subjects, his art is entirely subservient to the religious spirit of his age. Even in its mode of conceiving and arranging those subjects it is in part still trammelled by the rules and consecrated traditions of the past. Many of those truths of nature to which the painters of succeeding generations learned to give accurate and complete expression, Giotto was only able to express by way of imperfect symbol and suggestion. But among the elements of art over which he has control he maintains so just a balance that his work produces in the spectator less sense of imperfection than that of many later and more accomplished masters. In some particulars his mature painting, as we see it in the Arena chapel, has never been surpassed—in mastery of concise and expressive generalized line and of inventive and harmonious decorative tint; in the judicious division of the field and massing and scattering of groups; in the combination of high gravity with complete frankness in conception, and the union of noble dignity in the types with direct and vital truth in the gestures of the personages.
The frescoes of the Arena chapel must have been a labour of years, and of the date of their termination we have no proof. Of many other works said to have been executed by Giotto at Padua, all that remains consists of some scarce recognizable traces in the chapter-house of the great Franciscan church of St Antonio. For twenty years or more we lose all authentic data as to Giotto’s doings and movements. Vasari, indeed, sends him on a giddy but in the main evidently fabulous round of travels, including a sojourn in France, which it is certain he never made. Besides Padua, he is said to have resided and left great works at Ferrara, Ravenna, Urbino, Rimini, Faenza, Lucca and other cities; in some of them paintings of his school are still shown, but nothing which can fairly be claimed to be by his hand. It is recorded also that he was much employed in his native city of Florence; but the vandalism of later generations has effaced nearly all that he did there. Among works whitewashed over by posterity were the frescoes with which he covered no less than five chapels in the church of Santa Croce. Two of these, the chapels of the Bardi and the Peruzzi families, were scraped in the early part of the 19th century, and very important remains were uncovered and immediately subjected to a process of restoration which has robbed them of half their authenticity. But through the ruins of time we can trace in some of these Santa Croce frescoes all the qualities of Giotto’s work at an even higher and more mature development than in the best examples at Assisi or Padua. The frescoes of the Bardi chapel tell again the story of St Francis, to which so much of his best power had already been devoted; those of the Peruzzi chapel deal with the lives of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist. Such scenes as the Funeral of St Francis, the Dance of Herodias’s Daughter, and the Resurrection of St John the Evangelist, which have to some extent escaped the disfigurements of the restorer, are among acknowledged classics of the world’s art. The only clues to the dates of any of these works are to be found in the facts that among the figures in the Bardi chapel occurs that of St Louis of Toulouse, who was not canonized till 1317, therefore the painting must be subsequent to that year, and that the “Dance of Salome” must have been painted before 1331, when it was copied by the Lorenzetti at Siena. The only other extant works of Giotto at Florence are a fine “Crucifix,” not undisputed, at San Marco, and the majestic but somewhat heavy altar-piece of the Madonna, probably an early work, which is placed in the Academy beside a more primitive Madonna supposed to be the work of Cimabue.
Towards the end of Giotto’s life we escape again from confused legend, and from the tantalizing record of works which have not survived for us to verify, into the region of authentic document and fact. It appears that Giotto had come under the notice of Duke Charles of Calabria, son of King Robert of Naples, during the visits of the duke to Florence which took place between 1326 and 1328, in which year he died. Soon afterwards Giotto must have gone to King Robert’s court at Naples, where he was enrolled as an honoured guest and member of the household by a royal decree dated the 20th of January 1330. Another document shows him to have been still at Naples two years later. Tradition says much about the friendship of the king for the painter and the freedom of speech and jest allowed him; much also of the works he carried out at Naples in the Castel Nuovo, the Castel dell’ Uovo, and the church and convent of Sta Chiara. Not a trace of these works remains; and others which later criticism have claimed for him in a hall which formerly belonged to the convent of Sta Chiara have been proved not to be his.
Meantime Giotto had been advancing, not only in years and worldly fame, but in prosperity. He was married young, and had, so far as is recorded, three sons, Francesco, Niccola and Donato, and three daughters, Bice, Caterina and Lucia. He had added by successive purchases to the plot of land inherited from his father at Vespignano. His fellow-citizens of all occupations and degrees delighted to honour him. And now, in his sixty-eighth year (if we accept the birth-date 1266/7), on his return from Naples by way of Gaeta, he received the final and official testimony to the esteem in which he was held at Florence. By a solemn decree of the Priori on the 12th of April 1334, he was appointed master of the works of the cathedral of Sta Reparata (later and better known as Sta Maria del Fiore) and official architect of the city walls and the towns within her territory. What training as a practical architect his earlier career had afforded him we do not know, but his interest in the art from the beginning is made clear by the carefully studied architectural backgrounds of many of his frescoes. Dying on the 8th of January 1336 (old style 1337), Giotto only enjoyed his new dignities for two years. But in the course of them he had found time not only to make an excursion to Milan, on the invitation of Azzo Visconti and with the sanction of his own government, but to plan two great architectural works at Florence and superintend the beginning of their execution, namely the west front of the cathedral and its detached campanile or bell-tower. The unfinished enrichments of the cathedral front were stripped away in a later age. The foundation-stone of the Campanile was laid with solemn ceremony in the presence of a great concourse of magistrates and people on the 18th of July 1334. Its lower courses seem to have been completed from Giotto’s design, and the first course of its sculptured ornaments (the famous series of primitive Arts and Industries) actually by his own hand, before his death. It is not clear what modifications of his design were made by Andrea Pisano, who was appointed to succeed him, or again by Francesco Talenti, to whom the work was next entrusted; but the incomparable structure as we now see it stands justly in the world’s esteem as the most fitting monument to the genius who first conceived and directed it.
The art of painting, as re-created by Giotto, was carried on throughout Italy by his pupils and successors with little change or development for nearly a hundred years, until a new impulse was given to art by the combined influences of naturalism and classicism in the hands of men like Donatello and Masaccio. Most of the anecdotes related of the master are probably inaccurate in detail, but the general character both as artist and man which tradition has agreed in giving him can never be assailed. He was from the first a kind of popular hero. He is celebrated by the poet Petrarch and by the historian Villani. He is made the subject of tales and anecdotes by Boccaccio and by Franco Sacchetti. From these notices, as well as from Vasari, we gain a distinct picture of the man, as one whose nature was in keeping with his country origin; whose sturdy frame and plain features corresponded to a character rather distinguished for shrewd and genial strength than for sublimer or more ascetic qualities; a master craftsman, to whose strong combining and inventing powers nothing came amiss; conscious of his own deserts, never at a loss either in the things of art or in the things of life, and equally ready and efficient whether he has to design the scheme of some great spiritual allegory in colour or imperishable monument in stone, or whether he has to show his wit in the encounter of practical jest and repartee. From his own hand we have a contribution to literature which helps to substantiate this conception of his character. A large part of Giotto’s fame as painter was won in the service of the Franciscans, and in the pictorial celebration of the life and ordinances of
