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By and by we sat down in the nave of the church till the ceremony should be concluded; and then my wife left me to go in quest of yet another chapel, where either Cimabue or Giotto, or both, have left some of their now ghastly decorations.
When the picture was completed the day was celebrated as a festival; a procession was formed; bands of music played joyful airs; the magistrates of Florence honored the occasion with their presence; and the picture was borne in triumph to the church. Cimabue must have been very happy at this great appreciation of his art, and from that time he was famous in all Italy.
It is crude, no doubt, but it is enough; the new art, which was to counterfeit and even extend nature, has really begun; the mystery and glory of painting are assured and the door opened for Botticelli. The three great names then in the evolution of Italian painting, a subject to which I return in chapter XXV, on the Carmine, are Cimabue, Giotto, Masaccio.
In this instance, as it happens, there is no reason to question the modern catalogue, though that is by no means the same thing as denying that Cimabue painted the picture which existed in the church of S. Cecilia in Vasari's time.
John kneels in front, and St. Peter reads the service; the other apostles are behind him, and there are three women. The execution of this curious picture is extremely rude, but the heads very fine. Cimabue painted the Death of the Virgin at Assisi.
Giotto was the son of a small farmer at Vespignano, near Florence. He was instructed in art by Cimabue, who discovered him drawing a lamb on a stone while herding sheep, and took him as his pupil.
The difference to be accounted for is certainly not larger than that separating, a century before, the frescoes of Giotto from the works of Cimabue and his school. Netherlandish School of the fifteenth century. It would be impossible here to characterize the works of the various masters who followed in the wake of the brothers Van Eyck.
The Madonna of Cimabue, which hangs at the end of the south transept, resembles the one in the Academy. In place of the powerful saints' heads, is a group of angels of much grace and purity, supporting a shrine. This picture is considered a bolder and more untrammelled composition than the other.
Architecture reared the noble monuments of the Duomo and Santa Croce. Cimabue revolutionized painting, and then "the cry was Giotto's." Italian poetry, preluded by the canzonets of Guido Cavalcanti and his rivals, rose to its fullest grandeur in the 'Commedia' of Dante. Italian prose was born in the works of Malaspina and Dino.
A chapel of the Bonapartes is here, containing memorials of two female members of the family. In several chapels, moreover, there were some of those distressing frescos, by Giotto, Cimabue, or their compeers, which, whenever I see them, poor, faded relics, looking as if the Devil had been rubbing and scrubbing them for centuries, in spite against the saints, my heart sinks and my stomach sickens.
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