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Updated: May 5, 2025
And it is really with such a painter as Giunta Pisano that Christian art pure and simple comes to end.
You have often heard it said that Giotto was the founder of art in Italy. He was not: neither he, nor Giunta Pisano, nor Niccolo Pisano. They all laid strong hands to the work, and brought it first into aspect above ground; but the foundation had been laid for them by the builders of the Lombardic churches in the valleys of the Adda and the Arno.
Gutemberg, Fust, and Schoeffher, the Inventors of the Art of Printing. William Caxton, the Father of the British Press. Dame Juliana Berners, and the St Albans Press. Wynkyn de Worde, and Richard Pynson, the Illustrious Successors of William Caxton. The Aldine Family, at Venice. The Giunta Family, at Florence. The Society of the Bibliophiles at Paris. The Prosperity of the Roxburghe Club.
She had been to the "up-stairs room" during recess and brought down the cyclopedia, and, happily, had found a page and a half regarding Giunta Pisano therein, which she was copying verbatim. To be sure, there was no word in it about Cimabue, or the relation of the one to the other, but this was not taken into account. There were plenty of words in the article, and that was the chief end just then.
I was sufficiently self-controlled not to shew my astonishment, and listened to an aria which she was singing, with her exquisite voice, beginning "Eccoti giunta al fin, donna infelice," words which seemed made for the case. The applause seemed as if it would never come to an end.
The tomb below, the figure of the Virgin floating in mid-air, and the opening heavens above, such is the general conception fixed by the traditions of art; but to give some idea of the manner in which this has been varied, I shall describe a few examples. Giunta Pisano, 1230. The empty tomb, with the apostles and others, below. Andrea Orcagna, 1359.
Other Italian painters there had been before him, it is true, and particularly Guido of Siena and Giunta of Pisa, but they fail to show in their work that spirit of originality and that breadth of conception which were so characteristic of their successors.
In the chamber next to this are some strangely beautiful crucifixes by Giunta Pisano, and a little marvellous portrait of S. Francesco on copper with a bright red book in his hand. Of the pictures which follow, but two ever made any impression upon me.
Giunta the Pisan, Gaddo Gaddi, and Cimabue, are supposed to have worked there, painfully continuing or feebly struggling to throw off the decadent traditions of a dying art. In their school Giotto laboured, and modern painting arose with the movement of new life beneath his brush.
If we follow the Via Torelli a little, we pass, on the right, the Oratory of S. Ranieri, the patron saint of Pisa, where there is a crucifix by Giunta Pisano which used to hang in the kitchen of the Convent of S. Anna, not far away, where Emilia Viviani was "incarcerated," as Shelley says. Close by are the few remains of the Baths of Hadrian.
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