A mere catalogue of those painters who pursued the panoramic method with
ability can hardly be expected. One and all they followed the Sienese
narrative style. Prominent would be certain incomers from other cities,
Giovanni da Milano, Antonio Veneziano, and Spinello Aretino. These are
typical decorators of the last quarter of the 14th century.
[Illustration:
FIG. 31. Andrea Bonaiuti, The Navicella, fresco, closely imitated from
Giotto’s Mosaic at St. Peter’s, Rome.—_Spanish Chapel._
]
We do better to fix our attention upon the most remarkable example of
the Florentine panoramic style, the decoration of the Spanish Chapel,
the chapter house attached to the Dominican Church of Santa Maria
Novella.[14] The work was begun by Andrea Bonaiuti in the year 1365, as
we know from a recently discovered document. As decoration it is
delightful, if rather superficially so. The artist treats his spaces as
wholes, declining to cut them up into oblongs after the earlier fashion.
He covers his great surfaces with ease and taste, has a knack at
illustration, and a fine sense of color. The great Calvary over the
triumphal arch imposes from its very vastness; the triangles of the
cross vault, including a spirited transcript of Giotto’s Navicella,
Figure 31, are composed with clarity and skill; the famous composition
of the Dominican theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, enthroned above the
Liberal Arts and Sciences, and their representatives in history,
combines an almost Byzantine formality and grandeur with prettiness and
ingenuity in details. But the method is better shown in the decoration
opposite, which represents the dual earthly powers, the Pope and the
Emperor, enthroned equally, and supported by the representatives of the
spiritual orders and secular estates, Figure 32. The group which
symbolizes the right government of society, according to mediæval ideas,
is set before a church which quite faithfully shows what the Cathedral
of Florence was then intended to be. High up in the arch is the goal of
all earthly endeavor—Heaven with Christ enthroned amid the angels; an
altar with a lamb before Him, symbolizing His sacrifice; His Mother
kneeling as intercessor for mankind. The Gate of Heaven with St. Peter
in attendance, is naïvely set above the church on a sort of aerial raft.
Below is a novel realistic touch, the villa-studded sky line of hills
which encloses Florence. The real guide to St. Peter’s presence is
always a Dominican monk, usually St. Dominic himself is intended—the
founder and militant evangelist of the order, as St. Thomas Aquinas was
its systematic theologian. In the lower range of the picture, St.
Dominic confutes the heretics, who tear their wicked books in despair.
Above he vainly beseeches careless gentlefolk at dalliance in an orange
grove; still higher, he leads the truly penitent to Heaven’s gate. At
the foot the Domini Canes (a bad pun for Dominicans) are vigilant. The
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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