It was at Rome that young Giotto was to broaden and refine his art. He
was called thither before the year 1300 to design the great mosaic of
Christ walking on the Sea of Galilee beside the tempest-tossed boat of
the Apostles. It stood over the inside cloister-portal of old St.
Peter’s, and has been many times moved in the rebuilding of the church,
and with each move restored, so that what we now see in the porch is
entirely remade. From certain fragments of the old mosaic, and old
sketch copies, Figure 12, we may judge that the Navicella, as the
Italians loved to call it, was an elaborate composition of great
dramatic power, the logical consummation of the experiments at Assisi.
Our best version of the Navicella is Andrea Bonaiuti’s adaptation,
Figure 31, for the vault of the Spanish Chapel, 1365.
But Giotto was soon to renounce the facile method of diffuse and genial
narrative in favor of a concise and massive style, akin to sculptured
relief, and deeply influenced by the antique. The arches and the columns
of Imperial Rome are teaching their silent lesson, the simple and noble
forms of Cavallini and his nameless rivals show how painting may vie
with sculpture in sense of mass and reality. With the problem of the
representation of mass on a flat surface, Giotto wrestled eagerly and
triumphantly. With a genius that few painters have equalled, he grasped
the truth that the figure painter’s problem of representing space is
chiefly that of emphatically suggesting mass. If you convince the eye of
the tangibility of your objects, the mind will supply elbow room and air
to breathe. It isn’t necessary to simulate a box, as the Sienese
painters often did. The painter who can give a convincing sense of mass
may handle accessories and perspective with the utmost freedom,
according to the inner law of his design. The painter who thinks first
of his space is in every way more bound to the smaller probabilities.
Much thinking of this sort must have been done by Giotto before he
worked out his new style at Padua.
After his return from Rome, Giotto sojourned for a time in Florence, and
in 1304 or thereabouts painted the gigantic Madonna formerly in the
Trinità, Figure 13. It is impressive in mass, admirable in the intent
expression of the attendant angels, rich in color, but the great figure
is unhappily crowded by the canopy. Giotto is still a bit uncertain as
to the rendering of space, and makes a good if unpleasing effort to
suggest depth despite the limitations of a gold background. With all its
nobility and tenderness, this is by no means so good a decoration as the
great Madonna by Cimabue, Figure 4, which hangs nearby in the Uffizi.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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