Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu/811

PAINTING 797 note in his day, but in no respect a regener- ator of art ; and Guido da Siena, an artist evincing some independence of feeling, and once supposed to have preceded him, is now believed to have been his contemporary or suc- cessor. Tuscany, at any rate, was the seat of this revival, and for upward of two centuries the Tuscan schools maintained their ascendan- cy in Italy. Neither Cimabue nor Guido ad- vanced much beyond the Byzantine traditions, and the chief merit of the former undoubtedly consists in the fact that he discovered and fos- tered the genius of Giotto di Bondone, the first great painter of modern times, and the true re- generator of the art. With the commencement of the 14th century, the date of this master's first works of importance, the history of Italian painting properly commences ; and in tracing its development each of the principal schools will be noticed in succession. The subject has already been treated at some length under the head of FKESCO PAINTING, which formed the most important branch of the art in the 14th and 15th centuries; and for the characteristics and chief productions of individual painters the reader is referred to their biographies in this work. The Tuscan schools, comprising the Sienese, Pisan, and Florentine, were in the 15th century merged in the last named, of which Giotto was the founder. Previous to his time the only real advance in painting was the sub- stitution of the human figure for its mere type or symbol. Giotto made the second great step of progress by rejecting the dark coloring which his predecessors had retained from their By- zantine models, and introducing that which was paler and more natural. His compositions also exhibit freer conceptions of grouping, and his figures more action and variety of position, the result doubtless of the new ideas of form suggested by the works of Nicolo Pisano. He painted in the chief cities of Italy from Naples to Milan, and his mature works, such as the frescoes in the chapel of the Arena at Padua and in the Franciscan church at Assisi, retain no traces of the Byzantine style. His followers and imitators, commonly known as the Qiottes- chi, for the most part confined themselves to the reproduction of the models left by their master, but some pursued the path he had open- ed to them with results beneficial to the pro- gress of art. Of the latter class were Tommaso di Stefano, called Giottino, Taddeo Gaddi, and Andrea Orcagna, the last of whom has been considered superior in dignity and grandeur to Giotto himself. Contemporary with Giotto,, and scarcely less famous, were Simone Memmi of the Sienese school, the characteristics of which seem to have been force of expression and a tendency toward idealism ; Pietro and Andrea di Lorenzo, known as the Lorenzetti, and Buffalmacco, of humorous memory, whose exploits as related by Boccaccio have survived almost every relic of his pencil. Other painters of the period were Angelo Gaddi, the son of Taddeo; Spinello Aretino; Cennino Cennini, author of the oldest Italian treatise on paint- ing; and Francesco da Volterra. None of these advanced much beyond the point reached by Giotto, and at the close of the 14th century his influence was discernible not in Tuscany alone, but throughout Italy and even beyond the Alps. But painting was still in a very undevel- oped state. Portraiture was rarely practised, landscape painting as a branch of art was un- thought of, and no true standard of form had been established. The purposes to which the art was applied were almost wholly religious, and when subjects from pagan mythology or classic history were introduced, it was to illustrate the truth of Christian revelation or the doctrines of moral theology. Believing that they shared with the clergy the task of instructing the people, the artists aimed at an impressive representation of their subject rather than at technical skill; and on this account their art, imperfect and conventional as it was, exhibits an earnestness and direct- ness of purpose to which the works produced during the splendid era of Kaphael can lay no claim. In the 15th century painting advanced very considerably, and toward its close Flor- ence, under the munificent sway of the Medici, became one of the most splendid art capitals of any age. Pietro della Francesca and Paolo Uccello developed the science of perspective, and Masolino da Panicale that of chiaroscuro. The productions of Lorenzo Ghiberti, the sculptor of the famous gates of San Giovanni in Florence, also gave new vigor to the imita- tive principles established by Giotto ; and to his influence perhaps the peculiar excellence of Florentine art may be traced. But to Ma- saccio, who discarded the conventional types of the human form and made his studies directly from life, is due the credit of establishing the great era of the pictorial art of this centu- ry; and until near the time of Raphael his conceptions of form remained the standard. Contemporary with or immediately succeed- ing him were Fra Angelico da Fiesole, less dis- tinguished for any external quality of art than for the deep religious sentiment of his works ; The profligate Filippo Lippi, one of the earli- est painters of the naturalistic as distinguished from the mystical school, as that class of mas- ters has been called who made religion the end and object of their art ; Benozzo Gozzoli ; Filippino Lippi ; Antonio Pollajuolo, the first who studied the dead subject for the purposes of design ; Domenico Ghirlandaio, the master of Michel Angelo; Cosimo Rosselli, Sandro Botticelli, Luca Signorelli, Andrea Verocchio, and Andrea Castagno, the first Florentine master who practised oil painting after the manner of the Van Eycks. With Leonardo da Vinci, a master accomplished in many arts be- sides painting, begins another epoch, in which Masaccio's conceptions of form were combined with more forcible and dramatic composition and clearer notions of local color and chia- roscuro, as illustrated in the famous "Last