ART. V.-1. Giotto and his Works in Padua; being an explanatory notice of the Series of Woodcuts executed for the Arundel Society, after the Frescoes in the Arena Chapel. By JOHN RUSKIN. Parts I. and II. 1854-1855. 2. The Life of Giovanni Angelico da Fiesole. Translated from the Italian of Vasari, by Giovanni Aubrey Bezzi, with Notes and Illustrations. 1850.

AMONG the thirteen hundred works of art which, this year, constitute the exhibition of the Royal Academy, there are few which have attracted more general attention than the fine picture by Mr. F. Leighton, a young artist, said to be only twenty-four years of age.

The subject chosen by the artist, namely, the Procession of Cimabue with his picture of the Madonna dei Rucellai, It is one of the most interesting events in the history of art. celebrates the commencement of a new era, when Italian art began to emancipate itself from the trammels of the Greek Theological School of Painting. Cimabue's Madonna dei Rucellai contained the largest figure that had then been painted in Medieval Italy; but it was less distinguished by its size than by its deviation from the line and rule manner of the Byzantine School, and its approach to the more natural and life-like style of the moderns. The story of the picture will be found in the interesting narrative of Vasari. When first exhibited to the people, who thronged in crowds to see it, their admiration was expressed in so lively a manner that the locality where the artist resided was, according to Vasari, thenceforth called "Borgo Allegri." On the completion of the picture, it was borne to the place of its destination, the Rucellai Chapel, in Santa Maria Novella, in triumphant but solemn procession; for the admiration of the people for the skill of the artist was tempered by religious veneration for the subject of the picture. Mr. Leighton represents the procession in its progress through the streets of Florence. Immediately in front of Cimabue's Madonna, which is borne aloft, like a sacred banner, walks with a calm step the acute and observant Cimabue, leading by the hand his beloved and youthful pupil Giotto, fresh from the mountain pastures of Vespignano. A group of artists, the most distinguished of the day, follow the picture, which was reputed to be the most wonderful artistic production of the age. Among the artists are the intimate friends of Cimabue, Gaddo Gaddi the painter, and Andrea Tafi the Mosaicist, both followers of the Byzantine School; the aged Niccola Pisano, the apostle of

progress, whose study of the antique laid the foundation of the restoration of art in Italy; Arnolfo de' Lapi, the famous Florentine architect, and the merry and jest-loving Buffalmacco are also there; while Dante, leaning against a wall contemplates the procession with cold and ascetic air. A band of musicians march in front of Cimabue and Giotto, and children strew flowers on the path of the artists; beautiful and expressive female forms add variety and interest to the scene.

As it is not our purpose to discuss the artistic merits of this remarkable picture, we shall merely observe that it is painted according to the recognised principles of art, and has nothing Pre-Raphaelite about it but the subject. We might add that the picture has been purchased by her Majesty, for the sum of £600, a sufficient guarantee for its merits.

The theme of the picture so skilfully carried out by the painter is that which has induced us to mention it here. It is the commemoration in the nineteenth century of the great art-movement of the thirteenth. It records the triumph of mind over matter, of the vivifying influence of nature over the cold formalism of the Byzantine School. The innovation was accepted, as with one voice, by Tuscany; the Florentine Cimabue, and the progressive schools of Guido da Siena, and of Giunta da Pisa enjoyed the art-patronage of the Church and of the wealthy of their own times, and their names have descended to posterity as the revivers of painting in Italy.

Judging of the merits of Cimabue by those of the artists who succeeded him, the admiration expressed by his contemporaries for his paintings appears to us exaggerated; it is only when his works are compared with those of the Byzantine School in Italy that we can really appreciate his talent. More fortunate than Guido da Siena or than Giunta da Pisa, Cimabue was immortalised by Dante and by Vasari; but perhaps his greatest claim to distinction rests on his having been the master of Giotto di Bondone.

Giotto was born of poor parents at Vespignano, fourteen miles north of Florence. In early youth he is said to have been remarkable for his intelligence and vivacity. While occupied as a shepherd boy he made acquaintance with nature and indulged his inclination for art by sketching, with a pointed stone upon the smooth face of a rock, the sheep which composed his flock. While thus employed he was seen by Cimabue, who struck with his talent, obtained his father's permission to take the boy to Florence and educate him as a painter. Giotto was then only ten

years of age. His future career justified the expectations formed of his powers; he became not only the first painter of his day, but a great architect and sculptor. "He was most excellent in all the arts," says Ghiberti, "even in that of statuary.'

During the middle ages the sister arts of architecture, painting, and sculpture were, in Europe at least, more closely united than at present. Painting and sculpture, though religious in their aim, were almost entirely of a decorative character, and strictly subservient to architecture; hence the three arts were frequently practised by the same individual. And what could be more rational and proper than for the artist who erected the building to design the decoration? Who could tell so well as he, how to arrange the figure-groups and colour, so as to produce the best effect in the building which they were to ornament? The edifice was first built, then decorated in a suitable manner; this was setting to work in the right way. Giotto was an architect, and in this capacity he decorated many noble buildings with paintings, and one with sculpture. Yet it is not, altogether, for his skill in painting, architecture, and sculpture, that Giotto became celebrated, the bold innovations which, after the example of Cimabue, he introduced into the first of these arts, proclaim him one of the master-minds of his time. Raised from the sheepfold to the proud pre-eminence of first in art, Giotto drew his earliest inspirations from nature; and his genius could not be restrained by the cold conventionalities of the Byzantine painters. Rejecting their formalism and servile imitation of preceding works, while he preserved the early traditional treatment of his theme, he effected a complete revolution in art. His influence was felt not only by his immediate followers, but his name, eclipsing that of Cimabue, has descended to posterity as the founder of the Florentine School of Painting. Rosinit calls him the restorer of painting in Europe, after the Greeks and Romans; and he considers that Giotto's greatest glory consisted in the acknowledgement of posterity, that the praises of Dante were a just tribute to his merits, and not the effect of partiality.

The fame of Giotto spread throughout Italy, which was

* Giotto's principal work in architecture was the beautiful Campanile or Bell-Tower at Florence; some of the bas-reliefs of which were executed by his own hand. Among his other architectural works may be mentioned the Castel dell' Uovo, at Naples, and the fortress of Agosta at Lucca, and the design for the façade of the Duomo of Florence.

† Storia della Pittura, Tom. II., p. 47.

filled with his works. He travelled through the length and breadth of the land, from Verona to Gaeta and Naples, from Padua to Pisa, from Pisa to Florence, leaving everywhere evidence of his powers. Many of these noble works have perished, and the few which remain have, like the books spared by the Sybil from the flames, increased in value in consequence of the destruction of the others. The most complete series of the works of Giotto now existing is in the chapel of the Arena at Padua. This, says the report of the Arundel Society," is a work of the highest importance in the history of painting; being at the time of its execution probably the most complete manifestation of the powers of the art which Italy had yet seen." Until recently time had dealt leniently with these fine relics of the middle ages, but a violent storm which happened some ten or twelve years ago, penetrated the roof of the building, injured some of the paintings, and the whole, from the delapidated condition of the building, are now threatened with decay. To rescue these valuable examples of early Italian art from oblivion, the Arundel Society have caused copies of them to be made by Mr. W. Olliver Williams, for the purpose of being engraved. Twenty-two of the subjects, carefully executed on wood, are already completed, and are now in the hands of the subscribers. They are accompanied by a highly interesting account of Giotto and his works from the eloquent pen of Mr. Ruskin.

The history of the great painter is soon told, for the materials are scanty and apocryphal. His shepherd life at Vespignano; his famous drawing of the circle, so perfect that "più tondo che l'O di Giotto " passed into a proverb; his intimacy with Dante; his presence in various cities, testified by his works rather than by any authentic biography; and a few anecdotes of good-humoured jests, form the sum total of all that we know of his life. Yet from these some estimate may be formed of his character. Let us hear what Mr. Ruskin says on the subject:

By comparing this general colour of the reputation of Giotto with the actual character of his designs, there cannot remain the smallest doubt that his mind was one of the most healthy, kind, and active, that ever informed a human frame. His love of beauty was entirely free from weakness; his love of truth untinged by severity; his industry constant, without impatience; his workmanship accurate, without formalism; his temper serene, and yet playful; his imagination exhaustless, without extravagance; and his faith firm, without superstition. I do not know in the annals of art such another

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example of happy, practical, unerring, and benevolent power. am certain that this is the estimate of his character which must be arrived at by an attentive study of his works and of the few data which remain respecting his life."-pp. 17, 18.

Mr. Ruskin then gives a brief sketch of the relation which Giotto held to the artists who preceded and followed him, and of the general course of his labours in Italy; then, in spite of his plea of incompetence, we have an elaborate analysis of Giotto's artistic character.

The early works of Giotto were, like those of his master Cimabue, formed on the Byzantine model, and at first with the objective treatment common to that school. His mind soaring above this "line and rule" system, he treated his subjects with a novelty and freedom, a feeling for truth and nature, which obtained for him the enthusiastic admiration of his contemporaries, and the respect of posterity. Boccaccio and Giovanni Villani bear testimony to his great powers of imitation and of drawing from the life, and Vasari_relates that Petrarch bequeathed to Francesco di Carrara, Lord of Padua, as the only object he possessed worthy of his acceptance, a Madonna by Giotto, of which, he remarked, the ignorant would not comprehend the beauty, but before which the masters of the art would stand mute with astonishment.

According to Mr. Ruskin the innovations of Giotto were "the introduction A. of gayer or lighter colours, B. of broader masses, C. of more careful imitation of nature than his predecessors." (p. 21.) The first-mentioned innovation was adopted, if not begun by Cimabue, in whom also orginated a peculiarity in the drawing of the features. Instead of the spectral stare" of the Byzantine school, Giotto substituted long, narrow eyes, very near together. Both these variations, which were perceptible even to the uneducated eye, were repeated by his followers during the succeeding hundred years: so much easier is it to copy the mannerism of a painter than his beauties.

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With regard to the second innovation, it may be observed that much of Giotto's breadth of effect was the result of the study of the antique and of the works of Niccolà Pisano. It has been remarked that his figures, both in the attitudes and disposition of the folds of the drapery, which are few and large, have somewhat of a statuesque effect; and his compositions appear to be arranged on the principle of the