Mornings in Florence Part 2

"So they rushed into one another's arms, and kissed each other."

No, says Giotto,--not that.

"They advanced to meet, in a manner conformable to the strictest laws of composition; and with their draperies cast into folds which no one until Raphael could have arranged better."

No, says Giotto,--not that.

St. Anne has moved quickest; her dress just falls into folds sloping backwards enough to tell you so much. She has caught St. Joachim by his mantle, and draws him to her, softly, by that. St. Joachim lays his hand under her arm, seeing she is like to faint, and holds her up. They do not kiss each other--only look into each other's eyes. And G.o.d's angel lays his hand on their heads.

Behind them, there are two rough figures, busied with their own affairs,--two of Joachim's shepherds; one, bare headed, the other wearing the wide Florentine cap with the falling point behind, which is exactly like the tube of a larkspur or violet; both carrying game, and talking to each other about--Greasy Joan and her pot, or the like. Not at all the sort of persons whom you would have thought in harmony with the scene;--by the laws of the drama, according to Racine or Voltaire.

No, but according to Shakespeare, or Giotto, these are just the kind of persons likely to be there: as much as the angel is likely to be there also, though you will be told nowadays that Giotto was absurd for putting _him_ into the sky, of which an apothecary can always produce the similar blue, in a bottle. And now that you have had Shakespeare, and sundry other men of head and heart, following the track of this shepherd lad, _you_ can forgive him his grotesques in the corner. But that he should have forgiven them to himself, after the training he had, this is the wonder! _We_ have seen simple pictures enough in our day; and therefore we think that of course shepherd boys will sketch shepherds: what wonder is there in that?

I can show you how in _this_ shepherd boy it was very wonderful indeed, if you will walk for five minutes back into the church with me, and up into the chapel at the end of the south transept,--at least if the day is bright, and you get the Sacristan to undraw the window-curtain in the transept itself. For then the light of it will be enough to show you the entirely authentic and most renowned work of Giotto's master; and you will see through what schooling the lad had gone.

A good and brave master he was, if ever boy had one; and, as you will find when you know really who the great men are, the master is half their life; and well they know it--always naming themselves from their master, rather than their families. See then what kind of work Giotto had been first put to. There is, literally, not a square inch of all that panel--some ten feet high by six or seven wide--which is not wrought in gold and colour with the fineness of a Greek ma.n.u.script.

There is not such an elaborate piece of ornamentation in the first page of any Gothic king's missal, as you will find in that Madonna's throne;--the Madonna herself is meant to be grave and n.o.ble only; and to be attended only by angels.

And here is this saucy imp of a lad declares his people must do without gold, and without thrones; nay, that the Golden Gate itself shall have no gilding that St. Joachim and St. Anne shall have only one angel between them: and their servants shall have their joke, and n.o.body say them nay!

It is most wonderful; and would have been impossible, had Cimabue been a common man, though ever so great in his own way. Nor could I in any of my former thinking understand how it was, till I saw Cimabue's own work at a.s.sisi; in which he shows himself, at heart, as independent of his gold as Giotto,--even more intense, capable of higher things than Giotto, though of none, perhaps, so keen or sweet. But to this day, among all the Mater Dolorosas of Christianity, Cimabue's at a.s.sisi is the n.o.blest; nor did any painter after him add one link to the chain of thought with which he summed the creation of the earth, and preached its redemption.

He evidently never checked the boy, from the first day he found him.

Showed him all he knew: talked with him of many things he felt himself unable to paint: made him a workman and a gentleman,--above all, a Christian,--yet left him--a shepherd. And Heaven had made him such a painter, that, at his height, the words of his epitaph are in nowise overwrought: "Ille ego sum, per quem pictura extincta revixit."

A word or two, now, about the repainting by which _this_ pictura extincta has been revived to meet existing taste. The sky is entirely daubed over with fresh blue; yet it leaves with unusual care the original outline of the descending angel, and of the white clouds about his body. This idea of the angel laying his hands on the two heads--(as a bishop at Confirmation does, in a hurry; and I've seen one sweep four together, like Arnold de Winkelied),--partly in blessing, partly as a symbol of their being brought together to the same place by G.o.d,--was afterwards repeated again and again: there is one beautiful little echo of it among the old pictures in the schools of Oxford. This is the first occurrence of it that I know in pure Italian painting; but the idea is Etruscan-Greek, and is used by the Etruscan sculptors of the door of the Baptistery of Pisa, of the _evil_ angel, who "lays the heads together"

of two very different persons from these--Herodias and her daughter.

Joachim, and the shepherd with the larkspur cap, are both quite safe; the other shepherd a little reinforced; the black bunches of gra.s.s, hanging about are retouches. They were once bunches of plants drawn with perfect delicacy and care; you may see one left, faint, with heart-shaped leaves, on the highest ridge of rock above the shepherds.

The whole landscape is, however, quite undecipherably changed and spoiled.

You will be apt to think at first, that if anything has been restored, surely the ugly shepherd's uglier feet have. No, not at all. Restored feet are always drawn with entirely orthodox and academical toes, like the Apollo Belvidere's. You would have admired them very much. These are Giotto's own doing, every bit; and a precious business he has had of it, trying again and again--in vain. Even hands were difficult enough to him, at this time; but feet, and bare legs! Well, he'll have a try, he thinks, and gets really a fair line at last, when you are close to it; but, laying the light on the ground afterwards, he dare not touch this precious and dear-bought outline. Stops all round it, a quarter of an inch off, [Footnote: Perhaps it is only the restorer's white on the ground that stops; but I think a restorer would never have been so wise, but have gone right up to the outline, and spoiled all.] with such effect as you see. But if you want to know what sort of legs and feet he _can_ draw, look at our _lambs_, in the corner of the fresco under the arch on your left!

And there is one on your right, though more repainted--the little Virgin presenting herself at the Temple,--about which I could also say much.

The stooping figure, kissing the hem of her robe without her knowing, is, as far as I remember, first in this fresco; the origin, itself, of the main design in all the others you know so well; (and with its steps, by the way, in better perspective already than most of them).

"_This_ the original one!" you will be inclined to exclaim, if you have any general knowledge of the subsequent art. "_This_ Giotto! why it's a cheap rechauffe of t.i.tian!" No, my friend. The boy who tried so hard to draw those steps in perspective had been carried down others, to his grave, two hundred years before t.i.tian ran alone at Cadore. But, as surely as Venice looks on the sea, t.i.tian looked upon this, and caught the reflected light of it forever.

What kind of boy is this, think you, who can make t.i.tian his copyist,--Dante his friend? What new power is here which is to change the heart of Italy?--can you see it, feel it, writing before you these words on the faded wall?

"You shall see things--as they Are."

"And the least with the greatest, because G.o.d made them."

"And the greatest with the least, because G.o.d made _you_, and gave you eyes and a heart."

I. You shall see things--as they are. So easy a matter that, you think?

So much more difficult and sublime to paint grand processions and golden thrones, than St. Anne faint on her pillow, and her servant at pause?

Easy or not, it is all the sight that is required of you in this world,--to see things, and men, and yourself,--as they are.

II. And the least with the greatest, because G.o.d made them,--shepherd, and flock, and gra.s.s of the field, no less than the Golden Gate.

III. But also the golden gate of Heaven itself, open, and the angels of G.o.d coming down from it.

These three things Giotto taught, and men believed, in his day. Of which Faith you shall next see brighter work; only before we leave the cloister, I want to sum for you one or two of the instant and evident technical changes produced in the school of Florence by this teaching.

One of quite the first results of Giotto's simply looking at things as they were, was his finding out that a red thing was red, and a brown thing brown, and a white thing white--all over.

The Greeks had painted anything anyhow,--G.o.ds black, horses red, lips and cheeks white; and when the Etruscan vase expanded into a Cimabue picture, or a Tafi mosaic, still,--except that the Madonna was to have a blue dress, and everything else as much gold on it as could be managed,--there was very little advance in notions of colour. Suddenly, Giotto threw aside all the glitter, and all the conventionalism; and declared that he saw the sky blue, the tablecloth white, and angels, when he dreamed of them, rosy. And he simply founded the schools of colour in Italy--Venetian and all, as I will show you to-morrow morning, if it is fine. And what is more, n.o.body discovered much about colour after him.

But a deeper result of his resolve to look at things as they were, was his getting so heartily interested in them that he couldn't miss their decisive _moment_. There is a decisive instant in all matters; and if you look languidly, you are sure to miss it. Nature seems always, somehow, trying to make you miss it. "I will see that through," you must say, "with out turning my head"; or you won't see the trick of it at all. And the most significant thing in all his work, you will find hereafter, is his choice of moments. I will give you at once two instances in a picture which, for other reasons, you should quickly compare with these frescos. Return by the Via delle Belle Donne; keep the Casa Strozzi on your right; and go straight on, through the market.

The Florentines think themselves so civilized, forsooth, for building a nuovo Lung-Arno, and three manufactory chimneys opposite it: and yet sell butchers' meat, dripping red, peaches, and anchovies, side by side: it is a sight to be seen. Much more, Luca della Robbia's Madonna in the circle above the chapel door. Never pa.s.s near the market without looking at it; and glance from the vegetables underneath to Luca's leaves and lilies, that you may see how honestly he was trying to make his clay like the garden-stuff. But to-day, you may pa.s.s quickly on to the Uffizii, which will be just open; and when you enter the great gallery, turn to the right, and there, the first picture you come at will be No.

6, Giotto's "Agony in the garden."

I used to think it so dull that I could not believe it was Giotto's.

That is partly from its dead colour, which is the boy's way of telling you it is night:--more from the subject being one quite beyond his age, and which he felt no pleasure in trying at. You may see he was still a boy, for he not only cannot draw feet yet, in the least, and scrupulously hides them therefore; but is very hard put to it for the hands, being obliged to draw them mostly in the same position,--all the four fingers together. But in the careful bunches of gra.s.s and weeds you will see what the fresco foregrounds were before they got spoiled; and there are some things he can understand already, even about that Agony, thinking of it in his own fixed way. Some things,--not altogether to be explained by the old symbol of the angel with the cup. He will try if he cannot explain them better in those two little pictures below; which n.o.body ever looks at; the great Roman sarcophagus being put in front of them, and the light glancing on the new varnish so that you must twist about like a lizard to see anything. Nevertheless, you may make out what Giotto meant.

"The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" In what was its bitterness?--thought the boy. "Crucifixion?--Well, it hurts, doubtless; but the thieves had to bear it too, and many poor human wretches have to bear worse on our battlefields. But"--and he thinks, and thinks, and then he paints his two little pictures for the predella.

They represent, of course, the sequence of the time in Gethsemane; but see what choice the youth made of his moments, having two panels to fill. Plenty of choice for him--in pain. The Flagellation--the Mocking--the Bearing of the Cross;--all habitually given by the Margheritones, and their school, as extremes of pain.

"No," thinks Giotto. "There was worse than all that. Many a good man has been mocked, spitefully entreated, spitted on, slain. But who was ever so betrayed? Who ever saw such a sword thrust in his mother's heart?"

He paints, first, the laying hands on Him in the garden, but with only two princ.i.p.al figures,--Judas and Peter, of course; Judas and Peter were always princ.i.p.al in the old Byzantine composition,--Judas giving the kiss--Peter cutting off the servant's ear. But the two are here, not merely princ.i.p.al, but almost alone in sight, all the other figures thrown back; and Peter is not at all concerned about the servant, or his struggle with him. He has got him down,--but looks back suddenly at Judas giving the kiss. What!--_you_ are the traitor, then--you!

"Yes," says Giotto; "and you, also, in an hour more."

The other picture is more deeply felt, still. It is of Christ brought to the foot of the cross. There is no wringing of hands or lamenting crowd--no haggard signs of fainting or pain in His body. Scourging or fainting, feeble knee and torn wound,--he thinks scorn of all that, this shepherd-boy. One executioner is hammering the wedges of the cross harder down. The other--not ungently--is taking Christ's red robe off His shoulders. And St. John, a few yards off, is keeping his mother from coming nearer. She looks _down_, not at Christ; but tries to come.

And now you may go on for your day's seeings through the rest of the gallery, if you will--Fornarina, and the wonderful cobbler, and all the rest of it. I don't want you any more till to-morrow morning.

But if, meantime, you will sit down,--say, before Sandro Botticelli's "Fort.i.tude," which I shall want you to look at, one of these days; (No.

1299, innermost room from the Tribune,) and there read this following piece of one of my Oxford lectures on the relation of Cimabue to Giotto, you will be better prepared for our work to-morrow morning in Santa Croce; and may find something to consider of, in the room you are in.

Where, by the way, observe that No. 1288 is a most true early Lionardo, of extreme interest: and the savants who doubt it are--never mind what; but sit down at present at the feet of Fort.i.tude, and read.

Those of my readers who have been unfortunate enough to interest themselves in that most profitless of studies--the philosophy of art--have been at various times teased or amused by disputes respecting the relative dignity of the contemplative and dramatic schools.

Contemplative, of course, being the term attached to the system of painting things only for the sake of their own niceness--a lady because she is pretty, or a lion because he is strong: and the dramatic school being that which cannot be satisfied unless it sees something going on: which can't paint a pretty lady unless she is being made love to, or being murdered; and can't paint a stag or a lion unless they are being hunted, or shot, or the one eating the other.

You have always heard me--or, if not, will expect by the very tone of this sentence to hear me, now, on the whole recommend you to prefer the Contemplative school. But the comparison is always an imperfect and unjust one, unless quite other terms are introduced.

The real greatness or smallness of schools is not in their preference of inactivity to action, nor of action to inactivity. It is in their preference of worthy things to unworthy, in rest; and of kind action to unkind, in business.

A Dutchman can be just as solemnly and entirely contemplative of a lemon pip and a cheese paring, as an Italian of the Virgin in Glory.

An English squire has pictures, purely contemplative, of his favorite horse--and a Parisian lady, pictures, purely contemplative, of the back and front of the last dress proposed to her in La Mode Artistique. All these works belong to the same school of silent admiration;--the vital question concerning them is, "What do you admire?"

Now therefore, when you hear me so often saying that the Northern races--Norman and Lombard,--are active, or dramatic, in their art; and that the Southern races--Greek and Arabian,--are contemplative, you ought instantly to ask farther, Active in what? Contemplative of what?