The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance | Page 6

"Avarice" is a horned hag with
ears like trumpets. A snake issuing from her mouth curls back and bites
her forehead. Her left hand clutches her money-bag, as she moves
forward stealthily, her right hand ready to shut down on whatever it can
grasp. No need to label them: as long as these vices exist, for so long
has Giotto extracted and presented their visible significance.
[Page heading: GIOTTO]
Still another exemplification of his sense for the significant is furnished
by his treatment of action and movement. The grouping, the gestures
never fail to be just such as will most rapidly convey the meaning. So
with the significant line, the significant light and shade, the significant
look up or down, and the significant gesture, with means technically of
the simplest, and, be it remembered, with no knowledge of anatomy,
Giotto conveys a complete sense of motion such as we get in his
Paduan frescoes of the "Resurrection of the Blessed," of the "Ascension
of our Lord," of the God the Father in the "Baptism," or the angel in
"Zacharias' Dream."
This, then, is Giotto's claim to everlasting appreciation as an artist: that
his thorough-going sense for the significant in the visible world enabled
him so to represent things that we realise his representations more
quickly and more completely than we should realise the things
themselves, thus giving us that confirmation of our sense of capacity
which is so great a source of pleasure.
III.
[Page heading: FOLLOWERS OF GIOTTO]
For a hundred years after Giotto there appeared in Florence no painter
equally endowed with dominion over the significant. His immediate
followers so little understood the essence of his power that some
thought it resided in his massive types, others in the swiftness of his

line, and still others in his light colour, and it never occurred to any of
them that the massive form without its material significance, its tactile
values, is a shapeless sack, that the line which is not functional is mere
calligraphy, and that light colour by itself can at the best spot a surface
prettily. The better of them felt their inferiority, but knew no remedy,
and all worked busily, copying and distorting Giotto, until they and the
public were heartily tired. A change at all costs became necessary, and
it was very simple when it came. "Why grope about for the significant,
when the obvious is at hand? Let me paint the obvious; the obvious
always pleases," said some clever innovator. So he painted the
obvious,--pretty clothes, pretty faces, and trivial action, with the results
foreseen: he pleased then, and he pleases still. Crowds still flock to the
Spanish chapel in S. Maria Novella to celebrate the triumph of the
obvious, and non-significant. Pretty faces, pretty colour, pretty clothes,
and trivial action! Is there a single figure in the fresco representing the
"Triumph of St. Thomas" which incarnates the idea it symbolises,
which, without its labelling instrument, would convey any meaning
whatever? One pretty woman holds a globe and sword, and I am
required to feel the majesty of empire; another has painted over her
pretty clothes a bow and arrow, which are supposed to rouse me to a
sense of the terrors of war; a third has an organ on what was intended to
be her knee, and the sight of this instrument must suffice to put me into
the ecstasies of heavenly music; still another pretty lady has her arm
akimbo, and if you want to know what edification she can bring, you
must read her scroll. Below these pretty women sit a number of men
looking as worthy as clothes and beards can make them; one highly
dignified old gentleman gazes with all his heart and all his soul at--the
point of his quill. The same lack of significance, the same obviousness
characterise the fresco representing the "Church Militant and
Triumphant." What more obvious symbol for the Church than a church?
what more significant of St. Dominic than the refuted Paynim
philosopher who (with a movement, by the way, as obvious as it is
clever) tears out a leaf from his own book? And I have touched only on
the value of these frescoes as allegories. Not to speak of the emptiness
of the one and the confusion of the other, as compositions, there is not a
figure in either which has tactile values,--that is to say, artistic
existence.

While I do not mean to imply that painting between Giotto and
Masaccio existed in vain--on the contrary, considerable progress was
made in the direction of landscape, perspective, and facial
expression,--it is true that, excepting the works of two men, no
masterpieces of art were produced. These two, one coming in the
middle of the period we have been dwelling upon, and the other just