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We shall not choose a Madonna for illustration, but another of Giotto's masterpieces, remembering that good as he was in his time, he seems amazingly bad compared with those who came after him. In 1303 a certain Enrico Scrovegno had a private chapel built in the Arena at Padua and he sent for Giotto to come there and adorn the whole of its walls and ceiling with frescoes.
If you can see that the lines of that cap are both right, and lovely; that the choice of the folds is exquisite in its ornamental relations of line; and that the softness and ease of them is complete, though only sketched with a few dark touches, then you can understand Giotto's drawing, and Botticelli's; Donatello's carving and Luca's.
Vava, of course was prettier, and acted well, but hers was a difficult part; and Doreen seemed to have become an Italian artist for the time being, and entered into the life and feelings of a Florentine painter of the Middle Ages, and her dress was an exact copy of Giotto's.
In the greater part of this work there is no intention of implying the existence of the represented creature; Dürer's Melencolia and Giotto's Justice are accurately characteristic examples. Now all such art is wholly good and useful when it is the work of good men.
This portrait of Dante is altogether removed from the later portraits of the indignant and weary man, of whom the Italian market-women said that he had been in Hell as well as in exile. Giotto's Dante on the walls of the Council Chamber is a noble young man of thirty, full of ambitious hope and early distinction.
Giotto's coloured tower in Florence, that carries the bells for Santa Maria del Fiore and Brunelleschi's silent dome, does not ring more than four contralto notes, tuned with sweetness, depth, and dignity, and swinging one musical phrase which softly fills the country. The village belfry it is that grows so fantastic and has such nimble bells.
I observe that the later painters who treated the subject, Rubens and Poussin for instance, omit the disappointed suitors. After the marriage, or betrothal, Joseph conducts his wife to his house. The group of the returning procession has been beautifully treated in Giotto's series at Padua; still more beautifully by Luigi in the fragment of fresco now in the Brera at Milan.
What interests us in Giotto's work at Padua and Assisi is first of all the story that he has to tell, and secondly the human quality of the characters that he exhibits. His sense of setting is extremely slight; and the homely details that he presents for the purpose of suggesting the time and place and circumstances of his action are very crudely depicted. His frescoes are all foreground.
The first piece of the closing series on the north side of the Campanile, of which some general points must be first noted, before any special examination. The two initial ones, Sculpture and Painting, are by tradition the only ones attributed to Giotto's own hand. The fifth, Song, is known, and recognizable in its magnificence, to be by Luca della Robbia.
A short way with Veronese critics Giotto's missing spire Donatello's holy men Giotto as encyclopaedist The seven and twenty reliefs Ruskin in American At the top of the tower A sea of red roofs The restful Baptistery Historic stones An ex-Pope's tomb Andrea Pisano's doors Ghiberti's first doors Ghiberti's second doors Michelangelo's praise A gentleman artist.
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