Part 14 (1/2)

[Illustration: ST FRANCIS BEFORE THE SOLDAN

_Giotto_]

Now you htly is just the sahtly The chapel is merely the vase turned upside-down, and outside-in The principles of decoration are exactly the same Your decoration is to be proportioned to the size of your vase; to be together delightful when you look at the cup, or chapel, as a whole; to be various and entertaining when you turn the cup round; (you turn _yourself_ round in the chapel;) and to bend its heads and necks of figures about, as best it can, over the hollows, and ins and outs, so that anyhohether too long or too short--possible or irace You will also please take it onwalk you shall have proof of it--that Giotto was a pure Etruscan-Greek of the Thirteenth Century: converted indeed to worshi+p St Francis instead of Heracles; but as far as vase-painting goes, precisely the Etruscan he was before This is nothing else than a large, beautiful, coloured Etruscan vase you have got, inverted over your heads like a diving-bell The roof has the symbols of the three virtues of labour--Poverty, Chastity, Obedience

A Highest on the left side, looking to theThe life of St

Francis begins in his renunciation of the world

B Highest on the right side His new life is approved and ordained by the authority of the church

C Central on the left side He preaches to his own disciples

D Central on the right side He preaches to the heathen

E Lowest on the left side His burial

F Lowest on the right side His power after death

Besides these six subjects, there are, on the sides of the , the four great Franciscan saints, St Louis of France, St Louis of Toulouse, St Clare, and St Elizabeth of Hungary The Soldan, with an ordinary opera-glass, you h; and I think it will be first well to notice soin on the stairs of the temple reminded you of one composition of titian's, this Soldan should, I think, rereatest in titian; so forcibly, indeed, that for my own part, if I had been told that a careful early fresob titian had been recovered in Santa Croce, I could have believed both report and my own eyes, more quickly than I have been able to adreat that--had its principles been understood--there was in reality nothingto be invented afterwards except Dutch effects of light

That there is ”no effect of light” here arrived at, I beg you at once to observe as athe Soldan's Magi,--fire-worshi+ppers--to pass with hi red at his feet It is so hot that the two Magi on the other side of the throne shi+eld their faces But it is represented si forht whatever There is no ruling colour on anybody's nose; there are no black shadows under anybody's chin; there are no Res of sword-hilt and arnorance, think you, in Giotto, and pure artlessness? He was now a , and professedly, and als as he saw theht?--and he the friend of Dante! who of all poets is the ht--though he has been thought by the public to know that of fire only Again and again, his ghosts wonder that there is no shadow cast by Dante's body; and is the poet's friend _because_ a painter, likely, therefore, not to have known that ht? Nay, the passage in the _Purgatorio_ where the shadows fro sunshi+ne make the flames redder, reaches the accuracy of Newtonian science, and does Giotto, think you, all the while, see nothing of the sort?

The fact was, he saw light so intensely that he never for an instant thought of painting it He knew that to paint the sun was as i to find out ways of see to do what he did not I can paint a rose,--yes; and I will I can't paint a red-hot coal; and I won't try to, nor seem to This was just as natural and certain a process of thinking with _him_, as the honesty of it, and true science, were impossible to the false painters of the Sixteenth Century

Nevertheless, what his art can honestly do to make you feel as much as he wants you to feel, about this fire, he will do; and that studiously

That the fire be _luminous_ or not, is no matter just now But that the fire is _hot_, he would have you to knoill you notice what colours he has used in the whole picture First, the blue background, necessary to unite it with the other three subjects, is reduced to the srey, for that is his dress; also the attendant of one of the Magi is in grey; but so warm, that, if you saw it by itself, you would call it brown The shadow behind the throne, which Giotto knows he _can_ paint, and therefore does, is grey also The rest of the picture[21] in at least six-sevenths of its area--is either crie, purple, or white, all as warm as Giotto could paint them; and set off by minute spaces only of intense black,--the Soldan's fillet at the shoulders, his eyes, beard, and the points necessary in the golden pattern behind And the whole picture is one glow

A single glance round at the other subjects will convince you of the special character in this; but you will recognize also that the four upper subjects in which St Francis's life and zeal are shown, are all in comparatively warm colours, while the ter ones--of the death, and the visions after it--have been kept as definitely sad and cold

Necessarily, youfull of monks' dresses Not so Was there any need for Giotto to have put the priest at the foot of the dead body, with the black banner stooped over it in the shape of a grave?

Might he not, had he chosen, in either fresco, have ht not St Francis have appeared in the centre of a celestial glory to the drea through more radiant clouds? Look, however, how radiant, in the small space allowed out of the blue, they are in reality You cannot anywhere see a lovelier piece of Giottesque colour, though here you have to mourn over the smallness of the piece, and its isolation

For the face of St Francis himself is repainted, and all the blue sky; but the clouds and four sustaining angels are hardly retouched at all, and their iridescent and exquisitely graceful wings are left with really very tender and delicate care by the restorer of the sky And no one but Giotto or Turner could have painted them

For in all his use of opalescent and warm colour, Giotto is exactly like Turner, as, in his swift expressional power, he is like Gainsborough

All the other Italian religious painters work out their expression with toil; he only can give it with a touch All the other great Italian colourists see only the beauty of colour, but Giotto also its brightness And none of the others, except Tintoret, understood to the full its symbolic power; but with those--Giotto and Tintoret--there is always, not only a colour harmony, but a colour secret It is not low, but to re king, that Giotto covers the ith purple and scarlet;--and above, in the dispute at assisi, the angry father is dressed in red, varying like passion; and the robe hich his protector e the peace of Heaven

Of course certain conventional colours were traditionally employed by all painters; but only Giotto and Tintoret invent a symbolism of their own for every picture Thus in Tintoret's picture of the fall of the ure of God the Father is entirely robed in white, contrary to all received custo the rock, it is surrounded by a rainbow Of Giotto's syiven account elsewhere[22]

You are not to think, therefore, the difference between the colour of the upper and lower frescos unintentional The life of St Francis was always full of joy and triu, weariness, and extreme hu, he is seen in the chariot of fire; dying, he submits to more than the common sorrow of death

There is, however, much more than a difference in colour between the upper and lower frescos There is a difference in ular difference in skill,--indicating, it see before the others, and afterwards united and hareneral reader to pursue this question; but one point he can notice quickly, that the lower frescos depend much on a mere black or brown outline of the features, while the faces above are evenly and completely painted in thethe ement of the draperies, contains much interest for us

Giotto never succeeded, to the very end of his days, in representing a figure lying down, and at ease It is one of thewhich he could study fro he never can paint; while subtleties of foresture, which depend absolutely on their momentariness, and actions in which no model can stay for an instant he seizes with infallible accuracy