Part 4

From the same church in Pisa comes Giotto’s _St. Francis of Assisi receiving the Stigmata_ (No. 1312). According to the descriptive account handed down to us by the unveracious Vasari, Giotto (1266-1337) was originally a shepherd boy whose latent talent was recognised by the discerning Cimabue, who forthwith took him as his pupil and taught him how to paint, the boy’s genius enabling him early to surpass his master. Although it would be rash unquestioningly to accept this archaic production as an authentic work by Giotto, it is one which any national collection would treasure. It depicts the supreme event in the life of St. Francis, when during his vision virtue passed from the wounded hands, the wounded feet, and the wounded side of the Christ into the same parts of the saint’s body. In the predella are three scenes from the life of St. Francis: (_a_) _Pope Innocent III. dreaming that St. Peter reveals to him that unless the Franciscan Order is founded the Church_ (typified here by the Church of S. John Lateran in Rome) _will fall down_; (_b_) _The Pope founding the Order_; and (_c_) _St. Francis, wearing the brown robes of his Order, and preaching to the birds_: “Whenas St. Francis spake these words to them, those birds began all of them to open their beaks, and stretch their necks, and spread their wings, and reverently bend their heads down to the ground, and by their acts and by their songs to show that the Holy Father gave them joy exceeding great.”

THE GIOTTESQUES

Four school pictures (Nos. 1313, 1315-1317) illustrate the example set by Giotto, who influenced very strongly indeed all art-manifestation during the fourteenth century, an age when the human body was denied all intrinsic significance. His profound feeling, gay colour, high dramatic power, and sense of form mark the emancipation of Italian art from the rigid formalism of the Byzantine manner. He discovered a style which was admirably suited to the spirit of his time, and developed for his own purposes a sense of perspective which he employed with considerable effect, although he never really found a scientific statement of the artistic principles which he instinctively perceived. His indefatigable energy and innate genius enabled him to distance his rivals and to bequeath to his countrymen a heritage which profoundly affected the art of Italy.

Foremost among his followers, who imitated his mannerisms without understanding the full significance of his ideas, was Taddeo Gaddi (1300?-1366), to whom are assigned in the official Catalogue the predella pictures (No. 1302) of (_a_) _The Death of St. John the Baptist_, (_b_) _Calvary_, and (_c_) _Judas Iscariot_. Taddeo Gaddi, a painter and architect, was the godson and pupil of Giotto as well as the pupil of his father, Gaddo Gaddi. Taddeo’s desire to give suitable expression to each of his figures often resulted, as in that of the daughter of Herodias in the second of these panels, in exaggeration.

Taddeo’s son, Agnolo Gaddi (1333-1396), who was described by Ruskin as “rather stupid in religious matters and high art,” may be the painter of the _Annunciation_ (No. 1301), in which we see the Virgin seated in a loggia to the right of the picture. The Archangel Gabriel announces, by the gesture of the right hand, that the Virgin shall be the Mother of the Christ. God the Father is shown in the heavens. Notice the gold background and the mosaics of the loggia. The mechanical methods and uninspired aims of the Giottesques, the artists who worked during the century which followed the death of Giotto, are well seen in the productions of Lorenzo di Bicci (fl. 1370-1409), his son Bicci di Lorenzo (fl. 1373-1424), and his grandson Neri di Bicci (1419-1491). Neri is represented by a _Madonna and Child_ (No. 1397). He might justly be described as a mere manufacturer of Giottesque pictures to order. He brought art down to the level of a trade, his work being flat and his colour raw and inharmonious.

A _Virgin and Infant Christ_ (No. 1563), inscribed “TVRINVS VANNIS DE PISIS ME PIQSIT P,” is evidently by Turino Vanni (fl. 1390-1398), a rare artist of this group of Florentine painters. The brief list of his pictures might be increased by having added to it a few panels at Pisa and Assisi, which are erroneously ascribed to Buffalmacco.

Andrea Orcagna (1308?-1368?) and his brother Nardo are not represented in the Louvre, but we have a follower of Agnolo Gaddi in Lorenzo Monaco (1370?-1425), who is seen to advantage in his _Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane_ and his _Holy Women preparing the Tomb_ (No. 1348A), which is inscribed “ANNO DÑI 1408,” and was formerly attributed to Gentile da Fabriano. Lorenzo Monaco is officially credited with a triple picture (No. 1348) of (_a_) _St. Agnes_ with her lamb and a martyr’s palm branch; (_b_) _St. Lawrence_, the artist’s name-saint, holding in his right hand a book and palm branch, and enthroned on a gridiron, the symbol of his martyrdom; and (_c_) _St. Margaret_, the patron saint of Woman as Mother, standing on the dragon. Lorenzo Monaco, who is reputed to have been the master of Fra Angelico, usually depicts long, slender, and sinuous bodies. Below this picture hangs a small panel, apparently part of the predella of an unidentified altarpiece. It does not seem to be included in the official Catalogue, and has neither a number by which to identify it nor a label to denote its subject or authorship! The picture has apparently never been referred to or described in any article or book. It certainly represents the Emperor Heraclius carrying the True Cross into Jerusalem. The picture appears to have been painted by Giovanni del Ponte (fl. 1385-1437).

Neither Starnina (1354-1408), who took the traditions of Early Florentine painting to Spain, Masolino (fl. 1383-1435), who is rarely met with out of Italy, nor Masaccio (1401-28), who may be said to have vitalised Italian art, is represented in the Louvre. Tommaso Masaccio, the “Hulking Tom” of Browning, gave to Italy and the world the magnificent series of frescoes which still decorate the Brancacci Chapel of the Carmine Church in Florence. He imparted to his figures such natural movement, vivacity of expression, free attitudes, simple draperies, and excellent modelling that he entirely revolutionised the art of Florence. His figures are, as Vasari said, “so lifelike that they seem to live and breathe.” This series of frescoes was studied with enthusiasm by all the great Florentine painters; Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and innumerable other artists derived the greatest possible benefit from them.

FRA ANGELICO

On the threshold of the Renaissance stands Fra Angelico (1387-1455), who was trained in the school of miniaturists and influenced by Lorenzo Monaco and Masaccio. His life was devoted to “the service of God, the benefit of the world, and his duty towards his neighbour,” as Vasari says. He regarded painting as one of the duties of the monastic life, and never began to paint without first kneeling in prayer. His pictures are aspirations towards heaven, while the figures with which he peoples his saintly compositions have faces which show peace, joy, hope, and communion with God. They are clothed in draperies of the purest colours, crowned with glories of burnished gold, but are never dramatic in their action. One of his best easel paintings outside Florence, where alone his art can be adequately studied, is his early _Coronation of the Virgin_ (No. 1290). This imposing, if overcrowded, composition is painted to the glory of God and in honour of the Dominican Order, to which the painter belonged. In the right bottom corner we see St. Agnes with her lamb, next to her St. Catherine with her wheel, above is St. Lawrence with his gridiron, and to the latter’s right St. Peter Martyr in Dominican robes and with wounded head. In the foreground kneels St. Mary Magdalene in red, her box of ointment in her left hand. St. Nicholas with the three golden balls at his feet, St. Thomas Aquinas in Dominican robes and holding the theological book from which rays of golden light issue, St. Louis (Louis IX., King of France), and St. Dominic himself—all help to swell the heavenly company. In the predella, or lower part, of this panel picture are depicted _Scenes from the Life of St. Dominic_, the founder of Fra Angelico’s own Order: (_a_) Pope Innocent III. in his vision sees St. Dominic supporting the falling Church; (_b_) the Pope receives, through the agency of St. Peter and St. Paul who hand him a staff and the Gospel, Divine authority to found the Dominican Order; (_c_) the Saint brings back to life a young noble named Napoleon who had been trampled under foot by a horse; (_d_) Christ in the tomb, the Virgin and St. John; (_e_) St. Dominic challenges heretics whose books are consumed in the fire, while his own book of the true Gospel issues forth unhurt by the action of fire; (_f_) angels descend from heaven to feed the starving monastery of St. Sabina at Rome immediately after St. Dominic has asked a blessing; these two blue-clad figures are among the loveliest of all Fra Angelico’s angelic beings, and perhaps the most inspiring figures in the whole of the Louvre collection; (_g_) the death of the Saint at Bologna and the passing of his soul up to heaven in accordance with the vision of the monk at Brescia. This early Cinquecento panel picture, which was formerly in the Church of S. Domenico at Fiesole, near Florence, was painted before the Beato went to beautify the cells of S. Marco with frescoes. It is one of the best of the primitive pictures in the Louvre.

From the hand of the same saintly painter are the _Adoring Angel_ (no No.), which until 1909 was in the Victor Gay collection, the _Martyrdom of St. Cosmo and St. Damian_ (No. 1293), part of the predella of a dismembered altarpiece, and the large fresco painting of the _Crucifixion_ (No. 1294) which hangs on the Escalier Daru. The latter was purchased, together with Domenico Ghirlandaio’s _Bottle-nosed Man_ (No. 1322, Plate III.), in 1879 for £1960. The _Beheading of St. John the Baptist_ (No. 1291) and the _Resurrection_ (No. 1294A) are unauthentic.

In Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-1498) we have an assistant and follower of Fra Angelico. He worked at different towns in Italy, notably at Montefalco, Orvieto, Florence, San Gimignano, Rome, and Pisa, where he died. Although his earlier work reminds us of Fra Angelico, than whom he is much more dramatic and much less spiritual, in later life he depicts the costumes and life of his time in a more realistic and objective manner. His _Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas_ (No. 1319), which originally hung in the Cathedral at Pisa, deals with a subject often met with in the art of the period. The great Dominican teacher, whom the heathen philosophers, Aristotle on the left, and Plato on the right, recognise as their master in philosophy, is enthroned, his books of theological learning on his knees. At his feet, subdued, is Guillaume de St. Amour, the author of a book entitled _De Periculis Novissimorum Temporum_, in which he exposed the various abuses then prevalent among the mendicants. The dramatic action seen in the lower part of the panel embraces Pope Alexander IV. presiding over the religious council of Agnani, and the envoys of St. Louis (Louis IX. of France) who took steps to end the religious conflicts of 1256. A large altarpiece (No. 1320) representing the _Madonna and Child Enthroned_, _St. Cosmo_, _St. Damian_, _St. Jerome_, _St. John the Baptist_, _St. Francis d’Assisi_, and _St. Lawrence_ in the central panel is also assigned to Benozzo. The frame also contains seven predella pictures, and at either end is the coat of arms of the Medici family.

The great French Museum, which is weaker than the National Gallery, the Berlin Gallery, and certain other national collections in Italian primitives, affords us no example of the art of Andrea del Castagno (fl. 1410-1457), whose compositions are characterised by harsh colour, hard lines, and crude forms. Nor do we find here any painting by that very rare artist, Domenico Veneziano (1400?-1461), who, it has been said, was the first Tuscan artist to work in an oil medium.

PAOLO UCCELLO

Prominent among the masters who were influenced by Donatello, the sculptor, and Lorenzo Ghiberti, the first metal-worker in elegant forms, is Paolo di Dono, generally known as Uccello. His profound study and ultimate discovery of the laws of linear perspective was enhanced by the inquiries into the laws of aerial perspective that Fra Angelico studied so deeply. Paolo Uccello (1397-1475) was a pupil and assistant of Lorenzo Ghiberti, who made the bronze doors for the East Side of the Baptistery at Florence. He gave himself up to the scientific study of perspective, the principles of which he was one of the first to apply to painting, thus rendering incalculable services to art. In his _Battlepiece_ (No. 1273) is seen a mounted soldier in armour with his sword drawn; on the left are horsemen about to charge with couchant lances, while on the right cavalry-men are drawn up awaiting orders, their lances in rest. The correctness of the perspective and the justice of the foreshortenings and the movements of the foot-men in the intervals of the cavalry mark an epoch in art. This is the third and right-hand panel of the series of three battle-pictures which Uccello painted for the Casa Medici (now the Riccardi Palace) in Florence for Cosimo de’ Medici about the year 1457, and not, as the official Catalogue asserts, for the Bartolini family. The best preserved of these three large panel pictures illustrating the _Rout of San Romano in 1432_ is that in the National Gallery (No. 583), while the second or centre panel of the series is now in the Uffizi (No. 52). The Louvre panel is in a deplorable condition, caused by long neglect.

Uccello’s _Portraits of Giotto, Paolo Uccello, Antonio Manetti, and Filippo Brunelleschi_ (No. 1272), whose names are in this order on the panel, is a work of considerable importance, as marking an early stage in the development of portraiture. This picture, which is referred to at some length by Vasari, constitutes a historical document. The Italian chronicler tells us that Uccello “was a person of eccentric character and peculiar habits, but he was a great lover of ability in those of his own art, and, to the end that their memory should remain to posterity, he drew with his own hand on an oblong picture the portraits of five distinguished men, which he kept in his house as a memorial of them. The first of these portraits was that of the painter Giotto, as one who had given light and new life to the art; the second was Filippo di Ser Brunellesco, for architecture; the third was Donatello, for sculpture; the fourth was himself, for perspective and animals; the fifth was his friend Giovanni (_sic_) Manetti, for mathematics. With this philosopher Paolo conferred very frequently, and held continual discourse with him concerning the problems of Euclid.” Manetti’s real Christian name, Antonio, is correctly inscribed on the panel, but is inaccurately given as Giovanni by Vasari and on the official label.

The _St. John the Baptist as a Child_ (No. 1274), which hangs in the Long Gallery, is labelled as a picture of the Florentine school, and catalogued as being by Uccello. It is perhaps by Piero di Cosimo.

We enter on the first period of the coming Renaissance with Fra Filippo Lippi (1406-1469), who was trained in the best school of Florentine painting. He was a pupil of Lorenzo Monaco, came under the influence of Fra Angelico, and was affected by the magic spell of Masaccio, whom he must have seen at work in the Brancacci Chapel. In the latter half of the Quattrocento the cult of love and beauty was rapidly dethroning the more austere ideals of an earlier age. Filippo Lippi’s stormy and romantic career passes into a new phase with his residence at Prato in 1452. Four years later he was appointed Chaplain to the nuns of S. Margherita in that town. The year before his arrival in Prato, Lucrezia and Spinetta, the orphan daughters (aged eighteen and seventeen respectively) of Francesco Buti, had, apparently much against their will, been placed in the Convent, the abbess of which commissioned the Frate to paint a picture of the _Madonna della Cintola_. Lucrezia posed to the painter-chaplain for the figure of the Madonna in that picture. On May 1, 1456, on the occasion of the exhibition of the Holy Girdle of the Virgin, a precious relic still preserved at Prato, the painter bore off Lucrezia out of the safe keeping of the convent. A short summary of these well-known facts is suggested by the view which is put forward in the official Catalogue of the Louvre, to the effect that the _Madonna della Cintola_ is to be identified with the _Nativity_ (No. 1343) in this Gallery. The weight of evidence is against this theory; in fact, this large panel picture has little claim to be regarded as the work of Fra Filippo. One critic has given it as his opinion that the _Nativity_ was begun by Fra Filippo and completed by Fra Diamante, who succeeded him as Chaplain at Prato. Others have attributed the picture to Pesellino, Baldovinetti, and Stefano da Zevio respectively. It seems to show the influence of Andrea del Castagno. The official Catalogue does not indicate the _provenance_ of the picture, although it implies that it came from the Convent at Prato at the time when it was brought to Paris by Napoleon. There can be little doubt that the _Madonna della Cintola_ is the painting thus named which still hangs in the place of honour in the Municipal Gallery at Prato.

The Louvre does, however, possess in the _Madonna and Child with Angels and Two Abbots_ (No. 1344, Plate II.) one of the best of the Frate’s creations, although the colouring has suffered considerably. It is an early work, and was painted about 1437 for the Barbadori Chapel in Santo Spirito. It contains beauty of line, freshness of colour, and much variety in the composition. The cast of the draperies is ample and the motives are novel and bold, the Renaissance background throwing into prominent relief the soulful and ideal figure of the Madonna. The predella panels of this dismembered altarpiece, for which Fra Filippo received forty gold florins, are now in the Accademia at Florence. They depict (_a_) _St. Frediano deviating the Course of the River Serchio_; (_b_) _The Virgin receiving the Announcement of her Coming Decease_; and (_c_) _St. Augustine in his Study_. The _Madonna and Child_ (No. 1345) is only a school picture.

In 1457, the year that Fra Filippo’s son Filippino was born, his household effects and box of colours were seized for debt. He lived on until October 4, 1469, when he died of a sudden and somewhat mysterious illness. The Frate, who is the connecting link between Masaccio, the first blossom, and Raphael, the full flower of Florentine painting, was the master of Botticelli. A small _Madonna and Child_ (No. 1345) has little claim to be regarded as the work of Fra Filippo.

In our attempt to unravel the skein of Italian art in this collection and to sketch its history in strict chronological order we may now consider two small predella panels of (_a_) _St. Francis receiving the Stigmata_ and (_b_) _An Incident in the Life of St. Cosmo and St. Damian_ (No. 1414) by Francesco Pesellino (1422-1457). The former deals with a subject we have already met with in this Gallery (No. 1312); the latter is a new theme. St. Cosmo and St. Damian were wealthy men and spent their time in doing charitable works as doctors without monetary reward, and are thus sometimes known as “the Holy Money-despisers.” According to the legend here represented, a Christian was one day praying to these saints in the church dedicated to them in Rome in the fervent hope that he might be healed of cancer in the leg. While thus at prayer he imagined that his leg was amputated and replaced by that of a dead Moor. In this small panel the saints are shown in the act of placing the black man’s limb on the body of the Christian, who, no doubt, will before long be healed. St. Cosmo and St. Damian being patron saints of the Medici family are often met with in Florentine art. We have already in this collection looked at a picture (No. 1293) by Fra Angelico illustrating their martyrdom. Pesellino, who studied the art of Fra Angelico, Masaccio, and Domenico Veneziano, and followed somewhat closely in the steps of Fra Filippo Lippi, can hardly have painted the small three-panel picture officially ascribed to him of (_a_) _The Dead Christ_, (_b_) _A Cardinal supporting the Bodies of Two Men who have been hanged_, and (_c_) _A Cardinal appearing in a Vision to a Bishop_. This small work (No. 1415), which was formerly in the Campana collection, has been claimed by Dr. Venturi and Mr. Berenson to be by the Umbrian artist, Fiorenzo di Lorenzo.

The _Madonna and Child and St. Augustin, St. John the Baptist, St. Anthony, and St. Francis_ (No. 1661), which is officially catalogued as being by an Unknown Florentine artist, and has been variously attributed to Andrea del Castagno, Fra Filippo Lippi, and Andrea Verrocchio, may be assigned to that nameless contemporary of Pesellino whose artistic personality was a few years ago constructed by Mrs. Berenson under the name of “Compagno di Pesellino.”

The art of the Umbrian artist, Piero dei Franceschi (1415?-1492), who is so well represented in the National Gallery, is not seen at the Louvre, where, however, a _Madonna and Child_ passes under his name. This panel (the official number of which is given in the Catalogue as 1300B and on the frame as 1300A) was formerly in the Duchâtel collection before passing into that of the Duc de la Trémoïlle, from whom it was purchased in 1898 for £5200 by the _Société des Amis du Louvre_. It was recognised over twelve years ago by M. Ary Renan as the work of Alessio Baldovinetti (14271499), who, like Piero dei Franceschi, was formed on Domenico Veneziano, and was also influenced by the discoveries and methods of Uccello.

Crowe and Cavalcaselle also had made that attribution before the question was taken up by Mr. Berenson, who on morphological and æsthetic grounds unhesitatingly ascribes it to Baldovinetti. “Compared with Baldovinetti,” writes Mr. Berenson, “Piero dei Franceschi is sterner and harder and more monumental. Piero’s Madonnas have a fixed and severe physiognomy, massive structure and immobile pose; never a smile, never a touch of tenderness.” How different from all this is the _Madonna_ by Baldovinetti before us, with her “refined features and her pensive gaze of adoration—a look that unveils her inner life, a look that will soon develop into the mystery which we feel in the face of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.” Vasari tells us that Baldovinetti was “extremely careful and exact in his work, and of all the minutiæ which Mother Nature is capable of presenting, he took pains to be the close imitator. He delighted in the representation of landscape, which he depicted with the utmost exactitude; thus we find in his pictures rivers, bridges, rocks, herbs, fruits, paths, fields, cities, castles, sands, and objects innumerable of the same kind.” A goodly number of these are included in the background of this picture.