much grace
and sweetness." But I do not think Lindsay does full
justice here to the immense advance upon all ante-
cedent Madonnas. His Virgin is more human, more
living, more tender, more real than any previous Byzan-
tine model. It has truth and expression. Earlier
Madonnas affected their worshippers as cold and stern :
Duccio's affected them as gentle and benignant. And
if we ourselves feel this at the present day, accustomed
as we are to the womanly tenderness which Lippi and
Botticelli knew so well how to give to Our Lady's face,
how much more must contemporary Florentines have
felt it, to whom Our Lady had been hitherto envisaged
as an object of terror and of reluctant worship rather
than as an object of close personal admiration and
devotion ! As Ruskin well says, the delight of the
thirteenth-century Florentines in Duccio's picture was
not merely delight in the revelation of an art they had
not known how to practise, but in the revelation of a
Madonna they had not known how to love. Haw-
tliorne, with strange American recklessness, declared
it would rejoice his spirit if Duccio's A^irgin were re-
moved from the church and reverently burnt. Such
a remark shoAvs utter incapacity to understand the real
interest and value of historical monuments. It is hope-
lessly out of tune with evolutionary feeling. I may
note in passing that the angels which surround this
famous picture show much more spirit and vigour of
drawing than the central figures. The ^"irgin and
151
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
Child were so sacred and so thoroughly conventionalised
a type that even Duccio did not dare to vary very
greatly from the received conception ; with the angels
he felt he had a freer hand, and he indulged his fancy
accordingly in bolder excursions.
There is another picture in the Belle Arti at Flor-
ence, which, though less admirable, is almost a replica
(say rather a predecessor) of the Ruccellai picture ; but
having been removed from Santa Trinita into the full
light of a gallery, it can now be far more conveniently
studied than its famous rival. The Madonna attributed
to Cimabue in our National Gallery (Room III., No.
565) is, if authentic, a somewhat early one of the
master's, less pleasing than either of the Florentine
examples ; but it gives at least a tolerably good idea
of the starting-point of the subject during the period
of rapid artistic evolution. Its greenish flesh-tints are
probably due to fading, which has allowed the green
groundwork to show through the surface-painting.
The visitor to the National Gallery will also find
a curious example of the rudest and earliest type of
Madonna in the picture by Margaritone of Arezzo (Ves-
tibule, No. 564). This is the most archaic and childish
in tone of all the works in our national collection.
Giotto's Madonnas, genuine or doubtful, are exceed-
ingly numerous. They show us no little advance upon
Duccio's model ; though even in fresco, and still more
in panel-paintings, they never exhibit anything like the
freedom and life of Giotto's vigorous historical subject-
pictures. The fresco in the Lower Church of Assisi,
152
MADONNA AND CHILD: Vf/izi Gallery , FLn-inc,
BOTTICELLI
THE MADONNA AND CHILD
for example, still retains something of the fretfulness of
Duccio's Virgin ; the hands are ill drawn, and the eyes
unsatisfactory ; while the Child has yet somewhat of
the stiff grown-up air which Byzantine painters thought
necessary to the solemnity of the infant Saviour. The
Madonna of the church of the Arena at Padua, again,
which is more certainly from the master's own hand, is
more pleasing and more natural. The Virgin's face in
it has much simplicity and purity ; the Child is com-
paratively truthful and baby-like ; and the humanity of
the two figures is strongly insisted on in the fact that
the Madonna is suckling her infant. But the hands,
the arms, and the Child's legs are very ill drawn, and
the whole composition lacks the freedom and dramatic
power of the historical frescoes. Conventionalism still
fetters the treatment of the subject. The haloes have
the usual Giottesque solidity, and the infant Saviour's
is threaded by the Greek cross, prophetic of his future,
always assigned to the Persons of the Trinity. Other
Giottesque Madonnas, both in Italy and elsewhere,
are too numerous to mention. From this Giottesque
form, as secondary parent, divergent ideals developed
themselves by degrees in the towns of Italy, under
the influence of the various environments, aristo-
cratic or republican, maritime, commercial, monastic
or mountainous.
Throughout the Florentine school, the gradual
evolution of the primitive type continued along lines
familiar to most of us. I need not recall here the
various advances in the treatment of the subject by
155
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
the Gaddi and their successors, by Fra Angelico and
Benozzo GozzoU, by FiHppo Lippi and Filippino and
BotticeUi, by Ghirlandajo and Cosimo Rosselli, by
Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and the mighty Renais-
sance painters of Florence. Examples abound in
every great gallery, in Italy and out of it. To illus-
trate these in anything like sufficient detail would
require many dozen successive pictures. As a speci-
men of the purest Florentine spirit in its noblest age,
I would instance Filippo Lippi's exquisite round
Madonna in the Pitti Palace : Our Lady's face in it
is said to have been studied from the nun Lucrezia
Buti, and it gives us in the most intense form a perfect
realisation of the Florentine ideal. This, however, is
not quite a simple Madonna and Child from our
present point of view, for in the background are re-
presented the Birth of the Virgin, the meeting of
Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate, and other
episodes. Even in our own National Gallery, it is
possible to make some study of the evolution of
Florentine Madonnas by the aid of the attributed
Cimabue, a Benozzo Gozzoli (Room II., No. 283),
a Filippo Lippi (Room I., No. 589), a Filippino
Lippi (Room I., No. 293), a Botticelh (Room III.,
No. 275), a Lorenzo di Credi (Room I., No. 593),
a Leonardo (Room IV., No. 1093), and several other
examples. The Sienese school, more pensive and less
stately, is also well represented by several specimens,
beginning with an excellent small Duccio (Room II.,
No. 566), and ending with a touching Pacchia (Room I.,
156
_MAl" iXNA A\D CUn.l) : Pitii i:,„i:crr. Flojciic,-
1 KA lILIli-o Llrpi
157
THE MADONNA AND CHILD
No. 246) of most graceful and exquisite execution. In
almost all we may note the conventional blue robe of
Our Lady, and the bright gilt star on her left shoulder.
The parallel evolution of the Lombard Madonnas
is best studied from INIilan as a centre. As a whole,
this type exhibits less purity and spirituality than the
Florentine, with greater graciousness and a certain
pleasing air of cultivated life. You would say, a well-
read Milanese lady. A refined worldly beauty replaces
here the poetic idealism of the Tuscan artists. A large
forehead and thoughtful eyes contrast with the shrink-
ing Florentine maiden. This difference can be admir-
ably seen when we compare the mystical Botticelli in
the Poldi-Pezzoli Museum at Milan witli the sweet
and touching but wholly unspiritual I^uini which forms
one of the principal treasures of the Brera Gallery. It
is worth while to note, too, that the long, oval face, the
somewhat simpering smile, the broad outlook on the
world, are all pure Lombard. The Florentine Leonardo
had settled in Milan towards the close of the fifteenth
century, and the variants of the Vierge aux Rochers in
the Louvre and the National Gallery painted by him
or under his supervision afford an interesting compari-
son with the earlier Lombard JNIadonnas. The dis-
tinction between these earlier pictures and the later
Lombard Virgins by Luini, Eoltraffio, Oggiono, and
Solario is also noteworthy. Some tolerable examples
occur in the National GaUery. Among the most
beautiful of the earher Lombard \^irgins are the
gentle, placid, and almost melancholy representations
139
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
by Ambrogio Borgognone, who seems like a silvery
northern Fra Angelico, with a touch of Filippino.
I will not dwell at any length upon Mantegna's
somewhat hard and scholastic Madonnas, nor on the
other works of the Paduan school, which charm us
rather by their admirable painting, their " repose and
self-control," than by any remarkable poetic beauty.
They are noble and serene rather than touching. But
in this school, and even in the lesser towns of the
Lombardo- Venetian plain, a distinct succession and
progression of Madonnas may easily be traced, often
of great evolutionary interest. I will recur to this
subject in part when I come to deal with the more
complicated theme of the Madonnas and Saints ; for
the present it will suffice to remark in passing that
local types of Madonnas may often be observed, even
in second-rate towns, which have influenced the work
of great painters when locally engaged, as was the case
with Mantegna, Luini, Cavozzola, and others.
The Venetian Madonnas, at which we next arrive,
rank among the most interesting of the entire series.
Beginning at first in very Giottesque examples, marked
by the uniformity of all primitive art, they show with
the Vivarini some slight approach to their final traits,
being solider and more aristocratic than their sisters on
the mainland. But it is with Giovanni Bellini and his
followers that the type reaches its culminating point.
A certain grandeur of mien is their distinguishing
mark ; it sinks with Titian into mere sumptuous
lovehness, and with Veronese into theatrical splen-
160
JIADONNA AND CHILD: Biera Galk'y, Milan.
I6l
THE MADONNA AND CHILD
dour. In the exquisite works of Bellini's age which
abound at Venice, Our Lady is represented with an
air of grave and matronly dignity whoUy alien to the
more natural and girlish Florentine ideal. At Florence
the Madonna is a tender, shrinking, and delicate
maiden ; at Venice she is a calm, serene, and pure-
spirited mother. Her face is fuller and rounder and
more placid in expression than the Florentine type of
the ancilla domini : her features are more solemnly
modelled, less acute, less dainty. She has a heavier
cheek and chin, richer lips, more drooping eyelids.
Her head is completely covered, as a rule, by the
mantling drapery of a cloak or wimple, which falls in
graceful folds on either side of the full neck and
shoulders. The neck itself, which in the Florentine
representation is slim and girlish, becomes for the
school of Bellini strong and firm as a column. The
Child, whom the reverence of earlier painters oftenest
represented as clad in a simple tunic, is wholly nude
with these great Venetian painters. As a rule. He
sits or stands in varied attitudes on His mother s lap ;
sometimes He plays with a fruit, a flower, or some
other small object. Madonnas of this charming char-
acter, by Bellini himself, by Cima da ConegHano, and
by other painters of the same type, abound in the
galleries and churches of Venice. Everybody must
recall the three exquisite examples in the sacristy
of the Redentore, attributed by earlier writers to
BeUini himself, but assigned by Mr. Crowe to Alvise
Vivarini, Bissolo, and Pasqualino. Nor is it easy to
163
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
forget the almost equally charming, though less re-
ligious, Cimas on the walls of the Academy and the
Doge's Palace.
I have left to the last the consideration of the
Madonnas of the Umbrian school, because this is the
one which led up in the end to Raphael, and through
Raphael to the type of the high Renaissance, the
eclectics, and the decadence. With the Umbrian
painters the model of the Madonna is usually a softly
rounded and very girlish maiden. A certain mystic
pensiveness informs her features. Yet her face has
the exquisite tenderness of a baby's : neither idealism
nor spirituality is expressed in her traits, so much as a
perfect and all but hifantile innocence. This type,
conspicuous throughout the whole development of
the Umbrian school, may already be observed in the
germ in Gentile da Fabriano, and can best be traced
onwards through Niccolo Alunno, Buonfigli, and
Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, in the admirable collection of
local art in the Pinacoteca at Perugia. Indeed, as
one might expect from the exalted devotion and
ecstatic, pietistic character of the Umbrian school (so
deeply influenced by the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi),
the JNIadonna and Child form its favourite subject ;
Niccolo in particular having repeated this theme a
hundred times over. A softened beauty, combined
with a far-away air of holy reverie, is the distinguish-
ing note of these Umbrian ^"irgins. Their feet tread
this earth, but their souls are absorbed in the con-
templation of the infinite.
164
THE MADONNA AND CHILD
In Perugino, the Umbrian type thus characterised
finds, of course, its fullest and highest representative.
Dainty small features, all too babyish for the figures
that bear them ; a mouth like a Cupid's bow ; a tiny
and delicate chin ; eyes set well apart, with curiously
heavy and drooping lids ; faint pencilled eyebrows ; a
broad smooth forehead : these are the main elements in
Perugino's Madonnas. The neck has also a peculiar
but affected grace : the pose of the head on it is
studied in its elegance. As for the divine Child,
though grave and earnest. He is oftener remarkable
for sweet and human babyhood than for suj)ernatural
character ; yet His tone is pure and holy, with a holi-
ness undreamt of by Michael Angelo and his followers.
Perugino, indeed, carried to the utmost pitch the
Umbrian ideal, which he repeated again and again,
in all its pensive and affected beauty, with almost
tedious frequency. His rival, Pinturicchio, has also
a IMadonna in a magnificent altar-piece in the Perugia
gallery, which shows us in a far more virile and
powerful form the Umbrian Madonna in her highest
development.
Raphael's earliest realisations of Our Lady were
necessarily to a great extent Peruginesque in concep-
tion, though with distinct reminiscences of Timoteo
Viti's charming naturalness of manner. The highest
point which he attains in this style is the lovely and
sympathetic " Madonna del Gran-Duca," in the Pitti
Palace at Florence. " The picture," says Kugler, " is
the last and highest condition of which Perugino's type
165
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
was capable." " The Virgin," says J. S. Harford, " has
all the pensive sweetness and reflective sentiment of the
Umbrian school, while the Child is loveliness itself.
We think of Perugino still, but we think of him as
suddenly endued with a purer, firmer outline, and more
refined sentiment." To my mind, in spite of technical
immaturities and Peruginesque drapery, this is the
loveliest and truest of all Raphael's Madonnas. It
still retains the purity and religious feeling of the
Umbrian school, yet has something of the charm and
artistic beauty of Raphael's Florentine manner. I
cannot go on to compare the various other Madonnas
of Raphael at full length ; but it is impossible to con-
trast this Virgin with the Madonna della Sedia, which
hangs close by it in an adjoining room, without perceiv-
ing at once the immense gulf between the simplicity
and sincerity of the great painter's early styles, and the
careless worldliness of his Roman period, when Our
I^ady appears as a beautiful and blooming Italian
woman, without sanctity or ideality, pressing to her
breast in mere maternal love a charming and engaging
but quite undivine infant.
From Raphael's Roman period onward the decline
in the conception of Madonnahood was rapid and fatal.
No better example of the final stage in its evolution
from the vaguely divine to the frankly human — I had
almost said the frankly every-day — can be found any-
where than in the pretty little panel by Correggio,
known as the Viei-gc cm Panie?', in the National Gallery
(Room IV., No. 23). This pleasing but wholly unre-
166
MADONNA AND CHILD : National Gallery, London
CORKEGGIO
167
THE MADONNA AND CHILD
ligious picture represents a round-faced little Italian
mother, striving to dress lier laughing baby in a tiny
short-sleeved jacket. It has, of course, the usual merits
of Correggio from the point of view of technique : it is
charmingly painted in excellent chiaroscuro, and attracts
us by its agreeable domestic flavour. It is, in point of
fact, a taking little genre picture of a young mother in
the rapture of tending her own first baby. But it is no
more a JNIadonna and Child than it is a Semele with
the infant Bacchus. Its sole claim to be considered
religious lies in its label. Not that this decline is
peculiar to Correggio or to the Bolognese painters.
The Venetian school had similarly gone off in religious
feeling during the lifetime of Titian : that great painter's
Madonnas are often mere grandiose portraits of Venetian
beauties ; while Veronese's and Tintoret's merge still
more completely into pure sumptuousness of arrange-
ment and voluptuousness of feature. The famous
Madonna of the Pesaro family, in the Frari at Venice,
though a magnificent specimen of Titian's composition,
colouring, and chiaroscuro, is in all essentials a palatial
picture of high life in a lordly and wealthy Venetian
household ; while the master has even represented
the infant Christ as a frolicsome and mischievous
baby, playing at bo-peep with St. Francis and St.
Anthony.
There is one little variant on the three-quarter-
length IMadonnas with which I have here been
chiefly engaged, so closely allied to them in the
spirit and treatment that I cannot refrain from
169 H
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
devoting a few words to it. This is the triple
group of the Madonna and Child with the infant
St. John, so common from the time of Perugino on-
ward. Earlier Madonnas of our type consist of the
Mother and Child alone : their background is oftenest
simple, especially in the primitive period, or at best
consists of a distant landscape, like Cima da Cone-
gliano's, recalling the scenes of the painter's own neigh-
bourhood. Such two-figure groups grow necessarily in
time a trifle monotonous. As art becomes conscious,
and strives deliberately after artistic effects, the inono-
tony of the subject is felt at last to be tedious. Some
variety from the accepted model is longed for. The
sculptors of the fifteenth century, influenced by the
desire for that pyramidal arrangement so effective in
their art, first began to combine with the Madonna and
Child the additional figure of the infant St. John
Baptist. The painters in turn, as Springer justly
remarks, were not slow to take advantage of so tempt-
ing an arrangement, which not only admits the delinea-
tion of additional features of child life, but also makes
possible the construction of a more advanced composi-
tion. The two children, represented as playing at the
feet of the Madonna, form a broad base for the picture ;
while the arrangement tapers upwards easily and natu-
rally towards the head of the Virgin. JNIoreover, it was
possible in such compositions to make the children
engaged in playing with some childish object — a bird, a
flower, a pomegranate (the last a symbol of the coming
Passion) — and so to vary the monotony of the old
170
THE MADONNA AND CHILD
conventional group, where the Madonna and Child
were represented, so to speak, inerely in the abstract, as
a holy mother and son, occupied in the contemplation
of their own divine purity.
" The Virgin and Child with the Infant St. .John,"
attributed to Perugino, in the National Gallery (Room
VI., No. 181), is a typical example of the treatment of
this newer theme by one of the older school of painters.
If a genuine work of Pietro (which is doubtful), it must
belong to his early period. It is a three-quarter-length
composition, representing the Madonna erect behind a
parapet, on which the infant Saviour stands nude or
practically so, while the baby St. John, with his con-
ventional little reed cross poised lightly on his shoulder,
occupies a lower plane to the right of the panel. Peru-
gino (or his scholar) has thus to a certain extent thrown
away the advantages which the new arrangement offered
him ; though he has also in part availed himself of the
opportunity for a pyramidal treatment. Furthermore,
the two children are not playing together : that would
be too sudden a departure from the severely religious
idea of Pietro's pictures; for, whether or not tlie Umbrian
master was an atheist, as Vasari asserts, he was at least
as an artist of most unshaken orthodoxy. His little
St. John holds clasped hands of adoration towards the
infant Christ ; and though the Saviour Himself plays,
baby-wise, with a curl of His mother's hair, that is the
utmost relaxation of the religious ideal that Perugino
can permit himself. The Virgin's comely face, most
Peruginesque in type, is grave and saintly with true
173
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
Umbrian saintliness ; and the tiny St. John, though a
buxom boy for so ascetic a future, yet expresses in his
baby countenance the utmost reverence and religious
feeling. Observe the parapet, and compare it with a
similar feature in several other Umbrian or Lombard
Madonnas in the same collection. Notice, too, the
Perugian landscape in the background, with those im-
possible early Italian rocks, which even Leonardo
was not ashamed to introduce upon the face of
nature.
With Rapliael, this triple type soon blossomed forth
into a far more artistic family of pictures. During
his Florentine period he produced three closely allied
groups, in which the utmost potentialities of the pyra-
midal form are most beautifully realised. These are
the Madonna del Cardellino in the Uffizi at Florence ;
the Madonna al Verde at Vienna ; and the well-known
Belle Jardiniere in the Louvre. In the first, the
natural touch of the children playing with the goldfinch
charmed the Italian fancy of the time, and suggested
the line of treatment which was to result at last in the
purely secular Madonnas of Correggio and the eclectics.
But the picture in the Louvre gives the best idea of
this transitional stage, when Raphael had to a large
extent got rid of his Peruginesque preconceptions, but
still retained something of the exalted purity and
pietism of the Umbrian school. Its draperies and
composition are far more perfect than those of the
Gran-Duca ; but it does not speak to the heart like
the earher picture. On the other hand, it is not purely
174
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH INI- ANT SJ'. JOHN : Xalion.il G.u'.^ry. Lomlon.
rEKUGIXO
'75
THE MADONNA AND CHILD
mundane and secular, like the Madonna della Sedia.
There is still some touch of Madonnahood about the
mother, some divinity in the Son, some Peruginesque
piety in the baby St. John Baptist.
In the Madonna della Sedia, on the other hand,
which is a round picture of the Virgin and Child with
St. John, in the Pitti Palace at Florence, Raphael
returns, so far as the mere formal and formative
elements of the composition are concerned, to the
earlier Peruginesque model. The figure of Our Lady
is a three-quarter-length : on her bosom is the infant
Christ, at her side St. John folds his little hands in
prayer. But as regards its spirit, this Madonna, painted
in the prime of Raphael's Roman period, is the most
purely worldly, the most undisguisedly earthly, of all
his Virgins. It is a mere beautiful Italian peasant
woman, with a many-coloured kerchief wrapped care-
lessly round her head, caressing her baby. As Kugler
rightly remarks, " the tranquil enjoyment of maternal
love " forms the keynote of the motive. " It is the
favourite picture of women," says Burckhardt. But
there is nothing in it of religious art, save the " grave
gaze of the Infant," which impressed George Eliot, and
roused in Madame Swetchine the most ardent admira-
tion. Present-day spectators hardly note even this
single touch of spirituality.
The Garvagh or Aldobrandini Madonna in our
national collection (Room VI., No. 1171) is a less
pleasing treatment of the same general theme as the
Belle Jardiniere, belonging to Raphael's Roman period.
177
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
It should be compared with the three examples of
the Belle Jardiniere type, and also with the Madonna
della Sedia, which it resembles in tone though not in
spirit.
As for the Blenheim Madonna in the National
Gallery, and the highly ideal Madonna di Foligno in
the Vatican, they fall rather under our next head of the
Madonna and Saints, while the Sistine Madonna at
Dresden must be regarded as an idealised form of the
same subject in its special development as the Madonna
in glory.
I am only too well aware how inadequately this
slight and imperfect sketch deals with the subject of
the most frequent representation in Christian painting.
I can but plead in extenuation that the vast complexity
and variety of the theme makes anything more than
such cursory treatment well-nigh impossible. I shall
be satisfied if I have suggested a classification of
Madonnas which will aid the reader in constructing a
mental scheme or formula of the types for his own
future guidance. Briefly to recapitulate the main heads
of such cross-divisions, I would say that any given
Italian Madonna must first of all be regarded as an
example of such and such an age, early, middle, or late,
in such and such a school — Florentine, Sienese, Um-
brian, Lombard, Paduan, Venetian, or eclectic. Next,
it must be regarded as fresco or altar-piece ; with or
without donor or saints ; as three-quarter-length or full
figure ; as simple or enthroned ; as the Madonna on
earth or the Madonna in glory. Careful comparison
178
MADONNA AXIi CHILIi W ITH INFANT ^T. jriHX. {!.,-, /.V/.V J.ir.iin.h^.i
LoH-.'re. Paris. RAl'HAEL
'79
THE MADONNA AND CHILD
through each of these groups, in time, in space, and
in reference to the pecuhar nature of the commission,
will reveal innumerable correlative points of resem-
blance or of difference which I cannot here set forth
in detail.
181
V
THE MADONNA AND SAINTS
The subject with which we have next to deal has a
somewhat different origin, and therefore requires some-
what different treatment from all those we have yet
considered. More essentially and exclusively than in
any of our previous cases, the theme of the Madonna
and Saints is the theme of a votive or donative picture.
In some few instances, it is true, a church or monastery
might order an altar-piece on its own account, to be
paid for out of the funds of the body-corporate ; and
when this happened it would be likely to commission
a painter for a Madonna and Child, accompanied by
the patron saint or saints of the foundation. But,
in the vast majority of cases, such ornaments of the
shrine were presented by a family or a private bene-
factor. Many of them stood over the special altar
of the family chapel ; others were given to local
churches by the squires of the parish — if I may be
permitted so very English an equivalent for the Italian
signori. In any case, the altar-piece usually consisted
of a central Madonna, flanked by a single saint on
either side, or by a pair or more, according to the
nature of the particular circumstances. But the
182
THE MADONNA AND SAINTS
number of personages on each side of Our Lady was
almost always symmetrical, and in the earlier period,
1 think, quite invariably so. The Madonna is also
in most cases represented as enthroned in a niche or
under a baldacchino. In other words, being here
essentially regarded as an object of adoration, she
is shown, for the most part, as the Queen of Heaven
in her state, while the surrounding saints may be
regarded as courtiers — ecstatic spectators of her divine
glory.
It will be seen already from these brief remarks
that the subject of the Madonna and Saints is, for
the most part, employed as a theme for altar-pieces.
It grew up, in point of fact, mainly in connection
with this special object. I do not mean to say that
the Madonna is not also often represented with atten-
dant saints under other circumstances. Frescoes of
Our Lady with the Holy Infant, attended by the
patron saints of the donor or his family, occur com-
monly enough in wayside shrines, in niches of walls,
in the cloisters of monasteries, and on blank spaces
in churches, quite apart from altars of any sort. But
it was the treatment in altar-pieces which mainly in-
fluenced the evolution of the subject; and to that
aspect of this very involved and complicated theme
I will here, for the most part, confine my attention.
The patron saint of a church or a donor may of
course belong to any age or country of Christendom.
Hence there is naturally no attempt at historical or
chronological propriety in these purely conventional
183
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
and anachronistic compositions. A Roman soldier,
like St. George of Cappadocia, may appear side by
side with a mediasval monk, like St. Francis of Assisi ;
the apostle Paul may find himself balancing the nun
of Siena, and the archangel Michael may stand face
to face with St. Jerome in the desert or St. Dominic
in the black-and-white robes of his order. No sense
of incongruity ever disturbs the mind of the mediseval
painter : he places the half-mythical St. Sebastian,
shot through with arrows, in close juxtaposition with
the historical St. Clara, who founded the female branch
of the Franciscans ; and he sees nothing odd in an
animated scene where bluff St. Thomas Aquinas,
with his works on philosophy in his sturdy hands,
faces ardent St. Peter Martyr, with his bleeding head
and a knife in his bosom. All these saints alike are
objects of veneration to the pious churchman ; and, the
scene of the composition being really laid, not in any
earthly spot, but in the Eternal Palace, such minor
inconsistencies of time and place are naturally lost in
the endless ocean of the Infinite and the Absolute.
Furthermore, what adds to the complexity of the
subject is the fact that each such individual saint,
represented alone, has had an evolution of his own
along separate lines, which must be followed in detail
by students of artistic development in Italy. For
example, we can trace a regular succession of St.
Sebastians, from the earliest Christian type in Rome,
through crude and wooden originals, with Giottesque
and quattrocento variations, down to Sodoma's ex-
184
THE MADONNA AND SAINTS
quisitely graceful and poetical conception in the Uflfizi
at Florence. Our own National Gallery alone pos-
sesses a whole series of successive Sebastians. We
can trace St. Peter, again, from the simple, classical
figures of the early Roman mosaics, through the long
decline into mediseval lifelessness, and up once more
through progressive developments to the majestic and
august apostle of Raphael's fancy. As in our last
chapter we followed out in part the evolution and
differentiation of the Madonna and Child through
the varying schools, so, in order thoroughly to under-
stand our present subject, must we follow out the
evolution and differentiation of each particular saint,
in space and time, over the Italy of our period. It
is clear that this task can only adequately be per-
formed on Italian soil.^ I shall limit myself here to
suggesting a plan of campaign for those who would
wish to attack the subject.
Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that each ele-
ment in the group of the Madonna and Saints has an
evolution of its own apart from the whole, it is
equally true that the group as a whole has an
evolution of its own apart from that of its component
members. In early altar-pieces we get the germ of
the system. The Madonna is there most often re-
presented on a central panel, set in a separate frame,
and surmounted by a little Gothic arch ; while on
either side an attendant saint is accommodated with
' Yet even in London the evolution of St. Catherine and some other
saints can he admirably worked out in the National Gallery.
185
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
a separate niche, in shape like an Early English lancet
window. Sometimes there are two saints on each
side, all separately provided with their own little
niches. In the first case, the altar-piece consists of
three distinct panels ; in the second, it is composed
of five compartments. The Madonna and Child and
each separate saint usually look straight out of the
panel into the face of the spectator. There is no
attempt at composition or grouping. The several
components of the altar-piece might stand alone, if
necessary ; and, indeed, in modern galleries we often
find such single saints from early altar - pieces dis-
played alone as complete pictures. The painter re-
ceived a commission to paint a Madonna with such
and such saints, and he painted each just as he
would have done if he had received separate com-
missions for the single figures. Nay, more : each
panel was painted apart ; it is only the gilt frame,
with its shrine-hke arcades and its top-pieces or ciispidi,
that gives them, when united, an artificial and wholly
factitious unity. Several such altar-pieces may be
examined in detail from this point of view in the
Early Florentine room at the National Gallery.
None of these Giottesque or Orcagna-like pictures
in our own collection happens to consist of a Madonna
and Child with Saints on the wings, though there is
an excellent altar-piece of the Baptism of Christ, with
saints on either hand, of the school of Taddeo Gaddi
(Vestibule, No. 579), which very well illustrates the
general principle of such early compositions. In the
186
THE MADONNA AND SAINTS
centre is John the Baptist baptizing the Saviour, with
two angels on the left, as is usual in the set treatment
of this subject, down to the time of the famous
Verrocchio in the Belle Arti at Florence ; in a panel
to the left stands St. Peter with his keys ; in another
panel to the right stands St. Paul, with the sword
which forms his almost invariable symbol. The visitor
should notice these two faces, which have almost the
character of portraits, and which reappear again and
again in endless pictures. Even so small a detail as
the cut of the two beards — St. Peter's rounded, St.
Paul's pointed — remains well-nigh constant through
the art of ages. But in the Paduan and Octagon
rooms of the National Gallery several examples of
the Madonna and Child in altar-pieces, with saints
in separate panels, may be observed and compared.
For example, there is a Gregorio Schiavone (Octagon,
No. 630), most instructive for our purpose ; as well
as an immense Carlo Crivelli (Room VIII., No. 788),
with the Madonna and Child in the centre, and three
rows of saints on either side, let in, tier above tier,
as separate panels. The saint to the JMadoima's
right, by the way, is again St. Peter, with his massy
keys, and with the same face and beard as in the
Baptism of the school of Gaddi. The other saints
of the lower row are the Baptist, St. Catherine of
Alexandria, and St. Dominic. But close by it hangs
another Crivelli (Room VIII., No. 724), where the
saints have been thrown into the selfsame picture
with the Madonna and Child : on Our Lady's right,
187
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
the aged form of St. Jerome ; on her left, a most
dainty and jaunty St. Sebastian, not nude and shot
through in a dozen places, as is his common wont,
but clad from head to foot in a fashionable suit, and
just poising in his hands a symbolical arrow as the
emblem of his martyrdom. The visitor who looks
at these two pictures with an evolutionary eye should
also observe in the same room the Virgin and Child
by Mantegna (Room VII., No. 274-), about which I
shall have more to say hereafter ; another by Marco
Marziale (Room VIII., No. 804); a third by Barto-
lommeo Vivarini (Octagon, No. 284); and a fourth
by Crivelli himself (Room VIII., No. 807), with
another St. Sebastian and a St. Francis with the
stigmata. If, from these pictures, he goes straight
into the Umbrian room, and observes Perugino's
Madonna (Room VI., No. 288) flanked by the arch-
angels Michael and Raphael, he will understand the
nature of the evolution in the subject to which I
am here directing attention.
This is the starting point. From the Byzantine
or Giottesque groups of isolated saints in abstract
and entirely symbolical attitudes, art gradually evolved
by successive stages the various forms we have next
to consider. The first step was taken when the
component saints, instead of staring straiglit out of
their respective panels at tlie worshipper, began to
turn their glance more or less furtively towards
the Madonna in the centre. In earlj^ examples, the
one on the right looks a little towards the left, the
188
r^is;^:
MADONNA AND CHILD WITH SAIXI S : Xatunal Callcry, LfuJon. AXIiREA MANTEGXA
iSq
THE MADONNA AND SAINTS
one on the left looks a little towards the right ;
their palms or other symbols are symmetrically dis-
posed towards the central figure ; some sense is dis-
played of the Madonna's presence ; some first attempt
in the direction of composition and grouping begins
to show itself. In Mr. Her])crt Spencer's phrase, a
first step is taken in tlie direction of coherence and
correlation.
A beautiful Fra Angelico in the Academy at
Florence shows us a far higher development in the
arrangement of the Madonna and Saints. Here, the
whole composition is thrown into a single picture.
As the old style of gilt backgrounds and little arched
niches went out of fashion, it was natural enough to
compress the composition into a single group, still
more or less symmetrical and conventional in treat-
ment. Not that the division into separate panels
went out at once : in many later pictures we get
examples of the composite altar-piece, built up out
of many distinct panels. An excellent late specimen
in the National Gallery is the great Romanino in
the Venetian room (Room VII., No. 297) with the
Nativity for its centre-piece and the patron saints
of Brescia — for which town the picture was painted
— let in as side-panels. But observe, both here and
in the Perugino with SS. JMichael and Raphael, that
the tops of the arches are rounded, not pointed : the
Gothic type has given way to the Renaissance. In the
main stream of development, however, the Madonna
and Saints of the later fourteenth century came to be
191
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
represented, for the most part (especially at Florence),
in a single group on one united picture. Take the
Fra Angelico as a typical example of this transitional
stage in the evolution of such pictures. In the centre
we have the Madonna and Child enthroned — a very
characteristic Madonna, in Angelico's delicate and
saintly manner, holding on one arm a somewhat un-
natural Child, still fully draped after the Giottesque
model, and rather resembling an adult than an infant
in the proportions of the figure. Our Lady sits en-
shrined in a capacious chair, with a canopy at her
back of a sort which occurs in many other contem-
porary pictures. On either side stands a group of
three saints, symmetrically disposed as in the earlier
works, but with their faces turned in the direction
of the Madonna. Notice, however, that the saints
nearest to the throne look straight out of the picture
— a trait which increases the feeling of symmetry.
Notice also how this arrangement is further intensified
by the position of the feet in these two subjects.
Observe once more that the Madonna sits on a raised
dais ; a marble step just beneath it is assigned to the
four earlier saints, who stand in pairs on either side
of her ; the later monks, in robes of their respective
orders, are content with the common floor of the
apartment. Finally, note that in the central niche
and the four lateral arches behind the principal figures
we have, as it were, an evanescent reminiscence of
the separate arcades of earlier altar-pieces. There is
visible a fading relic of the idea that each saint
192
2;
O
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THE MADONNA AND SAINTS
should be provided with a separate niche or shrine-
Hke background.
Later painters threw the Madonna and Saints by
gradual stages into a still more condensed and united
composition. In the Umbrian school, it is true, and
particularly with Perugino, the separate figures main-
tained to the last a strange degree of individual distinct-
ness. Here the various saints usually stood out in
almost complete isolation, and seemed scarcely to enter
into any united action — a trait which survives even to
Raphael's time in the Blenheim Madonna. This, the
most famous picture in the National Gallery, painted by
Raphael during his transitional period, represents Our
Lady and the Child, with St. John the Baptist on the
left in his coat of camel's hair, and St. Nicholas of Bari
on the right, with the three balls at his feet which con-
stitute his emblem. It should be compared with the
Perugino in the same room and on a similar subject —
the Virgin and Child, with the archangel Michael in
a panel on one side, and the archangel Raphael in a
second panel on the other — and still more with a second
Perugino to the right of it. But in the remaining schools
of Italy some attempt was made to blend the various
figures into an artificial unity. Admirable examples of
stages in this process may be seen in the great Ghir-
landajo of the Uffizi, and in the Ghirlandajo and
Botticelli of the Belle Arti at Florence. In all these
pictures the Madonna is enthroned under a similar
canopy ; saints surround her seat on different steps, in
accordance with their respective grades of dignity. For
195 I
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
instance, in the Ghirlandajo of the Uffizi the upper tier
is occupied by the archangels Michael and Gabriel, who
stand erect, and the lower tier by two sainted kneeling
bishops. Later still, the entire group is fused into an
adoring body, engaged in what the painters of the
High Renaissance characteristically describe as a santa
conversazione.
As an example of intermediate Lombard treatment
of the same subject, I would adduce the exquisite Am-
brogio Borgognone of the National GaUery (Room IV.,
No. 298). We may take it for granted that this lovely
work was a votive offering from a lady of the name of
Catherine. She desired, therefore, that the Madonna
should be represented with the two great St. Catherines
on either hand — St. Catherine of Alexandria and St.
Catherine of Siena. Their names are inscribed on the
haloes which surround their heads. The Madonna — an
exquisite example of the earlier and purer Lombard
type — sits enthroned on a raised seat, which may be
compared with that of the Blenheim Madonna and of
many other A^irgins in our national collection. The
Child, erect on her knees, and short-coated after the
earlier wont, is in the very act of placing the ring of
His mystic wedding on the timorous hand of St.
Catherine of Alexandria. The saint herself, as earlier
and more famous of the two, stands at the right hand
of Our Lady. In her left she grasps the palm of
martyrdom ; her right she holds forth, as the spouse of
Christ, to receive the ring with which He spiritually
weds her. As Princess of Egypt, the meek and
196
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MADONNA WITH SAINTS: UJJhi Galkry. Floye
GHIKLANHAIO
'97
THE MADONNA AND SAINTS
beautiful lady wears a regal 'Crown. Her long wavy
hair, of the type which we usually regard as Leonard-
esque, is characteristic of this saint even in pictures of
other schools : it should be compared with the tresses
of another St. Catherine by a nameless Umbrian which
hangs near the side door in the same gallery as the
Blenheim Madonna. At her feet lies the wheel, with
its conventional hooked spikes, which was the instru-
ment of her torture. On the Madonna's left stands St.
Catherine of Siena in her Dominican robes. Her face
is pure saintliness — a marvel of beauty ; her left hand
holds the ascetic white lily of the Dominican order ; her
right the Madonna takes with a gentle and one might
almost say a consolatory gesture. Our Lady seems to
comfort her for her less favoured position ; and, if you
look close, you will see that the infant Saviour holds in
His left hand a second ring, which He extends with
childish grace towards the Nun of Siena. In point of
fact, though the Princess of Alexandria is the saint
usually represented in Marriages of St. Catherine — as
in the famous Correggio of the Louvre and the
exquisite Luini of the Poldi-Pezzoli at Milan — the
Sienese devotee not infrequently shares the same
honours of espousal, as in the painstaking representa-
tion by Lorenzo di San Severino in the Umbrian room
at the National Gallery (Room VI., No. 249).
I do not treat this Borgognone, however, in our
formal classification, as a Marriage of St. Catherine,
but as a Madonna and Saints — for reasons which I
think will be clear to any one who compares the Cor-
199
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
reggio and the Luini, just mentioned, with the Titian
in the Pitti Palace and other examples elsewhere of the
mystic betrothal. That subject has a history and a
treatment of its own, while this agrees in all essentials
with the common type of the " Madonna Enthroned
with Saints," and wholly disagrees with the accepted
composition of the " Marriage of St. Catherine." The
reader who visits the picture I have described in the
National Gallery should not fail to compare it with the
other Borgognone which hangs by its side — a Madonna
and Child flanked not by saints but by two separate
panels of scenes from the Passion (Room IV., No. 1077).
It is most instructive to compare this exquisite work
of Borgognone' s with the wonderfully painted Andrea
Mantegna in the Paduan room of the National Gallery
(Room VIII., No. 274), not far from it. Here again
the central space of the composition is occupied by the
Madonna enthroned, though the raised seat of the
Queen of Heaven has a certain Paduan simplicity and
severity of outhne most unlike the ornate architectural
richness which the designer of the facade of the Certosa
has given to the details of his palatial interior. This
classical severity is very characteristic of the school of
Squarcione. For Mantegna, the greatest fruit and
foliage painter of his time, the background consists
of a delicious orange grove, on which the master has
expended all his skill and knowledge. On the
Madonna's right stands St. John the Baptist, anato-
mically rendered as no painter of the time save
Mantegna could have rendered him. His rough
200
MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE : Xatwiml Gallery, Loiidcu. AMBROGIO BORGOGNONT.
THE MADONNA AND SAINTS
garment of camel's skin, his little reed cross, his
Ecce Agnus scroll, form his conventional emblems :
the earnest yearning of his ascetic face, the singular
beauty of his ascetic body, are peculiar to Mantegna.
On the opposite side stands St. Mary Magdalen, a
voluptuous figure, fuUy robed, and in powerful contrast
to the lean saint of the wilderness. The strength of
the temptations of the flesh strikes her keynote. Her
long hair, as usual, marks her personality ; so does the
little alabaster box of ointment, very precious, which
seems most appropriate in the hands of a saint of such
expansive personal beauty. Her full neck, and the
marvellously painted melting colours of her richly shot
silk, betray the nature of the repentant sinner who has
much indeed in her past life to atone for. The two
figures are admirably contrasted. One is the saint for
whom sins of the flesh have no attraction ; the other is
the saint who has yielded to such sins and with hard
struggles repented. But we must remember always
that the painter's own fancy did not supply the ground-
work for this striking contrast of type and character.
His commission was simply for a Madonna and Child,
with the Baptist and the Magdalen : he carried it out
with all his accuracy of drawing, his refinement of
colour, his conscientious study of the minutest detail.
Probably the characterisation was more than half un-
conscious. The plants in the foreground exemplify
Mantegna's habitual care as much as do the robe of the
Madonna or the feet of the Baptist : they are recog-
nisable at once by the eye of the botanist.
203
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
It will be well at this point to observe that from
the evolutionary standpoint these various groups are
best considered in different series, according as they
represent the Madonna flanked by two, by four, or by
many saints. And it would be best for the observer to
begin his survey in any great collection by confining
himself at first to groups of the Madonna and Child
with only two accessory personages. Thus it would be
desirable in the National Gallery, after studying the
Borgognone and the Mantegna which I have just de-
scribed, to go on into the Umbrian room and examine,
first, the Perugino with St. Jerome and St. Francis (Room
VI., No. 1075), and then the Blenheim or Ansidei
Madonna. In both these Umbrian pictures Our Lady
is raised on a little pedestal above the adoring saints.
But in the Perugino she stands, while in the Raphael
she is seated in glory, with a type of background recall-
ing in many ways the Borgognone. And here again
we get another cross division ; for the backgrounds also
fall into distinct types, of regular I'ecurrence. For
instance, there is the balustrade, with trees in the back-
ground ; there is the throne and arch ; there is the
landscape with cities ; and there is the mountain and
river. Examples of all these will be readily recalled by
the reader as soon as the prevalence of the types is
pointed out to him.
Again, it is interesting to note that such a type
as the Madonna with St. Jerome and St. Francis of
Perugino, where Our Lady stands upon a separate
pedestal, produced a whole family of pictures of its
204
MADONNA DELL' AKPIE: Uffizl Gallay. Florcncc^
ANDKKA DEL SARTC
205
THE MADONNA AND SAINTS
own : an excellent late Florentine specimen of this
theme is the beautiful and graceful Madonna dell' Arpie,
by Andrea del Sarto, in the Uffizi at Florence. This
famous composition shows the Madonna erect on a sort
of hexagonal altar : in her arms is the Child, quite nude ;
at her feet, tiny angels cling in affectionate attitudes ;
on her right hand stands St. Francis, on her left St.
John the Evangelist. In this picture we attain the
full type of the Renaissance. Here, art is everything,
religion nothing. The conventional symbolism of the
saints has almost faded away. As light and shade, and
as tender colour, the picture appeals to us as Andrea's
loveliest work ; as a devotional painting, it impresses us
only by the gentle, aristocratic beauty of Our Lady,
and the merry face and confiding attitude of the purely
human and beautiful baby.
The later Renaissance carries us away into confused
masses of saints in confused heaps of drapery. An ex-
cellent example of these more ornate groups is that
of the Madonna Enthroned, by Fra Bartolommeo, in
the Uffizi. This overpraised composition embraces a
Madonna and Child with the infant St. John of the
usual pattern ; but behind is St. Anne, on either side
a saint, beyond each of these again a row of three other
saints in animated conversation ; at the foot of the
throne are steps, on the lowest of which sit two little
chubby angels ; by their side are two more saints in
the very foreground. The top of the picture is occu-
pied by three tiny cherubs holding an open book ;
to right and left other baby angels play musical
207
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
instruments. Nothing can be more alien than these
muddled and theatrical compositions to the simple and
almost architectural symmetry of the earlier Madonnas.
Artistic effectiveness has been largely lost in mere
fussy accumulation of superfluous sainthood. We are
well on the way to Correggio and the final degradation
into fly-away angels and simpering saints of the Bernini
period. Even the Sistine Madonna itself, when we
compare it frankly with Raphael's earlier and purer
efforts, shows in a certain degree the same unhappy
tendency towards an ornate and somewhat overloaded
composition.
It is most interesting from our present standpoint
to examine in detail the group of INIadonnas in the
National Gallery, of which the great Raphael forms
the centre-piece. They include a specimen by Giovanni
Santi (Room VI., No. 751), the father of Raphael;
another, already reproduced here (in a previous chapter),
of the Madonna and Child, with St. John, attributed
to Perugino; the Garvagh Madonna by Raphael (Room
VI., No. 744), which is a treatment of the same sub-
ject of his Roman period ; a copy of the Bridge water
Madonna (Room VI., No. 929) of his Florentine time ;
Perugino's Virgin and Child with Michael and Raphael,
which is an altar-piece of three separate compartments
(part still at the Certosa di Pavia, the remainder else-
where) ; and the other Perugino of the Virgin and
Child, with St. Jerome and St. Francis, in which all
the figures, though isolated and unconnected in almost
architectural distinctness, are nevertheless thrown, so
208
MADONNA ENTHRONEri: L (liziG.iUcry. Florenc,'
FkA KAKTOLOMMIii
THE MADONNA AND SAINTS
far as mere formal unity goes, into a single picture.
Last of all, there is the great Raphael itself (Room VI.,
No. 213). In this casual group of various works by
different Umbrian painters we have specimens of almost
all the types of treatment here enumerated. They
should be compared with the Madonnas in the Venetian
room, and still more with the adjoining Lombard ex-
amples. A minor point of no little interest is the
presence in many of them of a parapet or balustrade,
on which the infant Christ stands or reclines in front of
His mother. It is also worth while to observe whether
the Child is draped in a little coat, as early reverence
demanded, or is wholly or partially nude, after the later
fashion.
A Venetian picture of the Madonna with St. Paul
and St. George, in the Academy at Venice, signed
by, and attributed, I think without any hesitation, to
Giovanni Bellini, represents a somewhat different type
from any of those we have hitherto considered. It is
the analogue of the three-quarter-length Madonnas,
which I treated more fully in my previous chapter on
that simpler subject. In this beautiful picture, a most
charming example of Bellini's manner, the Madonna is
represented as standing behind a parapet, only the
upper part of her body being visible ; the Child, who
is nude, stands erect on the balustrade, and looks
straight out of the picture into the eyes of the spec-
tator. Our Lady's neck is of the usual bold Venetian
type, strong and firm as a pillar ; her face has all the
wonted Venetian calmness and matronly dignity. On
211
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
her right hand stands St. Paul, with his long pointed
beard, grasping the sword which is his acknowledged
emblem. His face has to some extent the character
of a portrait. On her left stands St. George, in helmet
and breastplace and sleeves of mail ; his sturdy hand
grasps the long staff or pole from which hangs his
pennon. A very realistic and human St. George he
is, too, with features so bluff and so little idealised as
to susfsrest the notion that he is but the counterfeit
presentment of some Venetian general who has chosen
to be painted in the character of his patron. The
Maltese cross on his helmet and on the flagstaff in
his hand forms a familiar symbol of the sainted warrior.
Indeed, St. George, as ancient Protector of the Re-
public, meets one at every turn in Venice and in the
Venetian territory.
The glorious altar-piece by Giorgione preserved at
his native town of Castelfranco Veneto shows a mili-
tant saint in similar panoply, and holding a long staff
surmounted by a cross-figured banner. This magnifi-
cent picture is also interesting to us as carrying to an
extreme a frequent peculiarity of enthroned Madonnas
in Venetian art. Often enough even elsewhere, as in
the Ansidei picture, Our Lady is seated on a high
throne, raised by steps, or by a dais or pedestal, above
the lesser saints who stand reverently beside her. But
in Giorgione's masterpiece tlie Madonna is elevated by
two huge pyramidal blocks higli over her votaries'
heads, where she sits enthroned looking down upon
the figures of St. George and St. Francis, who scarcely
212
THE MADONNA AND SAINTS
reach beyond the middle of the second step in her
pedestal. This exaltation of the Madonna above the
attendant saints marks, I need hardly say, an advanced
stage in the conception of her dignity as Queen of
Heaven. The military figure in the Castelfranco
picture is often described as San Liberale, no doubt
on sufficient grounds ; but all his emblems — armour,
flagstaff, and red- cross banner — are characteristic of
St. George, the champion of Christendom. A study
for this work, somewhat differing in the details (or,
according to Richter, a later copy), hangs in the
Venetian room of our National Gallery, where it is
labelled " A Knight in Armour." It should be com-
pared with the neighbouring St. George in a quaint
broad hat by Vittore Pisano, and with the other St.
George by Tintoret on the wall beyond it.
Venetian examples of the Madonna Enthroned,
with attendant saints, abound in the Academy and the
churches of Venice. They should be studied in chrono-
logical order, from the Stefano and the Vivarini in
the Antichi Dipinti room down to the Titians and
Tintorets whose saints and bishops have merged into
stately Venetian gentlemen. I would specially call
attention, among the works in the Academy, to the
Giovanni d'AUemagna and Antonio da Murano re-
presenting the Madonna Enthroned with the Doctors
of the Church, which derives special interest from the
fact that it still occupies the spot in the old Scuola
della Carita for which it was painted. Other examples
worthy of comparison from our present standpoint are
215
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
the Cima da Conegliano of the Virgin and Child with
St. John and St. Paul, representing in the distance the
castle of Coneghano ; and a Giovanni Bellini of the
Madonna with six saints (Francis, Job, John the Bap-
tist, Sebastian, Dominic, and Louis) from a chapel at
San Giobbe. But indeed the Academy is a perfect
mine and inexhaustible storehouse of Venetian examples
for comparison in our subject. Outside Venice, one of
the most curious Venetian specimens is the Cima da
Conegliano in the Pinacoteca at Parma, where the
Madonna is singularly enthroned on the steps of a
broken triumphal arch, and the Divine Child is seated
on a projecting portion of its plinth, protected by a
corner of Our Lady's mantle. To the right stands the
archangel Michael, with sword and armour ; to the left
St. Andrew, with the cross of his martyrdom. Shattered
fragments of the arch litter the earth in the foreground.
As the architecture is classical, I take the meaning of
this symbolical treatment of the throne to be that
Christ and the Madonna sit as King and Queen
among the ruined relics of antique paganism. We
shall come again upon this pretty allegorical concep-
tion when we proceed to consider the Adoration of
the Magi.
For the most part, I have taken it for granted so
far that the individual saints introduced into these com-
positions are the patrons of the donor or the particular
holy personages to whom the church or chapel which
they adorned was dedicated. This is generally so ; but
in order to understand the actual collocation of saints
216
MADONNA WITH SAINTS: Fiiiaiotiwi, J\.
CI MA DA (■OXEGLIANO
^17
THE MADONNA AND SAINTS
in any given picture we must know exactly the history
of its origin. For example, in the great altar-piece
by Romanino in the National Gallery (Room VII.,
No. 297), painted for the Church of St. Alexander
at Brescia, the composition consists of the following
figures : in the centre is the particular representation
of the Madonna and Child known as the Nativity ; on
Our Lady's right, St. Alexander himself, in his armour
as a Roman soldier, occupying, as patron saint of the
church, the place of honour beside the Madonna ; on
her left, St. Jerome, Romanino's own patron saint —
for his real name was Girolamo Romani. Above St.
Alexander is San Filippo Benizio, as representative of
the order of Servites ; and above St. Jerome is San
Gaudioso, the canonised Bishop of Brescia, as the
chief local object of veneration. Thus the group of
saints represents the church, the painter, the monastic
order, and the town where it was painted. The reader
will find it an interesting mental exercise to spell out
for himself the various saints in the great Orcagna in
the National Gallery (Vestibule, No. 569), or again the
three superposed rows in the Carlo Crivelli altar-piece,
and to discover in each case the reason for their pre-
sence. But in other instances the picture has rather a
doctrinal than a local or personal signification. For
example, we sometimes find groups of the INIadonna
and Child with the four Latin Fathers — St. Jerome,
St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Gregory — as in
the majestic example at the Academy in Venice already
alluded to. Here the idea is rather that of Christian
219
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
truth attested by the doctors, philosophers, and
thinkers. Other similar compositions are the Madonna
and Child with the four Evangelists ; with St. Peter
and St. Paul ; with the four Archangels ; or with the
Saints in Glory.
220
VI
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI
The mystic stoiy of the Three Kings in its simplest
form is narrated for us in the Gospel according to
St. Matthew. We are there told merely in the
vaguest terms that " there came wise men from the
East to .Jerusalem, saying, Where is He that is born
King of the Jews ? for we have seen His star in the
east, and are come to worship Him." And after
Herod the king had gathered all the chief priests
and scribes of the people together, and learnt of them
that the Messiah should be born in Bethlehem of
Judea, he sent them thither, " and said, Go and search
diligently for the young Child ; and when ye have
found Him, bring me word again, that I may come
and worship Him also. When they had heard the
king, they departed ; and lo, the star, which they saw
in the east, went before them, till it came and stood
over where the young Child was. When they saw
the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And
when they were come into the house, they saw the
young Child, with Mary His mother, and fell down,
and worshipped Him ; and when they had opened
their treasures, they presented unto Him gifts ; gold,
and frankincense, and myrrh."
221
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
Such is the simple tale of the Adoration of the
Magi, as narrated for us in the Gospel of the Hebrews.
Later legend, however, considerably enlarged and em-
bellished the episode ; for it is of the nature of legend
that the further it gets from the facts embodied in it,
the more it always knows about the minutest details.
The Wise Men, it seems, were three in number : they
were also kings — a fact not mentioned by our original
authority, but inferred from the psalmist's prediction,
" The kings of Tarshish and of the Isles shall bring
presents ; the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts."
Their realms, said later writers, were Tarsus, Saba,
and Nubia ; whence the third and youngest of the
three is commonly represented, in late art at least, as
a Moor or Nubian. Their names, which occur at
any rate as early as the ninth century, were declared
to be Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. The origin
and meaning of these Oriental-sounding words is quite
unknown, though Caspar or Kaspar has been traced
back through Cathaspar and the Syriac Cudophor to
a certain Indo-Parthian king, Condophares, who is said
to have been converted and baptized by the apostle
Thomas. In any case, we are assured that they were
finally instructed in the Christian faith, and afterwards
martyred. Their relics were long treasured in Con-
stantinople, where they had been taken by that mighty
discoverer of sacred remains, the Empress Helena.
Thence they were carried to Milan, and, in 1164, pre-
sented by Frederic Barbarossa to Archbishop Reinald
von Dassel, who removed them to Cologne as a
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI
precious possession. In the Rhenish capital they were
preserved for ages in a chapel of the great unfinished
cathedral behind the high altar, where a relief in gilded
bronze of the Adoration of the Magi stiU marks the
spot they so long occupied, while the chapel itself is
known to this day as that of the Three Kings. But
the actual relics of the Wise Men of the East no
longer rest in it ; they are contained in a magnificent
golden reliquary, a costly specimen of Romanesque
workmanship, executed shortly after their translation to
Cologne by Archbishop Reinald. This antique shrine
was carried away for concealment from the French in
1794 ; and, being then seriously injured, was not re-
placed in the chapel of the Three Kings on its restora-
tion to the cathedral in 1807, but has ever since been
preserved under lock and key in the treasury for safer
keeping. The faithful may see it by application to
the sacristan.
Indeed, if I might venture to digress for a moment,
I would remark that the Three Kings are almost
more important and distinguished at Cologne than
St. Ursula herself, with her 11,000 virgins. They
occupied the place of honour in the vast cathedral,
and formed for centuries the principal object of local
veneration. Nay, more — they were commonly known
in Germany as the Three Kings of Cologne ; and
their Feast of the Epiphany, or Dreikonigstag, was
specially honoured throughout the whole Rhine country
as a very high festival. Hence the popularity of the
name of Kaspar in central Germany, and the compara-
223 K
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
tive frequency of Melchior and Balthasar. Further-
more, as the Magi were pilgrims who came from
afar, and must therefore have rested on the way at
caravanserais, the sign of the Three Kings was a
natural one for an inn or hostelry. Hence it comes
about that hotels bearing this name are frequent along
the Rhine — one very ancient one so called at Bale
being familiar to this day to the modern tourist.
In Italy, however, where the rehcs of the Three
Kings had rested for awhile at Milan on their north-
ward journey, the Wise Men of the East were scarcely
less famous than in Teutonic Rhineland. Long before
their legend attained its full development, indeed, the
Adoration of the Magi had formed a subject for
the very earhest stratum of Christian painting in
the Roman catacombs. It is thus one of the most
frequent themes from the dawn of Christianity. As
art progressed, and the legend gathered volume,
the subject became perhaps the most popular and
the most often rendered of historical scenes from the
Gospel story. It meets us again and again in every
church and every gallery of Italy ; and the numerous
examples transported to the palaces and museums of
the North, enable even those who have not crossed
the Alps to form some fairly adequate idea of the
variety and complexity with which it has been treated.
Our own National Gallery is rich in specimens.
This variety and complexity has induced me to
keep the theme of the Three Kings for separate con-
sideration thus late in our series. Historically, indeed,
224
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI
it should even come before the Madonna and Saints ;
but its richness in detail makes it desirable to treat
it after that more simple subject. No recognised scene
in early Italian art introduces so bewildering a multi-
plicity of personages and circumstances as this. And
yet, at the same time, in the midst of that multiplicity,
the uniformity of type is still marvellously apparent.
All the chief elements of the composition recur again
and again, age after age, with stereotyped regularity.
The chief actors in the drama, often central to
the picture, though oftener occupying its extreme
right-hand side, are the Madonna and Infant. These
principal figures present, of course, in each generation
and in each school, the general features which we
have already recognised as typical of the Byzantine,
the Giottesque, the Florentine, the Umbrian, the
Lombard, the Venetian, or the Paduan model, as the
case may be, in each individual instance. They are
just the Madonna and Child, seated, of the particular
age and place and artist. Often the action takes
place in a stable : when this is so, the ox and the
ass, invariable accompaniments of the Nativity, are
shown behind the Madonna ; and very frequently the
Shepherds are depicted in the background, watching
their flocks by night, while the announcing angels
are heralding the new-born Saviour. Often, again,
it is at the mouth of a cavern — a detail taken from
the apocryphal gospels. In other instances the scene
is laid amid the ruins of an antique temple — a poeti-
cal and symbohcal way of representing the triumph
225
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
of Christianity over Paganism. Whichever idea is
adopted in the particular picture, however, the back-
ground almost invariably consists of a wide and
diversified mountainous landscape, through which
the retinue of the Magi may often be discerned
winding its way in stately procession down zigzag
roads that thread the distant hillside. Of course the
star that stands above the place where the young
Child is, forms for the most part a conspicuous
figure in every " Adoration."
The main action of the drama, however, is carried
on by the Three Kings in person. They are always,
I think, represented as typifying the three stages of
manhood, and often, too, as representing the three
continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa. There is an
Old King, a Middle-aged King, and a Young King ;
and the Young King at least is frequently depicted as
a Moor or negro, or at any rate as swarthy. But this
racial distinction is commoner in Germany and North
Italian art than in Tuscan or Umbrian. Sometimes an
attempt is made to give all three Magi some tinge of
Orientalism in costume or features. A simple turban
often suffices for this suggestive purpose. As a rule,
the Old King has a long and flowing snow-white
beard ; the Middle-aged King is provided with a
shorter and more rounded beard, brown or chestnut
in hue ; the Young King is invariably beardless. But
very occasionally, in northern pictures, all three are
smooth-faced. The moment chosen for representation
is usually that at which the eldest of the three presents
226
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI
his offering. In most instances he kneels and hands
his gift to the Child, the Madonna, St. Joseph, or
some attendant personage. Frequently he has removed
his crown, in token of subjection, and laid it on the
ground near the feet of Our Lady. The two other kings
more usually stand erect, though sometimes the third,
and occasionally the second as well, kneels before the
Saviour. Each holds in his hand a casket or chalice
containing his offering. Caspar gives gold, Melchior
frankincense, Balthasar myrrh from his southern king-
dom. The Child is often represented with two fingers
held out, in the attitude of benediction ; sometimes He
stretches forward His tiny foot to be kissed, with a
quaint suggestion of papal formality. I wiU only add
to this general sketch of the main variations that from
a very early date camels form in most instances an
element of the procession. But they have apparently
been evolved, by the earlier painter, as by the German
professor, from the inner consciousness of the individual
limner. They are much more like Western llamas or
alpacas than Arabian dromedaries. Such are the main
constants which go to compose the features of an
" Adoration."
In the very earliest representations of this scene —
those of the Roman catacombs — the number of the
Magi is not yet determined : the mystic number three
has not invaded the field ; they are few or many,
according to the fancy of the particular artist. But
long before the beginning of the tenth century the
scene had crystallised itself into a trio of the three
227
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
ages, and acquired in the main the determinate features
already noted.
Giotto's fresco at Padua shows us an early, simple,
and naive expression of these general elements. Com-
pared with the later and very complex "Adorations"
of the Renaissance painters, it resembles what a
biologist would call a " generalised " form of the genus
it foreshadows. That is to say, it shows the central
type with few special or decorative additions. Here,
the drama is enacted almost in the open air, only a
slight wooden shed or shelter, the stable of the Gospel,
being erected on four posts above the heads of the
Holy Family. One might call it a building reduced to
its simplest symbolical elements, as in a child's draw-
ing. Even at this early stage, however, the back-
ground is occupied by a frankly impossible mountain,
with a hardness of outline almost unequalled even in
the first age of Italian painting. Down its rugged
sides, along a dizzy path, the Magi are supposed to
have wound their way already : no trace of their
gorgeous retinue as yet appears upon its sinuous
shoulders. The Madonna and Holy Family occupy
the right-hand side of the picture — a position which
remains almost invariable, I think, in later works,
except where they are represented as central to the
composition. I can remember comparatively few
examples where the Madonna's place lies far to the
spectator's left in the picture : where such occur, I
believe they must have been painted with special
reference to the light from the east, in their original
228
ADORATION OF THE U.\Q,\\ Madoiwa dcW Arena, Padua.
229
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI
situation, as 1 infer from one or two instances still
in situ in Italian churches. The Virgin herself, in
Giotto's treatment, is one of the most charming and
subtly sweet of his presentations of Our Lady.
Her face and neck are admirable ; but the hand and
arm which hold out the divine Child are still, it must
be admitted, distinctly wooden. Notice the bands of
embroidery on the ]\Iadonna's dress, so frequent with
Giotto, and repeated, as is his wont, on the bosom of
the angel. As for the divine Child, He is more tightly
swaddled than even the master's usual bambino : Giotto
seems here to be strongly aware that he is dealing with
a new-born baby. Observe, too, that under this rough
wooden shed the Madonna herself is nevertheless doubly
raised on a royal dais, once by a curious ledge of natural
rock, and once by a sort of box or platform, which seems
to form the floor of the building. Both these features
occur again and again, with various modifications, in
later treatments. Indeed, such minor details, to all of
whicli it would be tedious to refer in every instance,
persist from age to age in the most wonderful manner.
The reader must note them for himself before the
original pictures. But I need hardly call his attention
here to the portentous star, a very bearded comet,
trailing its vagrant tresses across the startled sky, and
indicating the whereabouts of the divine Infant.
On the Madonna's right hand (or the spectator's
left) St. Joseph bows his head in a respectful attitude.
On her left stands an angel in silent attendance. St.
Joseph seems to occupy a lower stage by one step than
231
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
the Madonna ; so also evidently does the angel in the
foreground. All the figures, except that of a servant,
are provided with most solid and Giottesque haloes.
None is as yet more conspicuous than another. Later
on, the Madonna's halo becomes much more magnificent.
The Eldest King is kneeling before Our Lady, on
the lowest tier of rock, and is engaged in kissing the
feet of the infant Saviour. He has removed his crown,
which he has laid by his side on the step-like ledge ;
his gift of gold he has already presented : the angel
holds it in a sort of cup or monstrance. This is a
frequent feature in later " Adorations " ; sometimes St.
Joseph is admiring the offering or displaying it with
pride to interested spectators ; sometimes he is repre-
sented, with great naivete, inspecting it curiously, as if
to satisfy himself of its genuineness and exact value.
Indeed, to most mediaeval painters the Adoration
envisages itself essentially as an act of feudal homage.
The Eldest King has here the long beard so typical of
his character as usually represented.
Behind him stand erect the two other Magi. Their
crowns are less honourable than that of the chief actor.
The Middle-aged King, with shorter and younger
beard, holds in his hands a highly decorated horn, con-
taining frankincense. The Youngest King is smooth-
faced and interesting : his features, I fancy, bear a
certain remote resemblance to those of Dante. He
holds in his hand a handsome pyx, containing the
mystical myrrh of his country. No special Orientalism
is expressed by Giotto in the features or costume of
232
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI
any of the Magi. To him the Gospel folk were still
just ordinary Italian gentlemen.
In strong contrast with the solemn, stately, and
saint-like faces of these chief performers, angelic or
human, look at the face and figure of the brawny and
extremely rustic attendant who holds the camels. As
to those far-Eastern beasts themselves, which Giotto
can never have seen in the flesh, they belong to the
Noah's-ark order of zoologic art. Their legs, their
heads, their manes, their bodies, are all frankly impos-
sible. But, such as they are, Giotto did his best with
them, as representing the fact that the Wise Men
came from the East, the land of camels. So far as he
can, he desires to be accurate. It, is interesting to
note, too, that this single figure of the servant with the
two camels forms, as it were, the original rudiment out
of which, in a later age, were developed the gorgeous
pageantry of Benozzo Gozzoli and the panoplied glories
of Ghirlandajo's " Adoration." We get here a first
hint for subsequent evolution to expand and intensify.
As an entire composition, this fresco of Giotto's
seems to me one of the most perfect among his works
at the Arena. It is also full of instructiveness as illus-
trating for us the simplicity and straightforward direct-
ness of the early painter, compared with the overloaded
and confused panels of his later successors. For the
Adoration of the Magi became with the Tuscan artists
of the early Renaissance a mere excuse on which they
eagerly seized for processional display and the meaning-
less reduplication of Oriental magnificence. Giotto
233
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
himself is held to have attempted the same subject
again in the Lower Church at Assisi ; but if that un-
satisfactory fresco is really his own, as the best and
latest authorities now hold, it shows rather a falling off
than an increase in his powers of composition.
Readers in London will do well to compare our
illustration of this Giotto at Padua with a tempera
painting by Orcagna, representing the same scene, in the
National Gallery (Room II., No. 574). It must be
borne in mind, in examining the two, that Giotto's is a
fresco, while Orcagna's is a panel forming part of an
altar-piece. The centre of this important altar-piece was
the great " Coronation of the Virgin," in the same
room ; while the " Nativity " and the " Resurrection,"
which hang close by, formed, with the " Adoration,"
separate portions of its outworks. The necessary con-
striction and dwarfing of the subject by the shape of
the panel must therefore be allowed its due weight in
instituting a comparison between the two compositions.
Making such necessary allowances, however, it will be
seen at once that we have here another relatively simple
treatment of the theme of the Magi, which blossomed
out in later times into such extravagant but picturesque
detail. I would add that the evolution of this particular
subject may be reckoned among those which can best
be traced in our national collection. The visitor who
has inspected this early example of the " Homage of
the Three Kings " should proceed from it direct to the
Fra Angelico, the two Filippino Lippis, the Peruzzi,
the Dosso Dossi, the Paolo Veronese, the Vincenzo
234
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI
Foppa, and the unknown Venetian of the age of Bellini.
Close observation of similarities and differences in these
various examples will disclose an immense number of
minute coincidences, and will also serve to show to
some extent the order in which the various modifica-
tions were introduced, and the changes of tone which
the subject experienced in the diverse environments of
different parts of Italy. I would say to the student
who follows out this hint, " Think of each first in
relation to its time or historical order, and then in
relation to the school that produced it and the artist
who painted it."
The subsequent development of the Tuscan variety
of Giottesque " Adorations " can best be traced, of
course, in the churches and galleries of Florence, where
abundant examples occur, culminating in that flower
of Giottesque art, the exquisite specimen by Fra
Angelico in the cells of San Marco. This admirable
work shows us the Frate's handicraft in its latest,
fullest, and richest embodiment. Burckhardt suggests,
indeed, that it was painted in conscious rivalry with
Masaccio. But a still more striking embodiment of
early fifteenth-century ideas on the Adoration is the
magnificent tabernacle by Angelico's friend, the Camal-
dolese monk, Don Lorenzo Monaco, as he is styled
par excellence, in the room which bears his name at the
Uffizi. Omitting the part of the work which is essenti-
ally frame, with decorative figures and an " Annuncia-
tion" above, this splendid altar-piece consists in its
main portion of three arcades, beneath which are seen
235
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
the Madonna and Child and the three Magi. Con-
trary to custom, Our Lady and the infant Saviour here
occupy the left-hand side of the picture. They are
enthroned on a raised seat, with a ledge of rock once
more in the foreground ; the Madonna's head is veiled,
as usual, by a half-open snood ; the Child is fully
draped, after the early fashion. Behind these holy
personages we see the manger, where an ox is eating ;
a much milder and more ordinary star than Giotto's
portentous comet stands in heaven above them.
Quaint little angels float unsupported to the right of
Our Lady ; St. Joseph, on the left, occupies, as is the
rule, a somewhat lower position than the Madonna and
Infant. All the holy figures have star-dappled haloes
—a pretty variation on the earlier solid plaster models.
The Eldest and Youngest Kings are both kneeling ;
they have taken off their diadems and laid them on the
ground by their sides ; the Middle-aged King alone is
standing, and has handed his crown to an attendant
behind him. The beards and gifts are of the ordinary
patterns. But the greater part of the panel to the
right is taken up by the retinue of the Three Kings,
which with Don Lorenzo has reached quite appalling
proportions. Most of the suite are Moors or Orien-
tals. Some of them wear scimitars, and are turbaned ;
others are habited in strange canonical caps and
quaint varieties of peaked head-dress, intended by
Lorenzo to be generally indicative of the outlandish
and the heathenish. The figures have in most cases
that disproportionate height in relation to the head
236
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI
which was supposed to imply dignity and importance.
The rear is brought up by horses and nondescript
animals, no doubt intended to be very Oriental, among
which may still be detected a highly Giottesque and
impossible camel. In the background rise the usual
mountains, with incredible rocks ; while angels flit to
and fro in the middle distance. This gorgeous com-
position may well be regarded, in conjunction with Fra
Angelico's, as the last work of the Florentine Giot-
tesque type in the " Adoration of the Magi."
Though not strictly to be considered as an " Adora-
tion " at all, Benozzo Gozzoli's most exquisite " Proces-
sion of the Three Kings," in the dainty little chapel of
the Riccardi Palace, beguiles me, will I, nill I, into a
word of mention in passing. It covers three walls of
the tiny building ; on the fourth stood an altar-piece,
now wickedly removed to make room for a bald and
ugly window. This central work must certainly have
represented the Virgin and Child, to whom the unspeak-
ably beautiful angels on either side are hymning, open-
mouthed, their glorious adoration. All round the room
the stately retinue of the Three Kings winds its way in
regal pomp across the mountains to Bethlehem. This
is the lordliest in colour and in detail of all representa-
tions of the Wise Men of the East : it befits the palace
of Lorenzo the Magnificent. The scene takes place
amid a delicious landscape of roses and pomegranates ;
behind, the eye falls upon stone pines and cypresses,
serene mountain-chains, and great castle-crowned hill-
tops. The Eldest King is a portrait of the Patriarch
239
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
of Constantinople ; the Middle-aged King is John
Palaeologos, Emperor of the East ; and the Youngest
King is Lorenzo de Medici in his handsome boyhood.
But these three noble figures do not monopolise the
spectator's attention : they are accompanied on their
march by knights and pages in sumptuous array, and
by hunting leopards, which give a graceful touch of
Oriental feeling to the pompous and fanciful mediseval
pageant. No work in Florence breathes a more serene
air of the pure and innocent early Tuscan imagination.
Returning from this digression to our more proper
subject, I will mention next, as an example of primitive
Umbrian treatment, the extraordinarily rich and over-
loaded picture by Gentile da Fabriano in the Academy
at Florence. Everybody must remember its golden
brocades, its gem-starred crowns, and its sumptuous
ornament. As an " Adoration," indeed, this astounding
work follows close on the same lines as Don Lorenzo
Monaco's : its peculiarity is that it positively bristles
with gilt stucco, with precious stones, and with jewelled
embroidery. It is an orgy of apparel. The dresses in
themselves afford us a perfect museum of decorative
art : the turbans and caps glisten and glow with dazzling
profusion of pearl, turquoise, and amethyst. The Um-
brian masters sought to show their devotion by covering
every inch of their costly panels with masses of pure
gold, and rare stones by the hundred. In a work so
complex, so minutely painted, and so fantastic as this —
crowded with figures every one of which is bespangled
and decorated in almost incredible detail — it would be
240
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI
impossible to reproduce in a single page of plain black-
and-white the gorgeous effect of the entire composition :
I content myself with illustrating the isolated figures of
the Middle-aged and the Young Kings, thrown out
against the cave of the ox and the ass behind them.
Probably no picture in the world contains such extra-
ordinary enrichment of ornament as this, or so lavish a
wealth of decorative adjuncts. The jewels and other
adornments are raised above the surface by embossed
stucco. Traces of this early style may still be seen in
Foppa's treatment of the same subject in the National
Gallery (Room IV., No. 729). It is worth while to
notice, too, that in Gentile's picture the Young King's
head has already the affected pose afterwards so common
in the works of Perugino.
As a specimen of the evolution undergone by the
Magi at the hands of a Florentine artist of the Middle
Renaissance, I would call attention to the beautiful
round Ghirlandajo in the Uffizi at Florence, where a
large number of the heads have all the character of
personal portraits. In this noble circular picture, which
is dated 1487 on a box in the foreground, the figures of
the Madonna and Child, as is natural with that shape,
occupy, not one side, but the centre of the composition.
Our Lady is raised on a stone parapet, evidently de-
tached from the ruined temple which here, as often,
fills the greater portion of the background ; the ledges
of rock, inherited from Giotto, are still visible behind
her. The infant Christ, now nude (after the taste of
the Renaissance), save for a little semi-transparent
243
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
drapery, raises His two fingers in the attitude of bene-
diction — a frequent element in such works, to which I
ought, perhaps, in some earher cases to have called
more marked attention. Close by sits St. Joseph, with
his head on his hand, in silent admiration : this attitude
also is frequent and characteristic. Behind the saint,
the ox and the ass are somewhat incongruously stabled
under a wooden shed of the pure Giottesque type,
which quaint little building is grotesquely erected
between the classical pilasters and noble arcades of the
ruined temple. I cannot venture to describe this very
crowded and admirable composition in detail : it must
include, all told, not far short of a hundred figures.
Everything in it is dainty, consummate, exquisite.
Ghirlandajo makes it an excuse for a charming repre-
sentation of a delicious and graceful Florentine pageant.
I will merely add that the Kings, in the foreground,
have dismounted from their horses, and are kneeling in
picturesque attitudes of well-bred adoration before the
Madonna and Infant. The Elder King, long-bearded
as is his wont, has laid down on the ground his rich
velvet cap with the crown that surrounds it, and is just
about to kiss the foot of the divine Infant, about whose
attitude clings a certain quaint reminiscence of Papal
ceremonial. The Second King, with rounded beard,
but somewhat older than is habitual with him, has
deposited his simpler and less regal crown on the sward
in front of him. He is surely a portrait. The Third
King, young and beautiful, with aristocratic and almost
girlish beauty, looks like a counterfeit presentment of
244
-^T-^'Timimt
ADORATION OF THE MAGI: Uffi-.i Cillery. Florence.
GHIRLANDAJO
245
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI
one of the Medici. He is by no means a Moor — being,
indeed, a fair and flaxen-haired youth of most Teutonic
aspect ; but, as if to make up for this departure from
custom, a negro servant, in a coat of many colours, is
removing the crown from his long golden tresses. The
right side of the picture is occupied by the adoring
Shepherds, their sheep, to prevent mistake, being
queerly introduced, like a trade-mark, beside them.
These faces, again, are unmistakably portraits, and have
no doubt been identified, though I do not know to
what Florentines of that day critics may assign them.
The charming youthful heads in a group at the rear
have Medici features. The remainder of the picture is
crowded with horses, horsemen, turbaned Orientals,
Roman soldiers, spectators, attendants, sheep, shep-
herds, and angels. The composition is most masterly.
Through the arches of the temple in the background
we get glorious glimpses of distant mountains, below
which nestle close a town and harbour. This is a
picture that grows on one. The horses, in particular,
seem to me far in advance of any previous attempts at
animal painting in Italy. It is difficult to believe that
so short an interval separates them from the painstaking
but tentative work of Paolo Uccello. His efforts are
praiseworthy ; but vnih Ghirlandajo performance is
complete and immediate.
The marvellously minute and delicate " Adoration "
by Andrea Mantegna at the Uffizi is in many respects
very different indeed from Ghirlandajo's treatment. It
breathes no more the frank joy of the Florentine in
247 L
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
grace and beauty. We must judge it as the austere
work of a Paduan artist, dominated by the rigorous
and formal scholasticism of that university city. It
forms the central part in a magnificent altar-piece of
three portions, the other two panels representing the
Circumcision and the Ascension. But it is treated
almost like a miniature as regards exquisiteness of
execution and delicacy of workmanship. It is Flemish
in its conscientiousness. Mantegna, indeed, was at
heart half German ; and I may note in passing that
the Teutonic blood in Lombardy and the North made
Lombard and Paduan art differ widely from Tuscan
and Umbrian. Now, Mantegna passed part of his
life in Padua, where Giotto's frescoes must always
have been familiar to him ; and, indeed, a continuous
tradition from Giotto's time onward had kept up in
Lombardy and Venetia many of Giotto's forms more
unaltered than in revolutionary Florence. The points
of material resemblance (of course as to subject alone)
between Mantegna's work and Giotto's are thus much
more striking than in most other instances. I hope,
however, no critic will suppose I am comparing Man-
tegna's art with Giotto's : I merely mean that the
conventional tradition as to certain details descends
intact from Giotto's time as far down as Mantegna's.
This is especially noticeable in the group of the
Madonna and Child with the mountain behind them.
That mountain still occupies the same place as with
Giotto. There is here no ruined temple, but the
action takes place at the mouth of a cave, which often
248
ADORATION OF THE MAGI: Ufflzi Gallery, Florence.
ANDREA MAXTEGNA
249
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI
replaces it, in accordance with the Gospel of the
Nativity. The ledges of rock, though painted of
course with all Mantegna's skill, yet follow closely in
outline the Giottesque model, even the tilt of the
strata being the same in both instances. It is im-
possible to reproduce in one picture here a work
crowded with so many distinct features ; but visitors
to the Uffizi who are interested in the subject should
compare the Mantegna on the spot with a woodcut or
photograph of the Giotto at Padua.
In every detail, this "Adoration" of Mantegna's is
wortliy of the closest and most attentive study. To
the extreme right of the spectator stands St. Joseph, a
bowed and bent figure, recalling to some extent Lorenzo
Monaco's exaggerated height in the strange proportions
of head and limbs, most unusual in so ardent an ana-
tomist as Mantegna. I think this must be an echo of
earlier preconceptions. He holds in his hand the staff
which is his recognised symbol ; his halo is far less
elaborate than Our Lady's — a point which marks an
increasing sense of his inferior dignity. The same
shade of feeling is further expressed, as often, by
placing St. Joseph on the sohd ground beneath the
ledges of rock which form a natural pedestal or throne
for Our Lady. The Madonna herself is seated on a
projection of native rock ; she holds on her lap the
gift of the Elder King, a costly box set with precious
jewels. The Child, as is habitual in later pictures, is in
the priestly attitude of benediction. The one attendant
angel of Giotto's treatment has here been replaced by
251
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
an irregular glory of little naked cherubs (in a vague
mandorla) hovering around Our Lady's head near the
mouth of the cavern. Above, four fully-draped angels
of more adult aspect sing open-mouthed round the
star, from which a ray of light descends perpendicu-
larly towards the head of the Madonna. A little to
her right, one row of wattled hurdles does duty for
the stable, where the ox and the ass of the traditional
treatment may be dimly descried in somewhat poetic
vagueness.
As for the Three Kings themselves, Mantegna has
treated them with Paduan precision, yet much in the
spirit of earlier representations. It is instructive to
compare the attitude of the Elder King, in this gem
of later art, with Giotto's on the one hand and Ghir-
landajo's on the other. But observe that Mantegna,
in accordance with that spirit of greater historical and
local correctness which marks the school of Squarcione,
has given the Kings no European crowns : they wear
huge swathed turbans instead, as do also their attend-
ants. The Old King has removed his own headgear,
which is being held for him by a negro in the rear,
habited in an extremely Oriental costume. The Middle-
aged King, a finely modelled figure, stands erect, as is
more usual, clear-cut and definite : he has removed his
turban ; the orientalism of his dress is in many ways
conspicuous ; he holds in his hand his offering of frank-
incense. The Young King kneels reverently on the
left; a Moor, of features rather Hamitic or North
African than strictly negro, but with short curly hair
252
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI
and black skin like the darkest Algerian Kabyles. He
too has doffed his turban and laid it on the ground
by his side ; in his hand he holds his tribute of myrrh
in a delicate tazza.
The rear of the picture, a carefully wrought back-
ground, is taken up by an admirable and well -painted
group of Oriental attendants. On these subsidiary
personages Mantegna has bestowed no small amount
of pains and ethnological knowledge. They sum up
his idea of the peoples of the Orient. One is a negro ;
another a Tartar in an astrakhan cap. One is a China-
man in tolerably accurate Chinese costume ; another a
Kalmuck, with admirably painted features, a round fur
cap, and a quiver evidently drawn from a native
example. Behind lounge Turks and Arabs, Persians
in high caps, and other Eastern figures. Every head
is a study. Three camels occupy the attention of most
of these underlings ; but the camels are camels. No
longer the purely imaginative beasts of earlier art, they
are painted throughout from life with the profoundest
care and structural accuracy. Their expression of
stubborn patience mixed with stupid complacency is
admirably rendered. In the distance the remainder of
the august procession winds its slow way in scientific
perspective down a long, steep road, where other camels
descend laden with bales of Eastern merchandise.
Notice the painting of the rocks in the foreground,
and the weeds which spring from them. These are
in Mantegna's most exquisite manner. On the other
hand, the mountains and crags of the background
253
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
remain frankly impossible. Landscape as yet is not
drawn direct from external nature.
The Uffizi and the other Florentine galleries con-
tain numerous sister examples of " Adorations," which
should be compared in detail with these supreme treat-
ments. Very instructive, too, is the contrast of all the
Italian forms with the Northern presentment of the
episode of the Three Kings by Albert Diirer in the
fine altar-piece, one of his earliest easel-works, which
hangs in the Tribuna ; though the gulf between the
Italian and German schools is to some extent bridged
over by this very Mantegna. I would also call special
attention from the evolutionary standpoint to the
" Adoration " by Filippino Lippi in the Uffizi, interest-
ing both for comparison with the Ghirlandajo already
described, and for its portrait of Pier Francesco de'
Medici. Nor should the visitor omit to collate with
these later works the little Fra Angelico also in the
Uffizi, which well exemplifies the smaller miniature-
like style of the ecstatic friar. And he must on no
account overlook the other Ghirlandajo of a sister
subject — the Adoration of the Shepherds, in the
Belle Arti, with the Magi in procession approaching
the manger. As to examples by later masters, in the
Pitti and elsewhere, the reader needs only to be set upon
the quest in order to find them for himself abundantly.
For the evolution of the theme in the late Venetian
school, I will content myself here with a single work
— the " Adoration of the Magi " by Bonifazio Veronese
in the Academy at Venice.
254
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI
Nowhere else do we get the worldly magnificence
and the frank worship of wealth of the Venetian nature
so clearly marked and so undisguisedly displayed as
in the gorgeously coloured canvases of these later
Venetian painters. Every biblical scene, every episode
in the life of saint or martyr, becomes for them a
mere pageant of rich families : they think of the
Apostles as opulent contemporary Venetian aristocrats,
and do honour to holy men or ascetic hermits by en-
visaging them as possessed of lordly mansions and
splendid retinues. To be sure, the early Umbrian
artists did somewhat the same ; but they did it with
a difference. They idealised as they glorified : the
gorgeousness of their Kings was the gorgeousness
that never was, out of poem or fairy tale. But the
gorgeousness of the later Venetian artists knows no
such touch of child-like fancy ; they simply represent
the disciples or the early Christian saints in the most
matter-of-fact style as gentlemen of rank and princely
fortune. They loved such scenes as the feast in the
house of Levi the publican, which they treated as a
banquet of the Loredano or Vendramin families. Thus
there is a note of purely secular art about Bonifazio's
" Adoration " wholly wanting to any of its idealised
Tuscan or Lombard predecessors. The wealthy
commercial environment of Venice has difi^erentiated
the type from its primitive devotional and mystical
standard.
The scene is laid among rounded arcades which
recall at a distance Don Lorenzo Monaco. But their
257
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
style is of course that of the High Renaissance. In
the background rises the usual ruined temple, so con-
spicuous in many of the Three Kings pictures in the
National Gallery. Hard by stands the shed or stable,
necessitated by custom ; but we feel at once that it is
only there as a vain pretence ; Bonifazio put it in
merely because the public and his patrons expected
it. It was a part, but an uncomfortable part, of the
subject. To the left poses a Venetian model with a
staff, as St. Joseph. He is garbed in that vague and
indeterminate stuff known to later painters and critics
as " drapery" ; it has no particular texture, and is simply
used as a vehicle for splendid Venetian colour. And
the glow of pigment in this fine work is undeniable.
The Madonna exhibits a late development of the type
which originated with the tender school of the Belhni ;
she still preserves in her traits some pleasing reminis-
cence of Cima da Conegliano. Her head is covered
with the conventional snood ; but, essentially, she is a
handsome and well-built Venetian lady of Bonifazio's
acquaintance. The Child in her arms is in like manner
a very human baby: no more benedictions; he stretches
out his hand in good-humoured delight to play with
the cup which the Middle-aged King is in the act of
offering him. In the Magi themselves, Bonifazio has
departed still more markedly from earlier formalism,
and allowed himself a more natural and less proces-
sional grouping. The Elder King kneels as usual and
presents his gift ; but it is not the one accepted by the
Child : the infant Christ holds out His little hands for
258
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI
the cup of the Second King, who here stands forward
almost on a level with his elder companion. Why
this irregularity ? I have a suspicion that the Melchior
may be really a portrait of the donor of the picture ;
and, if so, by that one courtier-like touch Bonifazio
intended to pay a delicate compliment to his wealthy
patron. The Eldest King has laid his cap and crown
on the ground ; the Second King holds his own in his
hands in a carelessly graceful attitude. As for the
Third King, he is a Moor, and beardless as of wont
— just such a Moor as Bonifazio must often have seen
disembarking from his galley on the Riva dei Schiavoni.
He wears his turban ; an attendant, kneeling, hands
him his gift in a golden casket. For the background,
Bonifazio has gone off into unwonted excursions of
playful fancy; for not only have we the train of at-
tendants, the horses, the bales of goods, but our artist
has even diversified and enlivened the scene with a
well-rendered elephant. This beast belongs, I take it,
rather to the African than to the Asiatic species. In
the distance we have mountains, towns, trees, and
castles ; the ox or the ass I cannot anywhere discover :
Bonifazio seems to have thought them unworthy of a
place in so grave and dignified a composition. The
piece, on the whole, breathes the very spirit of the
voluptuous and wealthy Venetian society. And note,
as characteristic of a certain sly Venetian humour, the
knave in the strange cap looking round the column to
catch a glimpse of the Madonna and Infant. Such
touches, already present in BeUini and his school, are
259
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
familiar in Titian, and obtrusively common in Paolo
Veronese, Tintoret, and their compeers.
These few remarks form only an introduction to the
study of a vast and interesting subject. I am well
aware of their utter inadequacy. The reader can follow
out my slight clues for himself in all the great galleries
and churches of Europe. I will merely add one final
suggestion. The Annunciation and the Madonna and
Child are types of relatively simple and rigid species :
the Adoration of the Magi, on the other hand, is
perhaps the best type of a very varied and nautable
composition.
260
VII
THE PRESENTATION
In biology it sometimes happens that we find an
ancient form, and desire to trace its upward evolution
towards more modern types with which our own
age and our own world are familiar. That is the
method I have hitherto followed in preceding chap-
ters. More often, however, in concrete instances of
biological research, it is the modern or well-known
type that first engages our attention, and our prob-
lem is to trace it back to its earlier ancestry. In
the case of the subject with which we have next to
deal, I shall adopt the latter or reversed mode
of procedure : I shall begin with a comparatively
familiar theme, exemplified in its treatment by a great
painter in a famous picture, and then shall trace it
back through earlier representations till we arrive at
the original form which is the parent of all of them.
The one principle has been well described as the his-
torical, the other as the genealogical or biological
method.
Every visitor to Venice must vividly recollect the
vast canvas by Titian on the walls of the Academy,
delineating the Presentation of the Virgin in the
Temple. This brilliant and glowing work, the gem
261
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
of the collection which it now adorns, was one of the
master's earliest great pictures, and it was painted
for the very building in which it still stands, the
Scuola della Carita, fitted up at present as the Royal
Picture Gallery. It is a most characteristic piece
of Titianese painting. At the top" of the great grey
steps of the Temple stand the High Priest and his
assistants, dignified and solemn figures, in their robes
of office. Half-way up the flight, on a landing or
platform, the dainty little Virgin, a frankly human
child of most engaging aspect, pauses for a moment
to take breath on her way, before completing the
second part of the ascent in front of her. She is
dressed, even at this early period of her life, in that
invariable blue robe which is the symbol and out-
ward token of her Madonnahood. A devout Italian
of the fifteenth or sixteenth century would hardly
have recognised Our Lady in green or purple. The
red tunic and the blue mantle, long sanctified by
tradition, are her invariable attributes. A mystic will
tell you they symbolise heavenly love and heavenly
truth ; but for the evolutionist at least it is clear that
the Madonna's cloak really represents the visible
firmament, and that she wears it in her character
as Queen of Heaven, in succession, no doubt, to
some earlier Etruscan or Oriental goddess. Indeed,
I notice that " celestial blue " is the expressive phrase
quite naturally applied to the childish Virgin's dress
in this very picture by Crowe and Cavalcaselle. The
child holds her frock in her hand to prevent herself
262
THE PRESENTATION
from tripping, with childish simplicity ; her face is
sweetly trustful. The High Priest encourages her
with his open arms to mount the great steps ; but
his encouragement, one can see, is hardly needed.
The little maiden moves on with serene confidence ;
she feels no cloud of doubt, no childish shyness. She
goes up to the High Priest to devote herself to God
as a well-bred, aristocratic Venetian girl of three
years old would go up to the Bishop who was an
intimate of the household.
As for the surroundings, they, of course, are en-
tirely Italian — of the age of Titian. The buildings
are stately palaces of Renaissance architecture ; the
picturesque background recalls Cadore, or the lower
slopes of the Euganeans. One might almost fancy
oneself in Verona or Brescia. To give a final touch
of realism and modernity to the rich composition,
Titian threw in the old woman ■s\'ith the basket of
eggs at the bottom of the stairs, in the centre fore-
ground — that " celebrated " old woman, with her plain
and weather-beaten face, who roused such an out-
burst of wrath in Ruskin's breast : " as dismally
ugly and vulgar a filling of a spare corner as was
ever daubed on a side scene in a hurry at Drury
Lane." She is an admirable foil to the high-born
daintiness and delicacy of the Virgin. I need not
further dwell upon the details of this famous picture ;
it must be fresh in the mind of every visitor who ever
spent three days in Venice.
But notice now a small point or two in the com-
265
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
position of less obvious interest. At the foot of the
stairs stand friends and relations of the baby Virgin ;
her mother, St. Anna, is conspicuous among them,
with the children who were brought there (as we
shall see hereafter) to accompany and encourage the
infant novice. For the Blessed Virgin, said the
legend in the apocryphal gospels, was dedicated to
the service of God in the Temple from her childhood
upward, like Samuel ; and when her parents took
her thither, fearing that she would not mount the
steps alone, they brought her little companions, with
lamps in their hands, to prevent her from being
frightened. But Mary, filled with the Holy Ghost,
went up by herself, undaunted, and smiled at the
High Priest, who stood open-armed to receive her.
And if you look at the picture carefully, you will
see in the foreground, close beside St. Anna, the
figure of a handsome Venetian lady (in point of fact,
one of those beautiful models incorrectly described
as " the daughters of Palma Vecchio," whom Titian
so often painted), with outstretched arm, pointing
to the little Virgin, as if to say, " See how brave
and good she is ! Why, she's going up by herself,
without the slightest hesitation." So, too, the spec-
tators in the upper windows look out with surprise,
and point to the child in obvious admiration. Titian
envisages it all like a domestic ceremony in high life
of his own time — a sort of confirmation or reception
of a noble novice, a daughter of one of the great
stately oligarchical houses of Venice.
^66
THE PRESENTATION
And now I will ask you to accompany me for a
moment from the doors of the Academy to the church
of the Madonna dell' Orto, in "the far north of the
city. There, in a chapel of the left aisle, you will
find a somewhat later, but hardly less famous, " Pre-
sentation of the ^^irgin" by Titian's recalcitrant pupil,
Tintoretto (sometimes attributed to his son, Domenico
Tintoretto). As in so many other instances, you
will observe at once that the main personages and
incidents of the scene still remain fairly constant.
Revolutionist as Tintoretto was, his revolutionary
impulse affects rather the treatment than the per-
sonages of the composition. You have stiU the stairs,
and a very gorgeous set of Venetian stairs they are,
too, carved with arabesques, which betoken the dawn
of baroque architecture. At their summit, by the
doors of the Temple, stands the High Priest in his
robes and mitre, which closely resemble those of Titian's
imagining. His very pose and the attitude of his
hands are almost the same in both pictures. Half-
way up the stairs we see the little Virgin, one foot
as before on a lower step, the other just above it.
Still she raises in one hand her childish dress in front
of her : still the blond halo round her dainty head
shines vague and hazy. Lower down are her com-
panions, with their mothers, to encourage her : observe
that the most prominent of the grown women points
with one arm, as in Titian's picture, to the ascend-
ing Madonna. This feature, too, is traditional in
the subject. By the side, in place of the old woman
267
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
with her eggs, are lounging lazzaroni. Some of
these look on with the same air of surprise and
astonished interest as Titian's spectators. In fact,
the longer you look at the two pictures the more
will you be struck by their extraordinary coincid-
ences. Even the pyramid or obelisk is alike in both :
it obviously plays some principal part in this domestic
drama.
Now, even without examining any earlier examples,
we can judge at once for ourselves, from comparison of
these two familiar works, what must be the primitive
and indispensable elements in a " Presentation in the
Temple." We can work back from them mentally to
earlier instances. In the first place, we may discard all
that is essentially and characteristically Venetian — the
splendour, the gorgeousness, the rich robes and mate-
rials, the noble mien of the men, the voluptuous faces
and figures of the women. We know that Tintoretto
has eagerly seized the opportunity for foreshortening an
arm, for displaying what he dared of a shoulder or a
bosom. We know that Titian has painted in a portrait
or two of the golden-haired ladies and grave, stately
gentlemen, whom, in his courtly way, he delighted to
honour. We may also ehminate the purely Venetian
supernumerary personages, with their occasional touch
of almost Flemish boldness or grotesqueness of con-
ception — the old woman with the eggs, the half-naked
beggars, the well-dressed crowd, the great dames who
lean over from their decorative balconies. All these
are the accessories which naturally spring up with less
268
PRESENTATION OF THE VIRGIN IN THE TEMPLE : Madonna dcir Or/o. J'c/ce. TINTORETTO
269
THE PRESENTATION
reverent periods of art in great commercial cities : you
find them at Venice in the full Renaissance, as you find
them at Antwerp, Bruges, and Brussels in the later
ages of Flemish art. They are wholly alien to the ab-
stract ideal and devotional spirit of Siena and Perugia.
So, too, we may get rid of the architecture of the time
— the Corinthian columns, the rounded arcades, the
stately porticoes, the parti-coloured marble, like that
which encrusts the Doge's Palace. These are special
Venetian touches of the sixteenth century : we must
peel them all ofl^, as it were, layer after layer, if we wish
to arrive at the original elements which go to compose
the groundwork of our subject.
The factors which we may feel sure belong of right
to the scene, which we may expect to find fairly con-
stant in earlier instances, are mainly as follows. In the
first place, the action takes place on the steps and plat-
form of the Temple at Jerusalem. The Madonna, a
peculiarly mature-looking child for her age — according
to the gospels she was only three years old — ascends
by herself the great flight of stairs that leads to the
upper landing. (This discrepancy of age, however, may
be explained by a passage in the gospel of the pseudo-
Matthew, where we are distinctly told, " when Mary
was three years old, she walked with so firm a step,
spoke so perfectly, and was so assiduous in the praises
of God, that all were astonished at her and marvelled ;
and she was not regarded as a httle child, but as an
adult of about thirty.") She lifts her dress, which is
invariably blue. Most commonly the staircase consists
271 M
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
of two sets of steps, with a central landing ; and at this
landing the Madonna is oftenest in the act of pausing.
Above stands the High Priest, in full canonicals, with
outstretched arms, to receive the novice ; attendants,
most frequently two in number, stand by to assist him.
Below we get St. Anna and St. Joachim, with the
mothers and children. These form the indispensable
elements of a " Presentation in the Temple " : spec-
tators, citizens, buildings, landscape and background
accessories are thrown in as may suit the taste and
fancy of the age, school, or painter.
Now let us verify this a priori conclusion by looking
back to Giotto's " Presentation " in the Madonna dell'
Arena at Padua — one of that epoch-making series of
the Life of the Virgin which has stood us so often in
good stead through our whole inquiry. We shall notice
first of all that the elements thus enumerated are every
one of them there, though cramped and confined — or,
if I may say so, foreshortened, metaphorically speaking,
into a narrow space — and symbolically rendered, where
Titian and Tintoretto render them naturalisticalty.
The Temple is there ; but it is a temple " all-told " — an
entire building, seen four-square, from roof to foundation,
not cut off by the frame as in Titian and Tintoretto.
The men of Giotto's time always demanded this formal
completeness, even at the risk of false perspective and
absurd proportions : if you had given them part only of
a building or a ship, they would have asked at once,
" But where are the mast and sails ? where are the roof
and the chimnevs ? " Our own children do the same to
272
PRESEXTATIOX OF 1 HK VIRGIN IX THE TEMPLE : Madonna dclf Arena, l'„J„a. GIOTT
273
THE PRESENTATION
this day : if they draw a house, they draw that house
complete and entire, from the ground to the coping-
stone, with a door in the centre, and a window on each
side, and three more above, and on top of all a couple
of chimneys, conscientiously smoking. Now the art of
Giotto's day was still half childish ; so we get just such
an abstract temple, with roof and portico a great deal
too small for the people to pass under. The scale
necessitated that. If you wanted a temple complete in
one number, yet desired to make your figures large
enough and relatively important enough to strike the
eye, there was no help for it— you must dwarf your
building and exaggerate your actors. Giotto faced this
dilemma frankly : he accepted the situation. He was
satisfied to make a merely symbolical or conventional
temple, and to keep his figures almost life-size in the
foreground.
In such a picture, therefore, we cannot expect the
sense of space, the aerial perspective, which we find on
great canvases like Titian's or Tintoretto's. We must
be satisfied with a purely suggestive or ideal treatment ;
we must accept Giotto's temple in the same spirit in
which Elizabethan playgoers accepted the notification
on the scene at the back, " This is a wood," or " This
is a palace." It suffices for Giotto that by such rude
means he has made you understand the purport of
the picture.
At the top of the steps stands the High Priest —
Giotto's usual High Priest, the selfsame personage
who, later in the series, officiates, unchanged, in the
275
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
" Marriage of the Virgin." Yet observe that already
the attitude of his hands is the attitude which we get
in the Titian and the Tintoretto. That action became
stereotyped at an early period : succeeding painters
might improve on its drawing, its spirit, its anatomy ;
but they dared not depart altogether from the "motive,"
the conventional treatment. Notice, too, that the steps
are seen from one side, as in the Titian ; the Temple
occupies the right-hand half of the picture ; St. Anna
and her friends are to the left, at the bottom. Observe,
also, that here you are left in no doubt at all as to
which of the personages is the Virgin's mother. In
the Titian you may have felt some slight hesitation on
that dubious point, but by the aid of the Giotto it is
instantly resolved for you. St. Anna is the dignified
lady with the falling head-dress, who stands erect in an
attentive attitude nearest to the very base of the stair-
case. Her dress is the same in all essentials for Titian
as for Giotto. Besides, the earlier painter conveniently
provides her with one of his ordinary solid-rayed haloes,
which stamps her saintship. You must be struck, at
the same time, with the way in which Giotto com-
presses and shortens the action, by throwing St. Anna,
the little Virgin, and the High Priest into close contact
with one another. Nor need you doubt which of the
men behind is really St. Joachim : his halo teUs you
that, even if his position had failed to do so. In the
Titian, I take St. Joachim to be the elderly man who
similarly stands just behind the Madonna, though I am
by no means sure of it. Note, also, the attendant with
276
THE PRESENTATION
the basket, by Joachim's side, in Giotto's picture (his
feet, by the way, are about as ill painted as anything I
can remember in the Tuscan master's handicraft). In
the Tintoretto the Joachim has disappeared altogether,
or is at least unrecognisable.
As to the other personages, they are there in most
admired Giottesque disorder. The holy women who
surround the High Priest are "the virgins of the
Lord " so frequently referred to in the apocryphal
gospels. The two men to the extreme right, recalling
figures at Assisi, are evidently the same two persons
who flank the Temple (as we shall see) in subsequent
pictures. The porticoes, the columns, are all there in
the germ ; the balconies are there : even the second
flight of steps, if I am not mistaken, is suggested in the
quaint staircase to the upper floor of the Temple. I do
not like to push a theory too far — but, do you see the
basket carried by the man beside St. Joachim ? No
doubt it contains the turtledoves for ofl^ering, and the
Virgin's apparel. But did it not also give Titian the
hint for the " celebrated old woman with the basket
of eggs," who occupies the foreground in his famous
" Presentation"?
Now, before we go on to consider other versions of
the subject, let us look for a moment in somewhat
closer detail at the groundwork of legend on which all
such pictures alike are ultimately founded. We shall
thus be able to judge to some extent how much was
necessary, and how much accidental or personal, in
each painter's treatment of the particular episode. The
277
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
basis of our story comes, for the most part, from two
distinct documentary sources — the Gospel of the Birth
of Mary, and the ProtevangeHon. The incidents in
the two, however, do not wholly tally. In the Book
of Mary we read that, " When three years " (from her
birth) " had expired, and the time of her weaning was
complete, Joachim and Anna brought the Virgin to
the Temple of the Lord, with offerings," in pursuance
of their vow to dedicate her to the service of religion.
" Now, there were round the Temple, according to the
fifteen psalms of degrees, fifteen steps to ascend."
Curiously enough, however, Giotto has only ten, and
Titian thirteen ; while Tintoretto, from whom one
would not have expected so great precision, has the
proper number. " For, the Temple being built against
a mountain," the narrative goes on, " the altar of burnt-
offering, which was without, could only be come near
Ijy stairs. So the parents of the blessed Virgin and
infant Mary put her upon one of these steps. But
while they were taking off their clothes in which they
had travelled, and, as custom wills, were putting on
some neater and cleaner ones, in the meantime the
Virgin of the Lord in such a manner went up all the
steps, one after another, without the help of any to lead
or lift her, tliat one would hence have judged she was
of perfect maturity. Thus did the Lord, in the infancy
of His Virgin, work this extraordinary deed, and show
by this miracle how great she was likely to become
hereafter." Thereupon Joachim and Anna left the
Virgin with the other maidens in the apartments of the
278
THE PRESENTATION
Temple till the time of the Sposalizio. In this version
of the tale, it will be observed, St. Joachim and St. Anna
are not present on the occasion of the Presentation.
The Protevangelion supplies us with an alternative
form of the story, which has been far more instru-
mental in directing the conceptions of painters than
the Book of Mary. According to that gospel, " When
the child was three years old, Joachim said. Let us
invite the daughters of the Hebrews who are undefiled,
and let them take each a lamp, and let the lamps be
lighted, that the child may not turn back again, and
her mind be set against the Temple of the Lord."
This episode of the lamps is rarely introduced into
pictures of the subject. " And they did thus till they
ascended into the Temple of the Lord. And the High
Priest received her, and blessed her, and said : Mary,
the Lord God hath magnified thy name to all genera-
tions, and to the very end of time by thee AviU the
Lord shew His redemption to the children of Israel.
And he placed her upon the third step of the altar.
And the Lord gave grace unto her, and she danced
with her feet, and all the house of Israel loved her."
From these two stories, as well as from hints in
the pseudo-Matthew, the artistic legend was for the
most part compounded. But other medieeval legends
naust also have grown up as accretions round these
earlier cores ; for in most " Presentations " of the four-
teenth and fifteenth centuries, I find other elements
present and almost constant, which must be due in
great part to the influence of more recent stories.
279
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
What those stories may be I will frankly confess I do
not know ; nor are they, strictly speaking, material to
our purpose. But it was the way of the Middle Ages
to connect the early life of personages who figure in
the gospel history with the incidents of the Prot-
evangelion and of the Book of the Infancy. I do not
doubt, therefore, that persons more versed than myself
in the evolution of legend could supply a name, both
here and elsewhere, to many accessory characters whom
I am unable to identify. My object is mainly to trace
the development of the subject as a theme in art, not
to account for legend or to explain symbolism.
With this proviso, I shall go on to consider two
very interesting and almost contemporary examples of
the " Presentation " by Giottesque painters, both of
which are to be found on the walls of chapels at Santa
Croce at Florence. I would advise those who can to
visit the originals on the spot and to compare them in
detail : for those who cannot do so, I hope our repro-
ductions will be found fairly sufficient. The earher
of the two, as I judge, is the one by Taddeo Gaddi :
I say the earlier, not because I have any reason to
know its exact date, but because it is earlier in type,
which amply suffices for our present purpose. The
slightly later one is now, I believe, attributed by those
who have a right to an opinion to Giovanni da 31ilano.
I give an illustration of each, and I hope the reader
will compare them for himself before I proceed
to dilate upon the details of their likenesses and
differences.
280
PRESENTATION OF THE VIRGIN IN THE TEMPLE : Santa Crocc, Florence. TADDEO GADDI
28 1
THE PRESENTATION
Note first, to begin with, the form and arrange-
ment of the Temple itself, already foreshadowed,
though vaguely, in Giotto's Paduan treatment. But
observe also that, while in Taddeo Gaddi the arches
are round, in Giovanni da Milano they are pointed.
Romanesque is in the act of giving place to Gothic.
With this slight exception, the details of the archi-
tecture in the two pictures are strikingly similar.
Observe, for example, the arch over the High Priest's
head, displaying to the left little circular windows.
Observe, again, the exact correspondence of the roof
and its various parts : the flying buttresses, pierced
with round arches ; the pillars and their capitals ; the
architectural enrichment in the selfsame places. Next,
observe the portico or loggia to the right of the picture,
with the Virgins of the Lord seen issuing from it to
welcome the Madonna. Note such close correspond-
ence of detail as the fact that through the first arch
of this portico we see three children's figures, with
heads closely crowded together in the selfsame atti-
tudes. The foremost of these children points in each
case with her right hand ; her left holds a book in
Taddeo Gaddi's version ; a guitar in that of Giovanni
da Milano. In either composition the second girl lays
her hand on her companion's shoulder. I will not
multiply the coincidences of this curious group : the
longer one looks at the figures which compose it, the
more strongly is one impressed by their close resem-
blance. It will be sufiScient to note here that Gaddi's
personages are slightly less numerous — in other words,
283
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
that Giovanni da Milano has added some elements to
his predecessor's picture, a point which may be further
observed in other portions of the composition, such as
the bending figure on the extreme left, and the groups
of children in the first-floor gallery.
As to the steps, they are here in both instances, in
accordance with the gospel — fifteen in number. Com-
parison of their arrangement is extremely instructive.
In each picture the first flight consists of five steps,
the details of whose arrangement and ornament are
closely coincident. Observe how in both cases the
fifth step runs round the corner. The second flight
also consists of five steps, which Taddeo (or rather his
inefficient restorer) arranged in somewhat doubtful
perspective, while Giovanni shows one how they ought
to have been represented. Observe on this second
flight the coincidence of the ornamentation at the
angles and round the corner. The third flight, with
its irregular corner ornament, should also be compared
by the student of the original picture. The longer
we look at the details of the architecture and the
perspective of the curiously open Temple, the more
are we impressed by the close nature of the resem-
blance. I may add that Taddeo Gaddi's steps of the
second flight appear to me to have been painted over
and muddled by a most incompetent hand. But here
I am travelling somewhat outside my province.
It would be impossible to take the vai'ious figures
of these two frescoes in detail at sufficient length for
complete treatment. I will only note a few salient
284.
PRESENTATION^ OF THE VIRGIN IN THE TEMPLE: Santa Crocc, Florence.
GIOVANNI DA MILANO
=S5
THE PRESENTATION
features. To the extreme right in both stand two
tall grave men, who were already present in Giotto's
picture : I do not doubt, therefore, that they are
identifiable as characters in the received legend. But
I cannot name them. As a matter of artistic evolu-
tion, however, it is interesting to note that their
position is constant at the right-hand side of the com-
position, as is also the relation of their heads to the
parapet behind them, alike in Giotto and in his two
followers. One of them points with his hand in two
cases out of the three. In every instance they appear
to me to be sinister personages. Close in front of
them are two kneeling women, Avhose veils and head-
dresses proclaim them to be distinct conventional
characters, whom, however, I cannot identify. They
are not present in the Giotto at Padua, but they
occupy precisely the same positions in the Taddeo and
the Giovanni, as well as in many other Giottesque
" Presentations." Minute comparison of point by point
in this extreme right-hand corner of the two works
will reveal various minor unexpected coincidences in
the inost minute particulars.
In Taddeo Gaddi's work, a child is in the very act
of ascending the lowest step of the staircase. I do not
know who this child may be, and, indeed, I have pur-
posely taken no pains to identify her, because 1 think
the pictorial evidence alone is almost more interesting
than any legendary addition could easily make it. It
is clear that this child has some close connection with
the veiled figure among the kneeling women. This
287
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
connection Taddeo failed to accentuate ; Giovanni,
therefore, has more clearly brought it out by represent-
ing the child in the very act of receiving a book from
the hands of her mother. In this, as in other details, I
am sure comparison of the two pictures will show that
Giovanni when he painted his " Presentation " had
Taddeo's picture in the neighbouring chapel of the
same church continually in his mind, or, at least, was
copying some other variant of the same model essen-
tially similar, and that he deliberately endeavoured to
improve on certain features which seemed to him
unsatisfactory in his predecessor's treatment.
To the left of this single child are two other children
— a boy and a girl — so closely united that they are
evidently meant for brother and sister. These also are
no doubt individualised by legends unknown to me.
They do not occur in the Giotto at Padua, but they
are frequent in " Presentations " of the later Giottesque
period. The leaning figure who accompanies them in
Taddeo's work is not represented in Giovanni's, but is
foreshadowed, I believe, by the leaning attendant with
the basket on his back in the Paduan fresco.
As for the little Madonna herself, she stands, in
both works, on the top step of the first flight. In her
attitude, Giovanni has gone back to Giotto's model.
St. Joachim and St. Anna occupy, as usual, the extreme
left of the picture : this position for the pair is constant.
It is worth while to note, however, that Taddeo makes
Joachim stand a little in advance of Anna, while Gio-
vanni returns to the precedent set by Giotto. Observe
288
THE PRESENTATION
also the dress in each case, which is similar and typical :
St. Joachim's robe cut low in the neck ; St. Anna with
a curious nun-like hood and wimple. These persist till
the days of Leonardo and Raphael.
There still remains to describe the High Priest, with
the group around him. These figures also are largely
constant. Observe the High Priest's dress and hair and
beard, as also the old man to the spectator's left of him.
Only, as usual, Giovanni has somewhat increased the
number of personages in his composition. Note, in
particular, in Taddeo's picture, the dignified character
who sits in a sort of private box, on the left, by himself
(a portion of which box, I believe, has been damaged
and badly repainted). This is the same chai-acter, I
feel sure, as the personage to the extreme left of the
High Priest's group in Giovanni's picture. I don't
know who he is, but I am sure there must be a legend
about him. Giovanni placed him in the High Priest's
group, I imagine, because he was dissatisfied with
Taddeo's perspective, yet hardly saw how he could
much improve upon it. I am tolerably certain that
the same character appears in the Giotto, intermediate
between the heads of Joachim and Anna.
One word more as to sundry small differences.
Giovanni's picture has the Temple completed in the
upper right-hand corner by a tower or campanile,
suggested, I take it, by Giotto's at Florence. No trace
of this tower appears in Taddeo's picture, though I do
not feel sure it may not once have existed and been
painted over. But in all these matters I speak with
289
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
that diffidence which becomes a person inexpert in the
technique of connoisseurship. On the other hand the
Taddeo has, to the left, above the Joachim and Anna,
a second portico, out of which a lad is apparently peep-
ing. It seems to me possible that a similar portico
once existed in Giovanni's work, where the correspond-
ing part of the fresco has evidently been damaged.
But perhaps the analogous portion in his composition
may be the gallery over the High Priest's head, where
lads are similarly looking down upon the Virgin. In
both compositions, a large number of the characters
are pointing with their hands towards the figure of the
little Madonna.
And now I think no one can look back at the Titian
or the Tintoretto without being struck by the new light
cast on their origin and meaning by these earlier pic-
tures. The porticoes, the accessory personages, the
mothers, the children, the steps, the architecture, all
are foreshadowed in the Giottesque paintings, and all
are accounted for by the apocryphal legends. As an
intermediate Florentine stage, however, which largely
explains the growth of the subject, I would direct the
attention of students to Ghirlandajo's work in the choir
of Santa Maria Novella at Florence. Here, of course,
we have the usual luxuriance of Ghirlandajo's elaborate
and florid architecture. We have also his accustomed
introduction of contemporary portraits by way of spec-
tators. The work, as a work of art, breathes the
fullest spirit of the middle Renaissance. But still, the
composition is for the most part vaguely reminiscent
290
THE PRESENTATION
of the Giottesque model, with which, of course, it is
directly connected by many successive intermediate
stages. I will call attention to a very few details. In
the foreground on the right are the two bearded figures
with which we are ah-eady familiar ; but beside them
sits a semi-nude beggar, who foreshadows the lazzaroni
so conspicuous in Tintoretto's treatment. The steps,
if carefully counted, are just fifteen ; but the High
Priest stands on a landing at the tenth, while the
Virgin — as usual, a remarkably well-grown child for
three years old — occupies the fifth, after Taddeo Gaddi's
example. Observe, again, the persistence in the shape
of the mitre. Behind the High Priest, the Virgins
of the Lord, now reduced to three, come forth to
welcome tlieir new companion. They occupy even
here the selfsame place in the composition as in earlier
pictures. The children at the foot of the steps are
similarly reduced to two ; they are both boys, but
embrace one another, as in Giovanni's picture. The
positions of St. Joachim and St. Anna rather resemble
Taddeo's type, though the hands recall Giovanni's
arrangement. The figures to the extreme left are
mere complimentary contemporary portraits. But
notice how St. Anna may always be distinguished
in fourteenth and fifteenth century work by her
hood and wimple. Even her homely features for
the most part persist, in Florentine representations
at least, with considerable constancy. I cannot answer
for Sienese or Venetian treatment.
Whoever conscientiously follows this subject in
293
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
detail through an ItaUan tour will admit, I think,
that it is impossible rightly to understand such later
works as the Titian or the Tintoretto without at least
some historical knowledge of previous attempts at
similar compositions. The earlier pictures explain
and supplement the later. I may add that the more
of such pictures we compare, the more do we under-
stand each detail in all of them. I am only able here
to select for illustration a few typical examples out
of many which at various times have come under
my notice. The student who makes his own col-
lection of illustrative photographs will constantly be
able to fill in lacunae in these remarks, and no doubt
to convict me of occasional misapprehension.
294
VIII
THE PIETA
The subject which I have reserved for this chapter
differs in many respects from all its predecessors. It
is on that account, indeed, that I have decided to
include it, with some hesitation, among the themes
here selected for separate treatment. In all our
previous subjects the various pictures have been more
or less noticeable for their uniformity and similarity ;
while the themes themselves have been marked by
definiteness of aim and distinctness from one another.
Works in each series were instantly recognisable as
varieties of a species. But I choose the Pieta as a
text because it introduces us to quite a new type
of subject — the sort of subject where a moderate
amount of variety prevails, where convention did
not early harden doAvn into fixity of composition
or crystallise into rigid forms. A certain plasticity
of imagination was permitted from the beginning ;
a certain indefiniteness of nomenclature and scope
remained habitual to the end. It exemplifies, so
to speak, the nebulous condition. I shall also show,
as I go on, that this subject admirably illustrates
sundry curious differentiating tendencies of the Tuscan
295 N
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
as opposed to the Venetian or Lombard mind ; and that
it is hkewise well adapted for tracing some strange
peculiarities in the development of art during the later
Renaissance. On all these accounts it deserves recog-
nition in this brief introduction to a vast and interest-
ing field of evolutionary study.
In the first place, I will begin by pointing out that
the boundaries of the genus Pieta (if I may be allowed
that frank biological metaphor) are far less clearly de-
fined than the boundaries which mark off a " Sposalizio,"
an "Annunciation," or an "Adoration of the Magi." In
all these cases we know exactly what sort of picture to
expect, what episodes are sure to be represented by the
artist, what characters, what accessories, what back-
grounds should be introduced. But the Pieta is a name
very loosely applied to the touching group of the Mater
Dolorosa weeping over the body of the dead Saviour.
In its purest form it need embrace, I think, only these
two personages, with or without attendant angels ;
though it is often extended to include, besides, St.
.John and the Magdalen, with Joseph of Arimathea
and other saints ; while the word is sometimes even
used to designate a figure of the dead Christ, supported
by two or more angelic guardians, without the intro-
duction of the Madonna at all — though this last-
mentioned usage I take to be a misnomer. Thus
the student who wishes to observe and follow out
this subject must carefully distinguish between the
different but ill-marked types in which we find the
Mater Dolorosa and the Cristo JMorto alone, the
296
THE PIETA
Mater Dolorosa with the saints of the Crucifixion,
and the Mater Dolorosa attended by pitying angels,
as well as those in which we see the angels alone
supporting the body of the dead Saviour.
From one point of view, again, the Pieta must
be considered in relation to the Stations of the
Cross, which are oftenest fourteen, but sometimes
fifteen, and sometimes only eleven. In this connec-
tion it forms a single scene in a great sacred drama,
whose parts, however, did not so completely settle
down into invariable forms as did some other sub-
jects of artistic treatment. The Stations of the Cross
circle, of course, round the Crucifixion as centre ; but
many additional or generahsed scenes, such as the
Way to Calvary, the Return from Calvary, and so
forth, are commonly recognised. In general art, apart
from the series of Stations complete, the most frequent
of these scenes or moments are the Ecce Homo, the
Mater Dolorosa, the Descent from the Cross, the
Pieta, the Entombment ; Avhile of subsequent epi-
sodes from the Gospel history the most frequent are
the Maries at the Sepulchre, the Eesurrection, the
Ascension, the Noli Me Tangere, the Doubts of
Thomas, the Disciples at Emmaus, and the Day of
Pentecost. I place these subjects quite intentionally
in unchronological order, because I am dealing with
them here simply as themes for pictures, and re-
garding them therefore rather in their artistic than
in their historical or rehgious connection. I should
also add that I am thinking of them only as isolated
297
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
works, from the point of view of the visitor to
churches and galleries, not as parts of a continuous
series, from the point of view of a pilgrim at a calvary
or sanctuary.
Again, the particular set of works to which I
desire here to call attention are those which, like
the Pieta, deal with the person of the dead Saviour.
These are the Deposition or Descent from the Cross,
the Entombment, and the simpler subject often de-
scribed in Itahan parlance as the Cristo Morto. They
are motives which, in the earlier devotional paintings,
were treated as sacred and affecting themes, intended
to rouse the pity and reverence of the spectator, but
which became, to the scientific artists of the Renais-
sance, mere bravado opportunities for the display of
anatomical knowledge and often of obtrusively pro-
minent and unpleasant realism. The later painters,
indeed, were sometimes even betrayed by their scien-
tific ardour into gratifying the most morbid and
unwholesome tastes, where earlier artists had only
sought to rouse the ardent devotion and religious
feeling of their contemporaries.
Giotto's "Pieta" or " Entombment " (for it is called
indiscriminately by either name), in the IMadonna dell'
Arena at Padua — the touching figures of which I re-
produce here — forms an excellent example of the
earlier and purely sacred treatment of such difficult
themes. In it there is little or no insistence on the
various painful phenomena of death, viewed as a
physical fact ; no deliberate and careful painting of an
298
PIETA : Jt/a,/oni;a dcW Arena, Padua.
299
THE PIETA
actual corpse ; no gloating over the ideas of rigidity
and decomposition. The form of the dead Saviour
does not even occupy quite the foreground of the
fresco. Giotto, with perfect and beautiful instinctive
tact, has thrown between the central portion of the
body and the spectator's eye the bent figure of one
of the Maries, who thus veils and conceals the dead
limbs of the Redeemer. Another of the mourning
women holds His shoulders on her lap, and clasps
His neck with her arms ; a second supports His
drooping head ; a third lifts His hands in her own,
and so prevents the white and lifeless arms from
falling limp and listless. There is exquisite though
naive art in every one of these actions. The grouping
and composition of the four principal figures with the
corpse they tend is in its way supreme and perfect.
At the feet of the dead Christ sits the weeping
Magdalen, conspicuous, as always, by means of the
long and waving hair with which she had wiped the
feet of the living Saviour. Behind them all the Mater
Dolorosa stands with clasped hands in a singularly
natural attitude of unspeakable grief (often imitated
afterwards), her very draperies seeming to suggest
profound emotion, while her face is most unutterably
touching and pathetic. Balancing her on the right,
we see the beautiful and eloquent figure of St. John,
with his arms outspread in an agony of despair and
shattered affection, as who should say, " Let me go
— me too ; I must surely follow Him ! " Just at
first sight, to many people, this last pose seems over-
301
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
done ; it strikes them as theatrical. But the longer
one looks at it, the more is one impressed by it ;
and on every successive visit to the spot the feeling
of satisfaction and sympathy deepens. Farther to
the right are Joseph of Arimathea and another saint
(perhaps Nicodemus), in comparatively calm and self-
contained contemplation.
As a whole, this is the finest flower of Giotto's
pictorial achievement. He never before or after
painted anything so consummate. We can well for-
give him the ill-drawn feet of the saint to the extreme
right, and the quaint expressions of the funny Uttle
mourning angels overhead, when we look at the
stricken figures of the bereaved Madonna and the
distracted Magdalen. And we have only to examine
this glorious fresco with the most casual glance in
order to see that Giotto was not thinking of how best
to paint "the dead nude," but of how best to represent
the pathos and tenderness of that supreme scene in
religious history, as he himself envisaged it. It was
the impression to be produced on the spectator that
engaged his mind, not the pallor of the crucified
corpse, or the listless rigidity of the outstretched arms
supported by the Maries. In the scientific art of the
late Renaissance we too often forget the profound
feeling of the scene in our pervading consciousness of
the fact that the body has been elaborately and con-
scientiously studied in the dissecting-room of a hospi-
tal. Giotto troubles us with none of all that : he is
thinking far too much of the Madonna's grief to be
302
DESCENT FROM THE CROSS : .-fca./Vmj, /?/,»
FRA ANGELICO
THE PIETA
occupied with the startUng and painful reaUsm of the
anatomy class or the mortuary. His dead Christ,
indeed, is hardly more than suggested.
Fra Angelico's exquisite and saintly " Descent from
the Cross," in the Belle Arti at Florence, shows us in
even a finer and purer form the results of this early
devotional handling. Nothing that the ecstatic friar
ever painted (outside fresco) breathes such an air of
ineffable and unapproachable holiness as this beautiful
work. In the centre St. John and the other saints
are removing from the cross, with reverent hands, the
lifeless body of the Saviour. The Magdalen, on her
knees before it, is kissing the pierced feet with pas-
sionate grief as the disciples lower them. Near by
stand the Madonna, St. Veronica, the Maries ; to the
right, a believer, with a face of deep pity, holds the
crown of thorns, and displays pathetically the three
big nails which had long been conventional. As a
whole, this picture rouses in the spectator's mind the
profoundest feelings of sympathy and devotion. No
rehgious painting is more successful in exciting the
ideas for which religious paintings primarily exist.
One feels, as one looks at it, that it is good to be
here. Fra Angelico's art, besides being beautiful in
itself, has also what modern criticism would doubtless
call the extrinsic merit of purifying the soul by pity
and sympathy. But to Fra Angelico himself that
aim was the first one. " Art for art's sake " would
have been to his ear a ridiculous paradox.
The later Tuscan painters, however, developed along
305
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
lines very different from those of their primitive pre-
decessors. In order fully to understand this later
development, we must take into consideration some
peculiar characteristics of the Tuscan temperament.
From the very beginning the inhabitants of Tuscany
— call them ancient Etruscans or modern Florentines —
have always been remarkable for a certain strangely
gloomy and morbid twist of sentiment and disposition.
Their fancy runs always to pain and torture, to the
ghastly, to the horrible. Whoever has visited the
ancient Etruscan tombs at Corneto and Volterra, or
the museums of ancient Etruscan monuments in
Florence, Rome, and other Italian cities, must have
been struck by the prevalence of demons and torments,
of hissing snakes, hideous shapes, chimseras, and
Typhous. Hells and devils run riot in them. This
gloomy and morose Etruscan temperament gave colour
in like manner to the early Christian art of Tuscany.
The demons and gorgons of ancient Etruscan art pass
into grotesquely hideous devils of Christian frescoes,
like those which Spinello Aretino depicted on a church
wall at Arezzo, with traits so awesome that (accord-
ing to a false but illustrative tradition) they appeared
to him in his dreams, and killed the very artist
who invented them with remorseful terror. Dante's
" Inferno " is the magnificent and sublime poetical
outcome of this truly Tuscan love for the appalling
and the painful. The " Hell " in Santa Maria Novella ;
the seething flames and grinning demons in the Campo
Santo at Pisa ; the open-jawed dragon or personal
306
THE PIETA
Hades of the " Last Judgment," on the walls of a
hundred Tuscan churches, — these are the pictorial em-
bodiments of the selfsame spirit. The Etruscan artist
dwells upon St. Sebastian, pierced through with arrows,
as in PoUajuolo's masterpiece in the National Gallery ;
he reminds one at every turn of Swinburne's vigorous
lines, —
" Oh lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and of rods !
Oh ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted gods ! "
Of course I do not mean that Martyrdoms, Cruci-
fixions, Infernos, Entombments are unknown elsewhere
than in Tuscany : they are of the very essence of
mediaeval Christianity. One finds them everywhere.
But what I do mean is, that they are more frequent,
more realistic, more detailed, in Tuscany and in the
Etruscan region than elsewhere. This is especially
true of the most Tuscan Tuscany, that which centres
round Florence. The prevailing keynote of the
Umbrian and Sienese school, where Etruscanism was
weaker, is rather ecstatic bliss, and rapt contemplation
of heavenly joys, than ascetic severity or delight in
torture. The majority of the pictures in the Pina-
coteca at Perugia, for example, seem to move, for the
most part, in a high plane of devotional joy and trans-
port, especially observable in Buonfigli and Fiorenzo di
Lorenzo. Often enough there is a heavenly and an
earthly sphere in each picture — ^a Perugian trait which
Raphael carried away with him to the production at
Rome of the so-called " Disputa " in the Vatican, really
309
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
an assemblage of the Church militant and triumphant,
the Church on earth and the Church in glory. Etruscan
as these Sienese and Umbrians were mainly by descent,
they yet retained among their isolated mountain heights
less taint of this primitive Etruscan delight in blood
and wounds, in death and torture, than did the refined
and cultivated dwellers in the Arno vaUey. But at
Florence a certain echo of the gladiatorial pleasure in
human suffering seems to have lingered on all through
the Middle Ages. Whoever looks at the endless martyr-
doms in the Uffizi and the Pitti must be struck with
this fact. Indeed, the details of blood and torture in
Florentine pictures produce such an unpleasant effect
on many sensitive women that some of them find
certain rooms in the galleries at Florence almost closed
books for them.
Nor do I say that Venetian and Lombard painters
do not equally represent subjects of death and martyr-
dom. Still, they do so for the most part with a certain
subtle difference. Etrurian blood was common in the
Po valley. But the Venetians at least see even their
martyrdoms through a glorifying and softening haze of
Venetian magnificence. The Christian sufferers almost
seem as if they liked it. Take as a fine example Paolo
Veronese's noble St. Sebastian, in the church of that
name at Venice. Compare, again, the cheerful way in
which Carpaccio despatches St. Ursula and her 11,000
Virgins, in the graceful picture in the Venice Academy,
with such a work as Botticelli's " Calumny " ; or, again,
contrast the spirit of Paolo Veronese's " Martyrdom of
310
THE PIETA
St. Giustina," at the Uffizi, with the Florentine martyr-
doms in the rooms around it. The Venetian is always
intent on the picturesqueness and splendour and beauty
of the scene ; the Tuscan dwells rather on its pain and
horror.
In the earlier period, once more, this tendency to
dwell upon death and torment is largely restrained by
the reverential and devotional feelings of the painters.
As time went on, however, and art grew more self-
conscious, the desire for anatomical accuracy and for
realism in representation sent the great Tuscan and
Paduan artists to study in the dissecting room, and
gave them a further taste for these morbid aspects
of nature. They began to paint the dead Christ
from bodies in the mortuary ; to study mangled saints
from the accident wards and lazar-houses. A most
unpleasant example of the results of this tendency
may be seen in the extremely painful " Cristo Morto,"
by Mantegna, in the Brera at Milan. This very un-
happy Pieta is a triumph of what I will venture to
describe as dead-house realism. It represents a corpse,
boldly and admirably foreshortened, but in an advanced
stage of rigor mortis, studied from nature with sur-
prising accuracy, and appalling in its resemblance to
its loathsome original. No emotion of reverence, of
religious awe, or of human pity is excited by looking
at it ; the sole impression we receive is one of disgust
and repulsion, mingled with an unwilling and grudg-
ing recognition of the painter's supreme mastery of
light and shade, of anatomical and perspective science.
311
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
The faces of the Maries are equally unpleasant, and
for a similar reason ; their eyes are swollen and red
with crying ; their expressions are those of too agonised
grief; their whole effect is spoiled for us by an exces-
sive realism. I know no picture that more completely
exhibits the difference in this respect between the
earlier devotional and the later scientific and artistic
ideal. Even the noble " Crucifixion " by Mantegna, in
the Louvre, where the foreground figures are mag-
nificent in their stateliness, is not wholly free from
a similar taint in the dead Saviour and the thieves
who accompany Him.
Our own National Gallery contains not a few
works which excellently illustrate this phase of artistic
evolution. Its two chief Pietks are by Michael Angelo
(Room I., No. 790) and by Francia. Of these the
Michael Angelo is highly representative of later Re-
naissance feeling. Though unfinished, and in many
ways unattractive, it is considered by Richter a genuine
work of the mighty master. But it is characteristic of
Michael Angelo that what we notice in it most is
not the features of the Maries, nor the sentiment of
the work, but the rendering of the corpse in all its
flaccid limbs and muscles. It is a study of a dead
body. Hence it is not in the least attractive to the
ordinary spectator. Our other Michael Angelo — ^the
" Holy Family " — includes at least two figures of
youthful angels which, authentic or not, are undeni-
ably beautiful ; but this Pieta contains, from the point
of view of the great public, nothing save a ghastly
312
ENTOMBMENT: National Gallery, London.
MICHAEL ANGELO
THE PIETA
rendering of a sculpturesque corpse, thrown into an
attitude whose chief merit lies in the difficulty of
painting it. One can see that Michael Angelo had
learnt his anatomy from the dead body direct, and
took pride in showing how closely he had studied it.
In short, this picture is in essence not a Pieta at all —
not a devotional picture — but a design from the dead
nude, and an exercise in foreshortening.
The other Pieta, by Francia (Room V., No. 180),
admirably represents the spirit of the Ferrarese school
at its best and highest. It is, indeed, one of the most
satisfactory works, in its way, in our national collec-
tion — I mean, we have in it a splendid and consum-
mate specimen of the master it illustrates. Originally
this fine work formed the lunette on the top of the
large adjoining altar-piece representing the Virgin and
Child enthroned with St. Lawrence and St. Romualdo.
The necessity of shape thus imposed upon Francia
naturally conditions and circumscribes its forms ; and
I may here remark, in passing, that a comparison of
the few lunette pictures in the National Gallery may
supply the student of evolution with certain other
interesting and luminous suggestions as to the art of
composition, which I leave to be filled in by his own
ingenuity. This particular work of the great Bolognese
master is, in the strictest sense of the term, a Pieta —
that is to say, it comprises only the figures of the
Madonna and the dead Christ, with attendant angels.
In spite of a certain incipient Bolognese sentimental-
ism, its tone is largely that of the earlier painters.
315
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
" The artist has filled his picture," says Mr. E. T. Cook,
in his admirable handbook, " with that solemn reveren-
tial pity, harmonised by love, which befits his subject.
The body of Christ — utterly dead, yet not distorted
nor defaced by death — is that of a tired man whose
great soul would not let Him rest while there was
still His Father's work to do on earth. In the face
of the angel at His head there is a look of quiet
joy . . . in the attitude and expression of the angel
at the feet there is prayerful sympathy for the sorrow-
ing mother. The face of the mother herself, which
before " [in the altar-piece] " was pure and calm, is
now tear-stained and sad, because her Son has met
so cruel a death.
"'What else in life seems piteous any more
After such pity ? '
Yet it bears a look of content because the world has
known Him. She rests His body tenderly on her knee
as she did when He was a little child." On the whole,
in spite of some strained emotion, no more beautiful
Pietk occurs in Italian art after the age of Fra Angelico.
Though it may seem a digression, I will venture
to call attention at this point of our exposition to one
or two other pictures in the National Gallery which
illustrate various successive phases in the later love
of torture and death, especially in Tuscany. I have
already alluded to the great but distasteful Pollajuolo
(Room I., No. 292) of the "Martyrdom of St. Sebas-
tian," which hangs in the same room with the Michael
316
THE PIETA
Angelo, interesting because PoUajuolo was the first
close student of that artistic anatomy afterwards so
highly developed by Leonardo and Mantegna. He
painted, above all, the writhing body. Not far from
it may be seen Ridolfo Ghirlandajo's " Procession to
Calvary" (Room I., No. 1143), where the grief of the
Maries and the suffering of the Christ, who bears His
cross, are depicted with vulgar force and curious anima-
tion in most unsympathetic and brilliant colouring.
The work, if genuine, is wholly unworthy of the skil-
ful hand that painted the noble and beautiful " San
Zenobio" in the Uffizi at Florence. Compare with
these two Tuscan pictures the agonised writhings in
Castagno's "Crucifixion" (Room II,, No. 1138), side
by side with the earlier and purely Etruscan ghastli-
ness of the " Christ on the Cross," in which Segna di
Buonaventura displays the uglier phase of the primitive
Sienese artists (Room II., No. 567). How different
they both are again from the mere polite sentimental-
ism of Correggio's " Ecce Homo" (Room IV., No.
76), and the theatrical prettiness of his "Agony in
the Garden." Go straight from these mannered and
insipid works to the intense pietism of the " Cruci-
fixion," by Niccolo Alunno (Room VI., No. 1107),
where wild efforts are made after the expression of
grief which remind us almost of early German painters ;
and observe how this intenser Umbrian spirit prevails
even in later and weaker types like Lo Spagna's
"Agony" (Room VI., No. 1032). By contrast with
these, turn once more to the studied Venetian dainti-
319
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
ness of Giovanni Bellini's " Death of St. Peter Martyr,"
which is as little of a martyrdom from the Tuscan
standpoint as one can well imagine. True, a soldier
in the foreground is placidly engaged in murdering
without malice the unruffled saint ; but, with true
Venetian spirit, Bellini (or his follower) has troubled
himself little about the blood or the wound ; he is
much more interested in the foliage of the wood and
the delicious landscape, the feather in the inoffensive
assassin's helmet, and the bystanders, Avho take no
notice at all of this picturesque though somewhat
startling episode. No dwelling on throes and torments
here : 'tis a most peaceful murder. To a Tuscan, a
martyrdom is an opportunity for pangs and agonies ;
to a Venetian, it is merely an accidental occasion for
pretty background or for voluptuous display of copious
female charms in a St. Catherine or a St. Agatha.
As an example of the last vapid stage in the
decline of Tuscan art in the sixteenth century I would
instance the uninteresting " Cristo Morto," by Bron-
zino, in the Uffizi at Florence. Bronzino is the painter
of that astonishingly unpleasant and ugly Venus in the
National Gallery (Room I., No. 651), known as "An
Allegory," or " All is Vanity " — probably the vulgarest
and emptiest piece of Italian work in our collection.
He is also responsible for the false and flashy " Descent
into Hell," in the Scuola Toscana room at the Uffizi —
a picture more offensive in its hateful and prurient
treatment of the nude than any other work one can
easily recall. The nakedness of his nudes is their one
320
CHKISTU MORTO: L'jflzi GalUiy. /■■/, )v«,v
KRiiNZIXO
THE PIETA
salient characteristic. In this " Cristo Morto," how-
ever, even Bronzino is at his worst ; for he shows us
how pecuharly discordant is this commonplace and
catchpenny style of art when applied to a subject
usually regarded as one of the deepest solemnity and
the highest pathos. He has but to touch the Pieta,
and straightway he degrades it — degrades it below the
level of even the modern illustrated religious book,
sinking to depths of vulgarity and false histrionic
sentiment which the Florentine of his day alone would
ever have tolerated. Whoever can admire such work
as Bronzino's shows himself thereby psychologically
incapable of ever entering into the inmost soul of Lippi
and Botticelli, of Giotto and Fra Angelico.
If there is one figure worse than another in this
egregious piece of bad academy art masquerading
in the guise of a rehgious picture, it is the person-
age on the left — St. John, I suppose, though what
Bronzino called him is quite unimportant — a senti-
mental, theatrical, unmeaning figure, about as con-
scious of the scene in which he bears a part as if
he were rehearsing it for a melodramatic repre-
sentation. And that is, in fact, pretty much what
he is doing ; for to Bronzino a subject like the Pieta
envisaged itself essentially as a tableau vivant — a
set composition of models, whom you chose, for
the most part, for their arms and necks, and whom
you arranged for effect in what you took to be a
pretty and striking attitude. Almost equally offensive
are the underbred airs and graces of the Magdalen
323 o
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
on the right — I suppose she is the Magdalen — with
her affected hand in its absurd pose, and her pre-
tence at a kiss, which would be an insult to a
corpse if really so given. It is difficult to say what
makes the vast gulf between affectation hke this
and affectation like Perugino's ; but a vast gulf there
is, and we feel it instinctively. The one is naive,
simple, harmless, virginal ; the other is conscious,
obtrusive, meretricious, annoying. As to Bronzino's
colour, that is always poverty - stricken, nowhere
more so than in the faded National Gallery picture.
I instance this work only as showing the final con-
demnation into which Florentine art fell in its later
period.
The Pitti Palace contains at least three great
pictures, more or less capable of being classed among
Pietks, and well worthy of comparison from our
present standpoint. The most interesting is a really
touching Perugino — in some respects his finest work
— with far more emotion and earnestness in its
treatment than is usual with that most placid and
disconnected of Umbrian masters. The other two
are by Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto ;
they should be studied side by side, as examples of
the purely pictorial composition and arrangement
for effect of the later Renaissance, so different from
the conventional proprieties and sacred symbolism
of the Giottesque period.
324
IX
THAT GREAT PAINTER, IGNOTO
Next to "the poet Anon" the painter Ignoto has
surely deserved best of humanity after the picked
immortals. His works, in a surprising variety of
styles, are to be found scattered through every
gallery of Europe ; and though every now and then
one of them is claimed and vindicated for some
mightier name, yet " Pictor Ignotus " has master-
pieces enough still placed to his credit to deserve
an ideal statue in Venice or Florence. In the
first place, I am going to introduce you to one
of his very minor performances — a dainty little St.
Catherine in the National Gallery (Room VI., No.
646), there set down with official vagueness to the
" Umbrian School " without further ascription. No-
body could call this a great or remarkable painting,
though it has merits of its own as to tenderness of
feeling and delicacy of colour : but it is interesting
in its way as a local rendering of a theme which
can be better followed out than any other perhaps
within the walls of our British collection.
The St. Catherine forms one of a pendent pair
of devotional pictures, originally, I take it, com-
325
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
panion panels arranged in a triptych on either side
of an Enthroned Madonna. The other picture of
the pair is the graceful St. Ursula which hangs close
by it ; together they represent two virgin martyrs,
the princesses of the Church — one Southern and
Egyptian, St. Catherine of Alexandria ; one Northern
and British, St. Ursula of Cologne, the reputed
daughter of a petty king in some English princi-
pality. I gather, therefore, that the original com-
pound altar-piece, composed of a Madonna and Child,
with two saintly princesses, was either offered as a
votive picture or commissioned for her own private
chapel by some Italian lady of rank in Umbria,
most likely the daughter of a Duke of Urbino.
In either picture the saint is accompanied by an
attendant angel, and is sufficiently designated by
her appropriate symbol, the palm as martyr being
common to both, while the distinctive mark of the
Catherine wheel denotes St. Catherine, as the em-
blematic arrow tells us at once that her companion
is the arrow-smitten St. Ursula.
Let us look for a little at this placid and con-
templative saint, a most typical Catherine ; and then
let us ask ourselves how much of her is due to
original convention, common to all schools, and how
much to Umbria or our own special Ignoto.
No sacred type is more fixed and more constant
in early Italian art than the type of St. Catherine.
If you wish to see how constant are the form and
features of the Alexandrian princess, you need only
326
THAT GREAT PAINTER, IGNOTO
go into the adjacent Lombard Room (see p. 196),
where I would ask you to look at the beautiful and
touching figure on the extreme left in Borgognone's
exquisite altar-piece of the Madonna Enthroned with
the two St. Catherines — those, I mean, of Alex-
andria and Siena. Borgognone's far loveher and
tenderer picture — to my mind one of the chief gems
of our national collection — was painted, no doubt,
at the Certosa di Pavia, far away from the hard blue
hills and castled crags of Umbria. But in both alike
you get the same general type of the saintly princess
— soft, delicate, thoughtful, her rich golden hair
covering her shoulder in the same flowing fashion,
in unequal lengths, and held back from her high
and ample forehead by a royal diadem. As the
philosophic virgin martyr of the early Church, she
is always represented by a fair and intellectual
maiden ; while her exalted rank permits the ex-
uberant fancy of the painter to run riot in decoration
on her regal robes. Here, in the handicraft of our
unknown Umbrian master, she wears a wide-sleeved
tunic of some bright green stuff, richly embroidered
with a hem of gleaming gold thread, and daintily
jewelled with Oriental magnificence on the square-
cut edge of the delicate bodice. Over this royal
robe is flung at the shoulders a darker crimson
mantle. The colour scheme throughout is extremely
bright, almost verging on crudity ; but it is re-
deemed by the brilliancy and purity of its tints,
which make it on the whole effective and pleasing.
329
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
By the virgin martyr's side stand her famihar
emblems, one or both of which you can discover for
yourself, if you please, in more than twenty Italian
pictures of all schools and ages, scattered up and
down through the rooms of the gallery. With her
left hand she grasps the wheel, set with huge sharp
spikes, which was the instrument of her torture ; in
her right she holds the sword with which she suffered
at last her final and definitive martyrdom ; after which
her body was conveyed by angels to a sarcophagus
on Mount Sinai, as everybody has seen in the exquisite
and touching fresco by Luini, now in the Brera at
Milan. In many pictures, however, the wheel is
shown, not whole, but broken into fragments ; because
it was so destroyed by an angel to terrify the execu-
tioners. Several other St. Catherines in the National
Gallery, in fact — as for example, the Borgognone
and the Carlo Crivelli (Room VIII., No. 724) — give
one examples of the wheel, with its cruel curved
spikes, of the selfsame pattern as in our nameless
Umbrian ; but the best known of all, the famous
Raphael from the Aldobrandini Collection, has the
spikes softened down to mere meaningless knobs,
which have hardly even a symbolical and rather vague
significance. Altogether, indeed, Raphael's treatment,
though pictorially noble and beautiful, is ecclesiologi-
cally and historically a complete falling away from
the charming conventional type of St. Catherine — a
type endeared to the minds of medieeval Italians by
hundreds of lovable and sympathetic embodiments.
330
THAT GREAT PAINTER, IGNOTO
The angel by St. Catherine's side, in our Umbrian
example, may not improbably represent the divine
messenger sent to break in pieces the wheel of the
executioners.
Now, if we compare this nameless St. Catherine
with many others in the National Gallery, we shall
soon be struck by the fact that it represents in a
very high degree the simple and innocent pietism
of the Umbrian painters. Both in this face and
figure, and in the companion St. Ursula, we find a
certain trustful and almost childish simplicity which
more than redeems their decided lack of imaginative
power. St. Catherine and her angel are of the
primitive sort that knows no guile. And this inno-
cent guilelessness is typically Umbrian. Among the
citied hilltops of the soaring Apennines, alike at
Siena and Perugia, art took a very different tone
from that which it assumed in rich and cultivated
Florence, in wealthy and commercial Venice. That
spirit of ecstatic piety, of self-effacing absorption in
the things of the soul, which found its final word in
St. Francis of Assisi and St. Catherine of Siena, was
common among the rapt Etruscan devotees of the
central hills of Italy. All the art of the Apennines
has therefore from the first that detached and studiously
simple pietistic air which degenerates at last into an
affected grace and a false sentimentalism with Perugino
and Pinturicchio. Our nameless Umbrian catches this
divine touch in its naive and natural prime. What
with Perugino is a studied pose is with him an
331
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
outcome of pure and spontaneous spiritual person-
ality.
Raphael's famous St. Catherine (Room VI., No.
168), of course, belongs to his Roman period. It has
the roundness of form and perfection of modelling,
the half-open lips and cultivated grace which mark
that epoch in the mighty master's life. But, though
instinct with nobility, and still striving hard after
spiritual effect, it displays no longer the unaffected
and natural holiness which belong as of right to the
Madonna del Gran Duca of his Umbrian tutelage.
I need hardly say it is a greater work of art by
many stages than our Ignoto's little panel ; but I
confess, when I look at the one, I rather incline to
be artistically critical ; when I look at the other I
incline only to say, " What an exquisite charm I What
a dehcious naivete ! "
There are several more St. Catherines in the
National Gallery, which, viewed as single figures, it
would be well for the visitor to compare as he passes
with our unknown Umbrian's pretty embodiment.
The Borgognone, which is most like it, is the most
touching of all; it has the silvery tone and the
exquisite feeling for individual character which make
its painter one of the most charming among the schools
of Lombardy. Then there is the Carlo Crivelli with
its obtrusive wheel and its quaintly twisted fingers,
a monument of the affected and contorted art of that
grimace-loving creature, half Venetian, half Paduan.
Walk from it straight into the Venetian Room and
332
THAT GREAT PAINTER, IGNOTO
look there at the various representations of the same
early type by the later painters of Venice, if you
wish to see how the wealth and luxury of a mercantile
city degraded the older spiritual conception of virgin
martyrs into mere voluptuous and fair-haired ladies,
taken direct from daughters of the princely merchant
oUgarchs of the Adriatic. There is a stately dame
of opulent Titianesque charms, for example, in a
Bonifazio Veronese (Room VII., No. 1202), of the
Madonna and Saints, whom one recognises with
surprise as a St. Catherine at last, not by her face
or figure, which are those of a worldly belle of the
later Renaissance, but by her broken wheel alone,
aided by some dim and faint reminiscence of her
wealth of hair. Another such lady, but of finer
feeling, will be found in the Madonna and Child by
Titian (Room VII., No. 635), where St. Catherine
appears as a stately matron of some old aristocratic
Venetian house, embracing the infant Christ with
maternal fervour. Unless I greatly mistake, these
two figures are each of them a portrait of some
lady of the lagoons with her own first baby. Titian
would have seen no irreverence in such an imper-
sonation, which would have appeared to Fra Angelico
the gravest sacrilege.
The visitor who goes carefully through the National
Gallery with the object of tracing out the evolution
of such separate figures will find a large number of
St. Catherines of every age of Italian art, which will
enable him to follow up the development of the type
333
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
from the earliest period, and its gradual differentiation
in the different schools. Sometimes he must be
content to look for the martyred princess half lost
among a number of throned and seated saints, as in
the panel from the great altar-piece of Taddeo Gaddi's
school, where a doubtful St. Catherine, recognisable
rather by her luxuriant hair than by any definite
emblem, sits in glory side by side with St. Ambrose,
St. Stephen, St. Matthew, and several other assorted
holy personages. Sometimes, as in the little predella
by Fra Angelico in the Early Tuscan Room, she
must be sought for diligently among a whole host
of minute and carefully painted figures. Sometimes,
as in the big Orcagna, she occupies a place of honour
among the highest saints, well in the foreground.
And sometimes, as in the glowing altar-piece by
Moretto (Room VII., No. 625), she sits in glory on
the sunlit clouds, where she receives the wedding-
ring, as the spouse of Christ, from the baby hand
of the infant Saviour. But if, from all these examples,
the visitor forms a central conception of the typical
St. Catherine, and then returns once more to our
nameless Umbrian, accepting it as a special product
of its time and place — the latter half of the fifteenth
century among the Apennines of Urbino — he will be
able to understand and criticise it far better than if
he looks at it in isolation as a mere unrelated three-
quarter-length figure of a saintly personage. That
is the way to judge ariglit of these Italian works.
So only will the spectator be able to estimate the
334
THAT GREAT PAINTER, IGNOTO
saintly simplicity of the style, the infantile piety and
purity of the feeling, the almost Flemish delicacy
and roundness of face in the girlish angel. Painted
a little smaller, this panel would have reminded us
of the delicious Memlincks at Bruges ; and indeed
Memlinck, save for his smallness of scale, is a painter
whose charming naivete and graciousness not a little
recall the Umbrian ideal. He is in the north what
Buonfigli and Fiorenzo were in the Apennine hill-
land. Strength and vigour, indeed, are not Umbrian
characteristics ; but for gentleness of touch, rapt
ecstasy of piety, and sweetness of conception, the
men of the mountains are unequalled in Italy.
335
X
OUR LADY OF FERRARA
The three principal Ferrarese Madonnas in the National
Gallery form a peculiarly interesting and valuable series,
as illustrating the development of a single group or
subject, in a single school, through three successive
stages of artistic progress. As a rule, indeed, the
rapid evolution of Italian art can only adequately be
traced on Italian soil, where many consecutive treat-
ments of the selfsame theme may be observed and
compared in close proximity to one another. Fortune,
however, has been kind to us with Our Lady of
Ferrara : we possess in our own collection in Trafalgar
Square no less than three of the finest presentments
of the local Madonna of that decayed capital, each
answering to an important and decisive moment in
the growth and development of Ferrarese art.
Our earliest specimen of the three is that strange
and at first sight somewhat repellent picture by
Cosimo Tura (Room V., No. 772), the vigorous father
of Ferrarese painting, whose crude and startling dis-
cords in red and green have no doubt astonished many
an innocent visitor to the National Gallery. The
curiously lurid effect of Cosimo's vivid colour, always
conspicuous for its extraordinary abundance of bright
336
MADONNA ENTHRONED: Kationnl Gallery. London.
COSIMO TUKA
337
OUR LADY OF FERRARA
grass-greens, cannot, of course, be suggested by a black
and white reproduction ; but the quaint stiffness of his
figures, the angularity of his drawing, the hard folds
of his drapery, and the exaggerated, almost Chinese,
obliquity of his eye-orbits are all well represented in
the characteristic Madonna here set before us. I need
hardly say that those who would study the picture
aright must go to the original for its bold and eccentric
colour; our little illustration only serves to recall the
general effect of the work to those who have already
made acquaintance at first hand with Cosimo's idio-
syncrasy.
I would only call attention in passing here to three
or four points in this interesting rather than beautiful
picture. Notice first the peculiarly Mongolian and
inexpressive face of the Madonna herself, with her
almond eyes, and her broad round countenance —
peculiarities observable in more than one of the angels
who surround the throne, and especially in the two who
are seated on the intermediate grade of steps, playing
the guitar or mandoline. These features are common
in the earlier works of the Ferrarese school, and even
in Cossa. They merge with Lorenzo Costa into the
Bolognese ideal. Observe, also, the quaintly contorted
limbs of the Divine Child, twisted in that constrained
way which always marks the first effort of nascent
art towards variety of attitude and emotional expres-
sion. In trying to be alive, art at this stage habitually
becomes vehement and unnatural. And do not forget
to glance at some characteristic accessories : the highly
339
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
decorated throne, the sunk panels of the arched ceiling,
the Hebrew inscription on the niche at the back, the
fruit and flowers so common in such works, but pos-
sessing here a certain unspeakable Ferrarese touch of
difference. This ornate character of decoration was long
retained by Ferrarese art ; and the architectural details
in particular may be profitably compared with those
many minor pictures in the same room of the Gallery.
The picture as a whole thus forms a good example
of the elaborate treatment of the Madonna and Child
which prevailed in the Bolognese and Ferrarese schools.
The sharp folds of the drapery, on the other hand,
betray at once the personal style of Cosimo Tura, who
can always be recognised both by this peculiarity and
by his singular and startling scheme of colouring.
But the two little angels at the foot of the throne,
engaged in playing the "regal" or portable organ, are
sweeter than is usual with the creations of so rough
and harsh a master. Tlie one to the spectator's left
touches the keys of the instrument ; her companion to
the right is represented with quaint naivete as blow-
ing the bellows. The panel originally constituted the
central portion of an altar-piece, the lunette of which
consisted of Cosimo's well-known Pieta, now hung
in the Louvre. Its decorative detail is well worthy of
close study. I will call attention now to one point
more only — the winged lion and bull, the eagle and
angel who surmount the throne, symbols, as I need
hardly say, of the four Evangelists.
The second enthroned Madonna of the Ferrarese
340
OUR LADY OF FERRARA
school to which I would direct your notice is the
far more beautiful picture by a little-known painter
who rejoices in the somewhat awkwardly redvindant
name of Ercole di Giulio Cesare Grandi (Room V.,
No. 1119). I will not trouble you here with any
particulars of the controversy which has raged, and
still rages, round this problematical master's shadowy
personality ; you will find as much as you care to
know about the subject in the Official Catalogue
and in Kugler's history. I am more concerned at
present with the picture itself, which is one of the
noblest and most satisfying works in our national
collection. Its glow of colour immediately attracts
the eye from a distance ; its exquisite composition and
its beautiful painting impress one more and more the
longer one looks at it.
The Madonna and Child sit enthroned in the centre
under an arch with a panelled ceiling, which at once
recalls Cosimo Tura's treatment. Minute comparison
of these two similar arches and the capitals of their
pilasters well repay the time spent upon them. But
the Madonna's face and figure show an enormous
advance in art during the short space of time that
separates the painter from his predecessor Cosimo ;
while the general arrangement of the figures may be
profitably compared with the composition in Raphael's
famous Blenheim Madonna. The two represent as
nearly as possible corresponding moments in the evolu-
tion of style, the one in the Umbrian, the other in the
Ferrarese school. Our Lady's face has in it a passing
341
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
touch of Francia with a more marked reminiscence
of Costa's style ; the Infant on her knees stands erect
and benignant, admirably poised, and entirely naked :
He holds out His right hand in the familiar attitude
of priestly benediction. Observe in both these pictures
the almost ungainly height of Our Lady's throne,
characteristic of Venetian and Ferrarese devotion. On
the Madonna's right (and the spectator's left) stands
the youthful figure of St. William, in full knightly
armour. This forms the most attractive and beautiful
feature in the entire composition. Now, St. WiUiam,
or San Guglielmo, is a great local saint at Ferrara,
whom we shall meet once more in the neighbouring
altar-piece by the sugary-sweet Garofalo (Room V.,
No. 671). A church and convent dedicated to him
long existed in the town ; his figure therefore recurs
frequently in Ferrarese pictures. Balancing him on
the other side of the composition stands St. John the
Baptist, holding his usual reed cross and the Book of
Prophets. He should be specially compared with
Raphael's St. John Baptist, in the Blenheim Madonna.
The work as a whole thus represents, of course, the
common subject of the Madonna enthroned, attended
by the particular saints of the donor or church — a kind
of group which forms the most frequent theme of art
for Italian altar-pieces. This particular specimen is
believed to have come from the church of the Con-
cezione at Ferrara ; but it is worthy of remark that
both the saints who appear in it had churches in the
town, that of San Guglielmo being now secularised, while
342
IIADONNA K.NTHRONEl) WITH ST. WILLIAM ANDST.JOHN TH M BAPTIST :
Xaliona/ C,i//a-r. Lomi,'::. GRAXl'I
343
OUR LADY OF FERRARA
that of San Giovanni Battista still exists in the sleepy
little piazza which opens into the Corso di Porta Mare.
Of the rich decorative work lavished on every part
of the picture I will not say much. The student
should observe it for himself on the original panel. I
will content myself with indicating what seems to be
its historical meaning. The subject on the top, by
the left side, I cannot confidently identify ; I take it,
however, to be " The Judgment of Solomon " ; the
subject on the right is, quite undeniably, " The
Sacrifice of Isaac." The medallions in the spandrels
of the arch represent the Annunciation, with the angel
Gabriel, as usual, to the left, and the Madonna at her
conventional prie-dieu to the right. The base of the
throne has Adam and Eve in relief in ivory with the
Tree of Knowledge, flanked on either side by the
turbaned head of a Jewish prophet. Beneath, on the
plinth, are subjects alternately in grisaille and colour,
representing (from right to left), the Nativity, the
Presentation in the Temple, the Massacre of the
Innocents, the Flight into Egypt, and Christ Disput-
ing with the Doctors in the Temple. As a whole
this splendid work forms a worthy monument of the
prevailing spirit of the Middle Renaissance ; while
the admirable drawing and perfect balance of the
infant Christ might almost entitle it to rank with
the finest work of Raphael. Nor would the pose of
San Guglielmo do discredit to Giorgione, whose own
exquisite St. George in the altar-piece at Castelfranco
it distinctly recalls to us.
345 P
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
The third of our Ferrarese pictures begins, it must
be allowed, to herald the decline : it has no longer
the simple force and charming sense of architectural
symmetry which distinguish the Ercole di Giulio
Grandi. It is an altar-piece by Garofalo, which origi-
nally occupied the place of honour above the high
altar of the church of San Guglielmo in the grass-
grown city. The centre of the picture is occupied, as
usual, by the Madonna and Child — a Madonna in
whom the somewhat insipid sweetness of the later
Renaissance takes the place of the dignity, solemnity,
and beauty of the greatest age. The saints at the
side exhibit the true nature of the work at once as
essentially a Franciscan altar-piece, intended for the
decoration of a Franciscan conventual establishment.
On the Madonna's right stand two somewhat realistic
figures in coarse brown robes, whom we recognise at
a glance as Franciscan friars, only too closely studied
from life, and entirely wanting in ideality or inner
saintliness of character. If one dare hint such a word,
indeed, they look even a trifle greasy and grubby. An
earlier age would have made their attributes clear to
us ; but Garofalo, learned in all the somewhat affected
art of the Raphaelesque painters, takes care to reduce
the symbols of the saints to the most inconspicuous
relics. Close attention, however, will show that the
friar on the right hand nearest to the throne bears
marks of the stigmata on his hands and feet, which
show him to be St. Francis of Assisi himself, the
founder of our order ; while the neighbouring friar
346
OUR LADY OF FERRARA
with a lily in his hand, a little more in the background,
is equally known for St. Antony of Padua, second in
sanctity among canonised Franciscans. On the other
side of the throne we get St. William himself, the
patron saint of church and convent, in his armour as
before — a graceful and dainty figure, but not to com-
pare in strength and majesty with Ercole's splendid
warrior. Behind him stands a nun in Franciscan
robes, whom we know to be Santa Chiara, the com-
panion of St. Francis and foundress of the Poor
Clares, the female branch of the Franciscan society.
All the characters in the picture are thus grouped
together as the chief objects of devotion on the part
of this particular Ferrarese convent.
It is impossible to look at this handsome work
without recognising at once the immense advance in
artistic technique which it displays, and the obvious
traces of the influence of Raphael, but it is impossible
also not to see that what was gained in art and know-
ledge was more than lost in power, freshness, and
spirit. The work as a whole is tame and uninterest-
ing ; even the skill with which Garofalo has used the
traditional greens of the Ferrarese school of colourists
to relieve the prevailing browns of the Franciscan
robes does not suffice to raise his work into the same
high rank as Ercole's masterpiece. We cannot look
at it without realising at a glance the beginnings
of that sad and rapid decline which resulted so
soon in the learned inanities and ineptitudes of the
Carracci.
347
THE PAINTERS' JORDAN
Among the earlier Italian works in the National
Gallery few are more interesting than a certain com-
posite altar-piece, vaguely described in the official
catalogue as of the " School of Taddeo Gaddi," and
representing in its central panel the familiar subject
of the Baptism of Christ in Jordan (Vestibule, No.
579). The treatment, of course, is somewhat hard
and dry, as one might expect from its age ; and
the figures have that early angularity which moves
the uncouth mirth of uncultured visitors ; but as a
moment in the development of the theme which it
enshrines it seems to me a precious relic in the
evolution of the art of painting.
The centre of the foreground is occupied by a
small and very symbolical Jordan — a Jordan reduced,
as it were, to its simplest and most beggarly elements.
There is only just enough of it, in fact, to enable us
to say, as the children write across their first rude
attempts, " This is a river." Such purely symbolical
Jordans, like symbolical temples and symbolical cities,
were common in the earlier ages of art ; and, what is
odder still, they survived from the days of Giotto and
348
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THE PAINTERS' JORDAN
Taddeo Gaddi, almost down to the days of Raphael
and Michael Angelo. You can see another admirable
example of very late date in the charming and sym-
pathetic Piero della Francesca of the same subject,
also in the National Gallery, about which, as melo-
dramatists put it, " more anon."
The right side of the picture — I speak here and
always from the spectator's point of view — is occupied
by a most rugged and realistic St. John Baptist,
clothed in a long garment of camel's hair, which,
however, the artist has generously concealed during
part of its length by a flowing robe of more luxurious
woven fabric. The middle of the panel is filled by
the constrained figure of the Saviour, girt with a
small loincloth, and standing up to His knees in the
symbolical river. On tlie right bank kneel two
angels with towels, their faces intensely round and
Giottesque, and their haloes displaying the usual
frank solidity of the period. Two beetling crags,
with extremely symmetrical trees, eke out the com-
position ; above, the lightly sketched figure of the
Eternal Father discharges a dove, representing the
Holy Spirit, on the head of the Son with whom He
is well pleased.
Now, this arrangement of the subject is conven-
tional and formal, and it recurs again and again in
the treatment of the Baptism from the earliest ages.
As a rule, one finds on the extreme right of the
picture the form of the Baptist ; in the centre stands
the Saviour, almost nude, in the symbolical river ;
351
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
and on the left we have one, two, or three angels
holding a towel, according to the taste and fancy of
the painter. Occasionally, it is true, especially in
very early works, the sides are reversed, the Baptist
occupying the left and the angels the right; but in
the vast majority of Baptisms, during the great
developmental age of Italian art (from Giotto to
Raphael), the disposition is the same as in the
" Altar-piece of the School of Taddeo Gaddi," and
the treatment conforms, on the whole, to this typical
instance.
The earlier history of the evolution of the type
thus hardened into a convention by the fourteenth
century is remarkable and interesting. The very first
representations of the Baptism of Christ which we
now possess are those which occur (as reliefs) on
sarcophagi and (as mural paintings) on the walls of
the Catacombs. A sarcophagus in the Lateran gives
us, I beheve, the most primitive realisation which has
been noted of the historical scene ; though still earher
allusions occur elsewhere in such symbolic forms as
Noah in the Ark and the Passage of the Red Sea.
In the relief on the Sarcophagus, however, a wavy
line of almost Egyptian simplicity represents the
Jordan, while a gigantic Baptist, clad in a loincloth
of camel's skin, pours water from a bowl over the
head of the Saviour. He is standing on the left, not,
as is usual in later representations, on the right of
the composition ; but the attitude of the two chief
persons, and especially the pose of the hand which
352
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THE PAINTERS' JORDAN
holds the cup or bowl, is already that which was
reproduced in later ages by numberless successive
generations of artists. The " motive," as critics call
it, was there from the beginning.
One point of difference exists, none the less,
between this earliest Baptism and all later representa-
tions. There is as yet no trace of the angel. He
makes his first appearance, so far as I have been able
to observe, in the central mosaic of the cupola in the
" Baptistery of the Orthodox," at Ravenna, a work
which all modern critics assign to the fifth century.
And he does so even there in a disguised form which
curiously illustrates the transition from heathen to
Christian art, and the way in which the conventional
types of later ages were originally evolved from
classical models. For the Ravenna mosaic, badly
restored and much altered, still shows us a St. John
with his jewelled cross on the left of the composition
(left, not right, being the early usage), pouring water
from a cup on the head of the Saviour, who occupies
the middle of the work, and who stands, quite nude,
up to his waist in the water of the river. The extreme
right, however, is filled by a figure of the river-god
of the Jordan, still represented quite frankly in the
classical fashion. The age, indeed, saw as yet no
incongruity in this intimate mixture of heathen and
Christian conceptions. Genii and angels mingle with
Job and Orpheus in picturesque confusion. The
river-god has his head crowned with a wreath of
water-weeds, and in his present form he holds a
355
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
towel ; but this towel I take, for a reason which will
be apparent hereafter, to be a bad bit of false restora-
tion. Originally, I feel sure, he must have poured
water from an urn at his side, as is usual with all
other classical river deities. The urn and its stream
of water were later mistaken, in the faded condition,
for a cloth or towel,' and so improperly represented
by the ignorant restorer. The cross which St. John
holds is also almost certainly a later addition, which
gives colour to the idea of the substitution of a towel
for the primitive water-urn.
But why do I suppose the river-god of the Jordan
originally held an urn instead of a towel ? Well, for
this reason. There is another most interesting mosaic
at Ravenna, in another church, now commonly known
as Santa Maria in Cosmedin, but originally built as
the Baptistery of the Arians. This mosaic is a century
later than that which decorates the Baptistery of the
Orthodox ; for the round church whose ceiling it
adorns was built after the capture of Ravenna by
Theodoric and his Goths, who, of course, were Arians ;
while the earlier Baptistery of the Orthodox was
erected and decorated under the Emperor Honorius,
who naturally belonged to the Catholic party. Now,
the Arians were evidently anxious to have a Baptistery
of their own, just as good and fine as that of the
Orthodox ; so they not only imitated its shape but
also decorated their ceiling with a counterpart mosaic
of the Baptism of Christ, as nearly as possible after
the fashion of its Catholic predecessor. The work-
866
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THE PAINTERS' JORDAN
manship, indeed, as was natural in that age of rapid
decadence, is far ruder than the beautiful handicraft
of the fifth century ; but the composition is still
approximately the same. Only, here the sides are
reversed; the Baptist stands on the right of the work,
and the Jordan holds, not a towel, but an urn. As
this is the older classical usage of river-gods, I feel
sure that at the time when Italian workmen wrought
this mosaic for the Gothic King, in close imitation of
the Orthodox Baptistery, the Jordan in that earlier
and finer composition must still have held an urn,
and not a towel. I may add that the Christ in the
Arian work is youthful and beardless, as is also the
usage in the earliest representations in the Catacombs
and on the antique sarcophagi ; while in the Orthodox
mosaic he wears a beard, which I venture to believe
is entirely due to later restoration. Certainly, the
Arian work is older in type than the Orthodox in
both these points, though later in the relative posi-
tions of the two chief actors ; and I can therefore
hardly avoid the conclusion that these portions of the
earlier mosaic have been subsequently restored by an
incompetent artist, who followed rather the usage of
his own time than the decayed and doubtful lines of
the original.
If this conjecture be right, then a fresco of the
seventh century in the catacomb of St. Pontianus
gives us the one other needful transitional stage to
the mediaeval treatment. Here, as in the Gothic
mosaic, the positions have reached the more familiar
359
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
form with St. John on the right, while on the left
bank stands an angel with a towel, a clear Christian-
isation of the half-pagan river-god of the Ravenna
compositions. I gather that as the earlier representa-
tions grew dim, the god was mistaken for a Christian
angel, and the water by his side for a linen fabric.
By the time of Taddeo Gaddi's follower, the single
angel, again, had grown into a pair, and the dove,
which occurs both in the Ravenna examples and in
the Catacomb of St. Pontianus, was now launched
direct from the visible hands of the Eternal Father.
But in other respects, the treatment through the
Middle Ages remained closely similar ; and examples
for verifying it are peculiarly numerous, since this
scene was, and still continues to be, the favourite
subject for decorating the walls or ceilings or altar-
pieces of baptisteries. Another good example, indeed,
occurs in the National Gallery itself in the graceful
though somewhat pallid picture by Piero della Fran-
cesca in the Umbrian room (Room VI., No. 665).
Notice here the continued relative positions of the
Saviour and St. John, the pose of the hand which
holds the patera, and the angels, as usual, on the
left bank. Only, observe that here they are increased
to three ; charming Umbrian angels, too, in open-
mouthed devotion, whom you may well compare with
the exquisite choir which hymns the Babe in Piero's
"Nativity" close by, as well as with the endless sing-
ing angels who form so delicious and characteristic
a feature in the paintings by Buonfigli and other
360
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THE PAINTERS' JORDAN
Umbrians of his age in the Pinacoteca at Perugia.
Look, in passing, also at the increased taste for land-
scape, which makes Piero substitute two or three
well-painted trees on right and left for the symmet-
rical and purely symbolical bushes of Taddeo Gaddi's
follower. Lastly, note how the increasing love of the
Renaissance for the representation of the nude exhibits
itself frankly in the figure of the man in the back-
ground, disrobing himself for baptism, and introduced
for no other purpose than in order that the artist
may show his technical mastery of anatomical draw-
ing. Visitors to Florence will recollect the similar
and famous instance of the young man on the walls
of the Brancacci Chapel.
I may add that while classical boldness represented
the figure of the Saviour entirely nude, the growing
reverence of later days supplied him with a loincloth ;
but recouped itself, as it were, for this artistic sacrifice
by frequently introducing other nude figures of peni-
tents in the background.
The most celebrated representation of this frequent
theme, however, is undoubtedly Andrea Verrocchio's
calm and majestic masterpiece, originally painted for
the convent of St. Salvi, and now in the Accademia
delle Belle Arti at Florence. This is a picture which
every visitor to Italy has admired, but which can
only be really and fully understood by just this kind
of comparison with other treatments of the theme by
earlier artists. A noble and ascetic St. John, stern,
lean, and full of desert character, stands in an attitude
363
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
directly reminiscent of earlier usage, yet, oh, how
much richer in life and movement ! Cup and posture
are the same, but life has been breathed into them.
The Christ, though sombre and severe, more like a
poverty-stricken Tuscan peasant than the ideal of
Christendom, is yet nobly conceived ; while the two
attendant angels, loveliest among the angelic figures
of the Florentine school, are so daintily beautiful
that legend will have it the more graceful of the
two was added surreptitiously to the master's work
by the pencil of his great pupil, Leonardo da Vinci.
And, indeed, even to a technical eye, there are signs
about it of a still greater hand than that which drew
the austere and characteristic Baptist. I would ask
aU my readers when they go again to Florence to
look once more at this glorious work of a painter
who has left us far too little, by the light of the
comparative method which I have here endeavoured
to focus slightly upon its theme and its antecedents.
364
CONCLUSION
And now I close this brief and imperfect retrospect.
As my work iias gone on I have felt increasingly
from time to time how much less I could do for
it than I had designed or hoped ; how difficult it is
to express one's ideas clearly in any other way save
by taking the reader round with one in the body
from gallery to gallery, and there pointing out to him
what strikes one most before the original pictures
in long succession. Nevertheless, I trust I have
succeeded, however feebly, in suggesting a new point
of view for early Italian painting. The point of
view is not indeed of the sort familiar to artists ;
yet even the artist will perhaps admit that it is
calculated to make the outside observer look closer
at works of art, and so to lead him on to higher
appreciation of their technical and testhetic aspects.
Moreover, it suggests a method of comparison. I
have tried to make my readers feel that no one
work can be fairly or adequately judged by itself
alone, nor even as a specimen of a particular school
and a particular master. It must also be regarded
as one of a long progressive series, — an "Annuncia-
tion," a " Pieta," a " Marriage of St. Catherine," a
365
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
" Martyrdom of St. Sebastian," a " Resurrection," an
" Assumption," as the case may be — and it must be
duly considered with reference to all the other pictures
on the same theme that preceded or succeeded it.
Even as a work of art it can never be completely
understood in isolation. It falls into rank as one of
a great family, a moment in a long line of historical
development ; and as such we must regard it, throwing
ourselves back into the mental attitude of the men
of its time, if we wish to judge rightly of its sesthetic,
its evolutionary, and its doctrinal importance.
To sum up briefly, then, I would say in one para-
graph that, from the standpoint of the evolutionist,
we should regard any given early Itahan work, not
primarily as a Raphael, a Giotto, or an Orcagna,
but primarily as a " Paradiso," a " Nativity," a " St.
Francis Receiving the Stigmata," a " Doge Presented
by St. Mark to the Madonna." We should mentally
restore it to its proper order in the historical or
evolutionary series, and should proceed to observe
what traits it borrows from earlier treatments, what
elements it foreshadows in later pictures. Then we
should look at it as a specimen of its own genus
as specially developed by such and such a school,
and as conditioned by the general advance of art at
such and such a period. After that we may con-
sider it, if we will, from the side of the new eonnois-
seurship (to which I do not in the remotest way
pretend), as showing such and such minute and
technical signs of proceeding from the hands of such
366
CONCLUSION
and such a particular master. We may note the
touches which mark it off for us as a Buonfigli, not
a Fiorenzo di Lorenzo ; which discriminate it as a
Bissolo from a Pasquahno or a Giovanni Belhni.
But more important for our purpose to the general
student will be the recognition of the spirit and
feeling of the special master, which is often success-
fully transmitted to pupils whom connoisseurship
infallibly and instantly recognises by smaU traits of
difference. Then again we must discover in each
great theme, not only the influence of the original
tradition, as modified by time, by place, by individu-
ality, but also the influence of purpose and medium,
of patron and position. For example, there is often
a treatment proper for fresco ; another for panel,
tabernacle, or altar-piece ; a third for miniature or
decorative objects. One style is used for tempera
and one for oil painting. Not infrequently we get
various types of treatment, conditioned by shape —
the square, the tall or upright oblong, the broad or
shadow oblong, the circular or tondo, the lunette, the
round arch, the pointed niche, the triangular or poly-
gonal space above a doorway. Then there is the
variety of final purpose : the austere and ascetic type
which suits the cloister or the monastery ; the more
joyous and decorative style adapted to church or
altar-piece ; the regal and ornamental method for the
rich man's palace. Thus even saints have often two
distinct types ; the one severe and sober-hued, when
they stand for objects of religious veneration ; the
367
EVOLUTION IN ITALIAN ART
other ornate and many-hued, when they stand as
patrons and representatives of some princely family.
But I will say no more. My main object has
been to show that each picture must be viewed as
a particular variant on a central type ; my second to
show that the variations themselves follow fixed laws
of development, and are due in part to a general
stream of human evolution, in part to differentiation
under the influence of the local or personal environ-
ment. I leave the reader to fill in for himself the
outline I have here endeavoured to sketch ; and I
can have no better reward for my uncertain toil than
to find that I have induced some other to take up
with me this interesting study on the lines I have
suggested from my own slight knowledge. If any
man objects that such a method is not study of Art,
I can only answer, " Perhaps not — but it is a study
of Evolution."
THE END
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