The Old Masters and Their Pictures, For the Use of Schools and Learners in ArtTytler, Sarah
History
The Old Masters and Their Pictures, For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art
Tytler, Sarah
Painters; Painting -- History
I have only space to tell you of three or four of the famous works of
Giotto. First, his allegories in the great church, in honour of St
Francis, at Assisi, in relation to which, writing of its German
architect, an author says: 'He built boldly against the mountain, piling
one church upon another; the upper vast, lofty, and admitting through
its broad windows the bright rays of the sun: the lower as if in the
bowels of the earth--low, solemn, and almost shutting out the light of
day. Around the lofty edifice grew the convent, a vast building, resting
upon a long line of arches clinging to the hill-sides. As the evening
draws nigh, casting its deep shadows across the valley, the traveller
beneath gazes upwards with feelings of wonder and delight at this
graceful arcade supporting the massy convent; the ancient towers and
walls of the silent town gathering around, and the purple rocks rising
high above--all still glowing in the lingering sunbeams--a scene
scarcely to be surpassed in any clime for its sublime beauty.' The
upper church contains frescoes wonderfully fresh, by Cimabue, of
Scriptural subjects, and frescoes of scenes from the life vowed to
poverty of St Francis. In the lower church, over the tomb of St Francis,
are the four masterpieces with which we have to do. These are the three
vows of the order figuratively represented. Mark the fitness and
grandeur of two of the figures, the suggestion of which has been
attributed to Dante, the woman Chastity seated beyond assault in her
rocky fortress, and Obedience bowing the neck to curb and yoke. The
fourth fresco pictures the saint who died, 'covered by another's cloak
cast over his wasted body eaten with sores,' enthroned and glorified
amidst the host of Heaven.
I have chosen the second example of the art of Giotto because you may
with comparative ease see it for yourselves. It is in the National
Gallery, London, having belonged to the collection of the late Samuel
Rogers. It is a fragment of an old fresco which had been part of a
series illustrating the life of John the Baptist in the church of the
Carmine, Florence, a church which was destroyed by fire in 1771. The
fragment in the National Gallery has two fine heads of apostles bending
sorrowfully over the body of St John. Though it is not necessary to do
it, in strict justice, because good work rises superior to all accidents
of comparison as well as accidents of circumstance, one must remember in
regarding this, the stilted and frozen figures and faces, which, before
Giotto broke their bonds and inspired them, had professed to tell the
Bible's stories.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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