The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance | Page 5

life, in short. I care little
that the picture endowed with the gift of evoking such feelings has
faults, that the types represented do not correspond to my ideal of
beauty, that the figures are too massive, and almost unarticulated; I
forgive them all, because I have much better to do than to dwell upon
faults.
But how does Giotto accomplish this miracle? With the simplest means,
with almost rudimentary light and shade, and functional line, he
contrives to render, out of all the possible outlines, out of all the
possible variations of light and shade that a given figure may have,
only those that we must isolate for special attention when we are
actually realising it. This determines his types, his schemes of colour,
even his compositions. He aims at types which both in face and figure
are simple, large-boned, and massive,--types, that is to say, which in
actual life would furnish the most powerful stimulus to the tactile
imagination. Obliged to get the utmost out of his rudimentary light and
shade, he makes his scheme of colour of the lightest that his contrasts
may be of the strongest. In his compositions, he aims at clearness of
grouping, so that each important figure may have its desired tactile
value. Note in the "Madonna" we have been looking at, how the
shadows compel us to realise every concavity, and the lights every
convexity, and how, with the play of the two, under the guidance of
line, we realise the significant parts of each figure, whether draped or
undraped. Nothing here but has its architectonic reason. Above all,
every line is functional; that is to say, charged with purpose. Its
existence, its direction, is absolutely determined by the need of
rendering the tactile values. Follow any line here, say in the figure of
the angel kneeling to the left, and see how it outlines and models, how
it enables you to realise the head, the torso, the hips, the legs, the feet,
and how its direction, its tension, is always determined by the action.

There is not a genuine fragment of Giotto in existence but has these
qualities, and to such a degree that the worst treatment has not been
able to spoil them. Witness the resurrected frescoes in Santa Croce at
Florence!
[Page heading: SYMBOLISM OF GIOTTO]
The rendering of tactile values once recognised as the most important
specifically artistic quality of Giotto's work, and as his personal
contribution to the art of painting, we are all the better fitted to
appreciate his more obvious though less peculiar merits--merits, I must
add, which would seem far less extraordinary if it were not for the high
plane of reality on which Giotto keeps us. Now what is back of this
power of raising us to a higher plane of reality but a genius for grasping
and communicating real significance? What is it to render the tactile
values of an object but to communicate its material significance? A
painter who, after generations of mere manufacturers of symbols,
illustrations, and allegories had the power to render the material
significance of the objects he painted, must, as a man, have had a
profound sense of the significant. No matter, then, what his theme,
Giotto feels its real significance and communicates as much of it as the
general limitations of his art, and of his own skill permit. When the
theme is sacred story, it is scarcely necessary to point out with what
processional gravity, with what hieratic dignity, with what sacramental
intentness he endows it; the eloquence of the greatest critics has here
found a darling subject. But let us look a moment at certain of his
symbols in the Arena at Padua, at the "Inconstancy," the "Injustice," the
"Avarice," for instance. "What are the significant traits," he seems to
have asked himself, "in the appearance and action of a person under the
exclusive domination of one of these vices? Let me paint the person
with these traits, and I shall have a figure that perforce must call up the
vice in question." So he paints "Inconstancy" as a woman with a blank
face, her arms held out aimlessly, her torso falling backwards, her feet
on the side of a wheel. It makes one giddy to look at her. "Injustice," is
a powerfully built man in the vigour of his years dressed in the costume
of a judge, with his left hand clenching the hilt of his sword, and his
clawed right hand grasping a double hooked lance. His cruel eye is

sternly on the watch, and his attitude is one of alert readiness to spring
in all his giant force upon his prey. He sits enthroned on a rock,
overtowering the tall waving trees, and below him his underlings are
stripping and murdering a wayfarer.