The Book of Art for Young People | Page 7

any other people in Europe, they too reproduced the same subjects and the same figures over and over again, only the figures were more graceful than those of the local Italian, English, and French artists, who in varying degrees at different times tried to paint like the Byzantine or Greek artists, but without quite the same success. So long as there was no need for an artist to paint anything but the old well-established subjects, and so long as people desired them to be painted in the old conventional manner, there was little reason why any painter should try to be original and paint what was not wanted. But in the thirteenth century a great change took place.
Let us here refresh our memories of what we may have read of that delightful saint, Francis of Assisi. He was born in 1182, the son of a well-to-do nobleman, in the little town of Assisi in Umbria, and as a lad became inflamed with the ideal of the religious life. But instead of entering one of the existing monastic orders, where he would have been protected, he gave away every possession he had in the world and adopted 'poverty' as his watchword. Clad in an old brown habit, he walked from place to place preaching charity, obedience, and renunciation of all worldly goods. He lived on what was given to him to eat from day to day; he nursed the lepers and the sick. Ever described as a most lovable person, he won by his preaching the hearts of people of all classes, from the King of France to the humblest peasant. He wrote beautiful hymns in praise of the sun, the moon, and the stars, and had a great love for every living thing. The birds were said to have flocked around him because they loved him, and we read that he talked to them and called them his 'little sisters.' An old writer tells this story in good faith:
When St. Francis spake words to them, the birds began all of them to open their beaks and spread their wings and reverently bend their heads down to the ground, and by their acts and by their songs did show that the holy Father gave them joy exceeding great.
Wherever he preached he made converts who 'married Holy Poverty,' as St. Francis expressed it, gave up everything they had, and lived his preaching and roaming life. St. Francis himself had no idea of forming a monastic order. He wished to live a holy life in the world and show others how to do the same, and for years he and his companions worked among the poor, earning their daily bread when they could, and when they could not, begging for it. Gradually, however, ambition stirred in the hearts of some of the followers of Francis, and against the will of their leader they made themselves into the Order of Franciscan Friars, collected gifts of money, and began to build churches and monastic buildings. At first the buildings were said to belong to the Pope, who allowed the Franciscans to use them, since they might not own property; but after the death of St. Francis, the Order built churches throughout the length and breadth of Italy, not of marble and mosaic but of brick, since brick was cheaper; but the brick walls were plastered, and upon the wet plaster there were painted scenes from the life of St. Francis, side by side with the old Christian and saintly legends. This sudden demand for painted churches with paintings of new subjects, stirred the painters of the day to alter their old style. When an artist was asked to paint a large picture of St. Francis preaching to the birds, he had to look at real birds and he had to study a real man in the attitude of preaching. There was no scene that had ever been painted from the life of Christ or of any saint in which a man preached to a bird, so that the artist was driven to paint from nature instead of copying former pictures.
Let us now read what a painter who lived in the sixteenth century, Vasari by name, wrote about the rise of painting in his native city. Some learned people nowadays say that Vasari was wrong in many of the stories he told, but after all he lived much nearer than we do to the times he wrote about, and it is safer to believe what he tells us than what modern students surmise, except when they are able to cite other old authorities to which Vasari did not have access.
The endless flood of misfortunes which overwhelmed unhappy Italy not only ruined everything worthy of the name of a building, but completely extinguished the race of artists,