GIORDANO

giordano, luca (1632-1705), italian painter, was born in naples, son of a very indifferent painter, antonio, who imparted to him the first rudiments of drawing. nature predestined him for the art, and at the age of eight he painted a cherub into one of his father's pictures, a feat which was at once noised abroad, and induced the viceroy of naples to recommend the child to ribera. his father afterwards took him to rome, to study under pietro da cortona. he acquired the nickname of luca fa-presto (luke work-fast). one might suppose this nickname to be derived merely from the almost miraculous celerity with which from an early age and throughout his life he handled the brush; but it is said to have had a more express origin. the father, we are told, poverty-stricken and greedy of gain, was perpetually urging his boy to exertion with the phrase, "luca, fa presto." the youth obeyed his parent to the letter, and would actually not so much as pause to snatch a hasty meal, but received into his mouth, while he still worked on, the food which his father's hand supplied. he copied nearly twenty times the "battle of constantine" by julio romano, and with proportionate frequency several of the great works of raphael and michelangelo. his rapidity, which belonged as much to invention as to mere handiwork, and his versatility, which enabled him to imitate other painters deceptively, earned for him two other epithets, "the thunderbolt" (fulmine), and "the proteus," of painting. he shortly visited all the main seats of the italian school of art, and formed for himself a style combining in a certain measure the ornamental pomp of paul veronese and the contrasting compositions and large schemes of chiaroscuro of pietro da cortona. he was noted also for lively and showy colour. returning to naples, and accepting every sort of commission by which money was to be made, he practised his art with so much applause that charles ii. of spain towards 1687 invited him over to madrid, where he remained thirteen years. giordano was very popular at the spanish court, being a sprightly talker along with his other marvellously facile gifts, and the king created him a cavaliere. one anecdote of his rapidity of work is that the queen of spain having one day made some inquiry about his wife, he at once showed her majesty what the lady was like by painting her portrait into the picture on which he was engaged. soon after the death of charles in 1700 giordano, gorged with wealth, returned to naples. he spent large sums in acts of munificence, and was particularly liberal to his poorer brethren of the art. he again visited various parts of italy, and died in naples on the 12th of january 1705, his last words being "o napoli, sospiro mio" (o naples, my heart's love!). one of his maxims was that the good painter is the one whom the public like, and that the public are attracted more by colour than by design. giordano had an astonishing readiness and facility, in spite of the general commonness and superficiality of his performances. he left many works in rome, and far more in naples. of the latter one of the most renowned is "christ expelling the traders from the temple," in the church of the padri girolamini, a colossal work, full of expressive lazzaroni; also the frescoes of s. martino, and those in the tesoro della certosa, including the subject of "moses and the brazen serpent"; and the cupola-paintings in the church of s. brigida, which contains the artist's own tomb. in spain he executed a surprising number of works,--continuing in the escorial the series commenced by cambiasi, and painting frescoes of the "triumphs of the church," the "genealogy and life of the madonna," the stories of moses, gideon, david and solomon, and the "celebrated women of scripture," all works of large dimensions. his pupils, aniello rossi and matteo pacelli, assisted him in spain. in madrid he worked more in oil-colour, a nativity there being one of his best productions. other superior examples are the "judgment of paris" in the berlin museum, and "christ with the doctors in the temple," in the corsini gallery of rome. in florence, in his closing days, he painted the cappella corsini, the galleria riccardi and other works. in youth he etched with considerable skill some of his own paintings, such as the "slaughter of the priests of baal." he also painted much on the crystal borderings of looking-glasses, cabinets, &c., seen in many italian palaces, and was, in this form of art, the master of pietro garofolo. his best pupil, in painting of the ordinary kind, was paolo de matteis. bellori, in his _vite de' pittori moderni_, is a leading authority regarding luca giordano. p. benvenuto (1882) has written a work on the riccardi paintings. giorgione (1477-1510), italian painter, was born at castelfranco in 1477. in contemporary documents he is always called (according to the venetian manner of pronunciation and spelling) zorzi, zorzo or zorzon of castelfranco. a tradition, having its origin in the 17th century, represented him as the natural son of some member of the great local family of the barbarelli, by a peasant girl of the neighbouring village of vedelago; consequently he is commonly referred to in histories and catalogues under the name of giorgio barbarelli or barbarella. this tradition has, however, on close examination been proved baseless. on the other hand mention has been found in a contemporary document of an earlier zorzon, a native of vedelago, living in castelfranco in 1460. vasari, who wrote before the barbarella legend had sprung up, says that giorgione was of very humble origin. it seems probable that he was simply the son or grandson of the afore-mentioned zorzon the elder; that the after-claim of the barbarelli to kindred with him was a mere piece of family vanity, very likely suggested by the analogous case of leonardo da vinci; and that, this claim once put abroad, the peasant-mother of vedelago was invented on the ground of some dim knowledge that his real progenitors came from that village. of the facts of his life we are almost as meagrely informed as of the circumstances of his birth. the little city, or large fortified village, for it is scarcely more, of castelfranco in the trevisan stands in the midst of a rich and broken plain at some distance from the last spurs of the venetian alps. from the natural surroundings of giorgione's childhood was no doubt derived his ideal of pastoral scenery, the country of pleasant copses, glades, brooks and hills amid which his personages love to wander or recline with lute and pipe. how early in boyhood he went to venice we do not know, but internal evidence supports the statement of ridolfi that he served his apprenticeship there under giovanni bellini; and there he made his fame and had his home. that his gifts were early recognized we know from the facts, recorded in contemporary documents, that in 1500, when he was only twenty-three (that is if vasari gives rightly the age at which he died), he was chosen to paint portraits of the doge agostino barberigo and the condottiere consalvo ferrante; that in 1504 he was commissioned to paint an altarpiece in memory of matteo costanzo in the cathedral of his native town, castelfranco; that in 1507 he received at the order of the council of ten part payment for a picture (subject not mentioned) on which he was engaged for the hall of the audience in the ducal palace; and that in 1507-1508 he was employed, with other artists of his own generation, to decorate with frescoes the exterior of the newly rebuilt fondaco dei tedeschi or german merchants' hall at venice, having already done similar work on the exterior of the casa soranzo, the casa grimani alii servi and other venetian palaces. vasari gives also as an important event in giorgione's life, and one which had influence on his work, his meeting with leonardo da vinci on the occasion of the tuscan master's visit to venice in 1500. in september or october 1510 he died of the plague then raging in the city, and within a few days of his death we find the great art-patroness and amateur, isabella d'este, writing from mantua and trying in vain to secure for her collection a night-piece by his hand of which the fame had reached her. all accounts agree in representing giorgione as a personage of distinguished and romantic charm, a great lover, a great musician, made to enjoy in life and to express in art to the uttermost the delight, the splendour, the sensuous and imaginative grace and fulness, not untinged with poetic melancholy, of the venetian existence of his time. they represent him further as having made in venetian painting an advance analogous to that made in tuscan painting by leonardo more than twenty years before; that is as having released the art from the last shackles of archaic rigidity and placed it in possession of full freedom and the full mastery of its means. he also introduced a new range of subjects. besides altarpieces and portraits he painted pictures that told no story, whether biblical or classical, or if they professed to tell such, neglected the action and simply embodied in form and colour moods of lyrical or romantic feeling, much as a musician might embody them in sounds. innovating with the courage and felicity of genius, he had for a time an overwhelming influence on his contemporaries and immediate successors in the venetian school, including titian, sebastian del piombo, the elder palma, cariani and the two campagnolas, and not a little even on seniors of long-standing fame such as giovanni bellini. his name and work have exercised, and continue to exercise, no less a spell on posterity. but to identify and define, among the relics of his age and school, precisely what that work is, and to distinguish it from the kindred work of other men whom his influence inspired, is a very difficult matter. there are inclusive critics who still claim for giorgione nearly every painting of the time that at all resembles his manner, and there are exclusive critics who pare down to some ten or a dozen the list of extant pictures which they will admit to be actually his. to name first those which are either certain or command the most general acceptance, placing them in something like an approximate and probable order of date. in the uffizi at florence are two companion pieces of the "trial of moses" and the "judgment of solomon," the latter the finer and better preserved of the two, which pass, no doubt justly, as typical works of giorgione's youth, and exhibit, though not yet ripely, his special qualities of colour-richness and landscape romance, the peculiar facial types of his predilection, with the pure form of forehead, fine oval of cheek, and somewhat close-set eyes and eyebrows, and the intensity of that still and brooding sentiment with which, rather than with dramatic life and movement, he instinctively invests his figures. probably the earliest of the portraits by common consent called his is the beautiful one of a young man at berlin. his earliest devotional picture would seem to be the highly finished "christ bearing his cross" (the head and shoulders only, with a peculiarly serene and high-bred cast of features) formerly at vicenza and now in the collection of mrs gardner at boston. other versions of this picture exist, and it has been claimed that one in private possession at vienna is the true original: erroneously in the judgment of the present writer. another "christ bearing the cross," with a jew dragging at the rope round his neck, in the church of san rocco at venice, is a ruined but genuine work, quoted by vasari and ridolfi, and copied with the name of giorgione appended, by van dyck in that master's chatsworth sketch-book. (vasari gives it to giorgione in his first and to titian in his second edition.) the composition of a lost early picture of the birth of paris is preserved in an engraving of the "teniers gallery" series, and an old copy of part of the same picture is at budapest. in the giovanelli palace at venice is that fascinating and enigmatical mythology or allegory, known to the anonimo morelliano, who saw it in 1530 in the house of gabriel vendramin, simply as "the small landscape with the storm, the gipsy woman and the soldier"; the picture is conjecturally interpreted by modern authorities as illustrating a passage in statius which describes the meeting of adrastus with hypsipyle when she was serving as nurse with the king of nemea. still belonging to the earlier part of the painter's brief career is a beautiful, virginally pensive judith at st petersburg, which passed under various alien names, as raphael, moretto, &c., until its kindred with the unquestioned work of giorgione was in late years firmly established. the great castelfranco altarpiece, still, in spite of many restorations, one of the most classically pure and radiantly impressive works of renaissance painting, may be taken as closing the earlier phase of the young master's work (1504). it shows the virgin loftily enthroned on a plain, sparely draped stone structure with st francis and a warrior saint (st liberale) standing in attitudes of great simplicity on either side of the foot of the throne, a high parapet behind them, and a beautiful landscape of the master's usual type seen above it. nearly akin to this masterpiece, not in shape or composition but by the type of the virgin and the very bellinesque st francis, is the altarpiece of the madonna with st francis and st roch at madrid. of the master's fully ripened time is the fine and again enigmatical picture formerly in the house of taddeo contarini at venice, described by contemporary witnesses as the "three philosophers," and now, on slender enough grounds, supposed to represent evander showing aeneas the site of troy as narrated in the eighth aeneid. the portrait of a knight of malta in the uffizi at florence has more power and authority, if less sentiment, than the earlier example at berlin, and may be taken to be of the master's middle time. most entirely central and typical of all giorgione's extant works is the sleeping venus at dresden, first recognized by morelli, and now universally accepted, as being the same as the picture seen by the anonimo and later by ridolfi in the casa marcello at venice. an exquisitely pure and severe rhythm of line and contour chastens the sensuous richness of the presentment: the sweep of white drapery on which the goddess lies, and of glowing landscape that fills the space behind her, most harmoniously frame her divinity. it is recorded that the master left this piece unfinished and that the landscape, with a cupid which subsequent restoration has removed, were completed after his death by titian. the picture is the prototype of titian's own venus at the uffizi and of many more by other painters of the school; but none of them attained the quality of the first exemplar. of such small scenes of mixed classical mythology and landscape as early writers attribute in considerable number to giorgione, there have survived at least two which bear strong evidences of his handiwork, though the action is in both of unwonted liveliness, namely the apollo and daphne of the seminario at venice and the orpheus and eurydice of bergamo. the portrait of antonio grocardo at budapest represents his fullest and most penetrating power in that branch of art. in his last years the purity and relative slenderness of form which mark his earlier female nudes, including the dresden venus, gave way to ideals of ampler mould, more nearly approaching those of titian and his successors in venetian art; as is proved by those last remaining fragments of the frescoes on the grand canal front of the fondaco dei tedeschi which were seen and engraved by zanetti in 1760, but have now totally disappeared. such change of ideal is apparent enough in the famous "concert" or "pastoral symphony" of the louvre, probably the latest, and certainly one of the most characteristic and harmoniously splendid, of giorgione's creations that has come down to us, and has caused some critics too hastily to doubt its authenticity. we pass now to pictures for which some affirm and others deny the right to bear giorgione's name. as youthful in style as the two early pictures in the uffizi, and closely allied to them in feeling, though less so in colour, is an unexplained subject in the national gallery, sometimes called for want of a better title the "golden age"; this is officially and by many critics given only to the "school of" giorgione, but may not unreasonably be claimed for his own work (no. 1173). there is also in england a group of three paintings which are certainly by one hand, and that a hand very closely related to giorgione if not actually his own, namely the small oblong "adoration of the magi" in the national gallery (no. 1160), the "adoration of the shepherds" belonging to lord allendale (with its somewhat inferior but still attractive replica at vienna), and the small "holy family" in the collection of mr r. h. benson. the type of the madonna in all these three pieces is different from that customary with the master, but there seems no reason why he should not at some particular moment have changed his model. the sentiment and gestures of the figures, the cast of draperies, the technical handling, and especially, in lord allendale's picture, the romantic richness of the landscape, all incline us to accept the group as original, notwithstanding the deviation of type already mentioned and certain weaknesses of drawing and proportion which we should have hardly looked for. better known to european students in general are the two fine pictures commonly given to the master at the pitti gallery in florence, namely the "three ages" and the "concert." both are very giorgionesque, the "three ages" leaning rather towards the early manner of lorenzo lotto, to whom by some critics it is actually given. the "concert" is held on technical grounds by some of the best judges rather to bear the character of titian at the moment when the inspiration of giorgione was strongest on him, at least so far as concerns the extremely beautiful and expressive central figure of the monk playing on the clavichord with reverted head, a very incarnation of musical rapture and yearning--the other figures are too much injured to judge. there are at least two famous single portraits as to which critics will probably never agree whether they are among the later works of giorgione or among the earliest of titian under his influence: these are the jovial and splendid half-length of catherine cornaro (or a stout lady much resembling her) with a bas-relief, in the collection of signor crespi at milan, and the so-called "ariosto" from lord darnley's collection acquired for the national gallery in 1904. ancient and half-effaced inscriptions, of which there is no cause to doubt the genuineness, ascribe them both to titian; both, to the mind of the present writer at least, are more nearly akin to such undoubted early titians as the "man with the book" at hampton court and the "man with the glove" at the louvre than to any authenticated work of giorgione. at the same time it should be remembered that giorgione is known to have actually enjoyed the patronage of catherine cornaro and to have painted her portrait. the giorgionesque influence and feeling, to a degree almost of sentimental exaggeration, encounter us again in another beautiful venetian portrait at the national gallery which has sometimes been claimed for him, that of a man in crimson velvet with white pleated shirt and a background of bays, long attributed to the elder palma (no. 636). the same qualities are present with more virility in a very striking portrait of a young man at temple newsam, which stands indeed nearer than any other extant example to the brocardo portrait at budapest. the full-face portrait of a woman in the borghese gallery at rome has the marks of the master's design and inspiration, but in its present sadly damaged condition can hardly be claimed for his handiwork. the head of a boy with a pipe at hampton court, a little over life size, has been enthusiastically claimed as giorgione's workmanship, but is surely too slack and soft in handling to be anything more than an early copy of a lost work, analogous to, though better than, the similar copy at vienna of a young man with an arrow, a subject he is known to have painted. the early records prove indeed that not a few such copies of giorgione's more admired works were produced in his own time or shortly afterwards. one of the most interesting and unmistakable such copies still extant is the picture formerly in the manfrin collection at venice, afterwards in that of mr barker in london, and now at dresden, which is commonly called "the horoscope," and represents a woman seated near a classic ruin with a young child at her feet, an armed youth standing looking down at them, and a turbaned sage seated near with compasses, disk and book. of important subject pictures belonging to the debatable borderland between giorgione and his imitators are the large and interesting unfinished "judgment of solomon" at kingston lacy, which must certainly be the same that ridolfi saw and attributed to him in the casa grimani at venice, but has weaknesses of design and drawing sufficiently baffling to criticism; and the "woman taken in adultery" in the public gallery at glasgow, a picture truly giorgionesque in richness of colour, but betraying in its awkward composition, the relative coarseness of its types and the insincere, mechanical animation of its movements, the hand of some lesser master of the school, almost certainly (by comparison with his existing engravings and woodcuts) that of domenico campagnola. it seems unnecessary to refer, in the present notice, to any of the numerous other and inferior works which have been claimed for giorgione by a criticism unable to distinguish between a living voice and its echoes. bibliography.--morelli, _notizie_, &c. (ed. frizzoni, 1884): vasari (ed. milanesi), vol. iv.; ridolfi, _le maraviglie dell' arte_, vol. i.; zanetti, _varie pitture_ (1760); crowe-cavalcaselle, _history of painting in north italy_; morelli, _kunstkritische studien_; gronau, _zorzon da castelfranco, la sua origine_, &c. (1894); herbert cook, _giorgione_ (in "great masters" series, 1900); ugo monneret de villard, _giorgione da castelfranco_ (1905). the two last-named works are critically far too inclusive, but useful as going over the whole ground of discussion, with full references to earlier authorities, &c. (s. c.) giottino (1324-1357), an early florentine painter. vasari is the principal authority in regard to this artist; but it is not by any means easy to bring the details of his narrative into harmony with such facts as can now be verified. it would appear that there was a painter of the name of tommaso (or maso) di stefano termed giottino; and the giottino of vasari is said to have been born in 1324, and to have died early, of consumption, in 1357,--dates which must be regarded as open to considerable doubt. stefano, the father of tommaso, was himself a celebrated painter in the early revival of art; his naturalism was indeed so highly appreciated by contemporaries as to earn him the appellation of "scimia della natura" (ape of nature). he, it seems, instructed his son, who, however, applied himself with greater predilection to studying the works of the great giotto, formed his style on these, and hence was called giottino. it is even said that giottino was really the son (others say the great-grandson) of giotto. to this statement little or no importance can be attached. to maso di stefano, or giottino, vasari and ghiberti attribute the frescoes in the chapel of s. silvestro (or of the bardi family) in the florentine church of s. croce; these represent the miracles of pope s. silvestro as narrated in the "golden legend," one conspicuous subject being the sealing of the lips of a malignant dragon. these works are animated and firm in drawing, with naturalism carried further than by giotto. from the evidence of style, some modern connoisseurs assign to the same hand the paintings in the funeral vault of the strozzi family, below the cappella degli spagnuoli in the church of s. maria novella, representing the crucifixion and other subjects. vasari ascribes also to his giottino the frescoes of the life of st nicholas in the lower church of assisi. this series, however, is not really in that part of the church which vasari designates, but is in the chapel of the sacrament; and the works in that chapel are understood to be by giotto di stefano, who worked in the second half of the 14th century--very excellent productions of their period. they are much damaged, and the style is hardly similar to that of the sylvester frescoes. it might hence be inferred that two different men produced the works which are unitedly fathered upon the half-legendary "giottino," the consumptive youth, solitary and melancholic, but passionately devoted to his art. a large number of other works have been attributed to the same hand; we need only mention an "apparition of the virgin to st bernard," in the florentine academy; a lost painting, very popular in its day, commemorating the expulsion, which took place in 1343, of the duke of athens from florence; and a marble statue erected on the florentine campanile. vasari particularly praises giottino for well-blended chiaroscuro. giotto [giotto di bondone[1]] (1267?-1337), italian painter, was born at vespignano in the mugello, a few miles north of florence, according to one account in 1276, and according to another, which from the few known circumstances of his life seems more likely to be correct, in 1266 or 1267. his father was a landowner at colle in the commune of vespignano, described in a contemporary document as _vir praeclarus_, but by biographers both early and late as a poor peasant; probably therefore a peasant proprietor of no large possessions but of reputable stock and descent. it is impossible to tell whether there is any truth in the legend of giotto's boyhood which relates how he first showed his disposition for art, and attracted the attention of cimabue, by being found drawing one of his father's sheep with a sharp stone on the face of a smooth stone or slate. with his father's consent, the story goes on, cimabue carried off the boy to be his apprentice, and it was under cimabue's tuition that giotto took his first steps in the art of which he was afterwards to be the great emancipator and renovator. the place where these early steps can still, according to tradition, be traced, is in the first and second, reckoning downwards, of the three courses of frescoes which adorn the walls of the nave in the upper church of st francis at assisi. these frescoes represent subjects of the old and new testament, and great labour, too probably futile, has been spent in trying to pick out those in which the youthful handiwork of giotto can be discerned, as it is imagined, among that of cimabue and his other pupils. but the truth is that the figure of cimabue himself, in spite of dante's testimony to his having been the foremost painter of italy until giotto arose, has under the search-light of modern criticism melted into almost mythical vagueness. his accepted position as giotto's instructor and the pioneer of reform in his art has been attacked from several sides as a mere invention of florentine writers for the glorification of their own city. one group of critics maintain that the real advance in tuscan painting before giotto was the work of the sienese school and not of the florentine. another group contend that the best painting done in italy down to the last decade of the 13th century was not done by tuscan hands at all, but by roman craftsmen trained in the inherited principles of italo-byzantine decoration in mosaic and fresco, and that from such roman craftsmen alone could giotto have learnt anything worth his learning. the debate thus opened is far from closed, and considering how scanty, ambiguous and often defaced are the materials existing for discussion, it is perhaps never likely to be closed. but there is no debate as to the general nature of the reform effected by the genius of giotto himself. he was the great humanizer of painting; it is his glory to have been the first among his countrymen to breathe life into wall-pictures and altar-pieces, and to quicken the dead conventionalism of inherited practice with the fire of natural action and natural feeling. upon yet another point there is no question; and that is that the reform thus effected by giotto in painting had been anticipated in the sister art of sculpture by nearly a whole generation. about the middle of the 13th century nicola pisano had renewed that art, first by strict imitation of classical models, and later by infusing into his work a fresh spirit of nature and humanity, perhaps partly caught from the gothic schools of france. his son giovanni had carried the same re-vitalising of sculpture a great deal further; and hence to some critics it would seem that the real inspirer and precursor of giotto was giovanni pisano the sculptor, and not any painter or wall-decorator, whether of florence, siena or rome. in this division of opinion it is safer to regard the revival of painting in giotto's hands simply as part of the general awakening of the time, and to remember that, as of all italian communities florence was the keenest in every form of activity both intellectual and practical, so it was natural that a son of florence should be the chief agent in such an awakening. and in considering his career the question of his possible participation in the primitive frescoes of the upper courses at assisi is best left out of account, the more so because of the deplorable condition in which they now exist. but with reference to the lowest course of paintings on the same walls, those illustrating the life of st francis according to the narrative of st bonaventura, no one has any doubt, at least in regard to nineteen or twenty of the twenty-eight subjects which compose the series, that giotto himself was their designer and chief executant. in these, sadly as they too have suffered from time and wholesale repair, there can nevertheless be discerned the unmistakable spirit of the young florentine master as we know him in his other works--his shrewd realistic and dramatic vigour, the deep sincerity and humanity of feeling which he knows how to express in every gesture of his figures without breaking up the harmony of their grouping or the grandeur of their linear design, qualities inherited from the earlier schools of impressive but lifeless hieratic decoration. the "renunciation of the saint by his father," the "pope's dream of the saint upholding the tottering church," the "saint before the sultan," the "miracle of the spring of water," the "death of the nobleman of celano," the "saint preaching before pope honorius"--these are some of the most noted and best preserved examples of the painter's power in this series. where doubt begins again is as to the relations of date and sequence which the series bears to other works by the master executed at assisi and at rome in the same early period of his career, that is, probably between 1295 and 1300. giotto's remaining undisputed works at assisi are the four celebrated allegorical compositions in honour of st francis in the vaulting of the lower church,--the "marriage of st francis to poverty," the "allegory of chastity," the "allegory of obedience" and the "vision of st francis in glory." these works are scarcely at all retouched, and relatively little dimmed by time; they are of a singular beauty, at once severe and tender, both in colour and design; the compositions, especially the first three, fitted with admirable art into the cramped spaces of the vaulting, the subjects, no doubt in the main dictated to the artist by his franciscan employers, treated in no cold or mechanical spirit but with a full measure of vital humanity and original feeling. had the career and influence of st francis had no other of their vast and far-reaching effects in the world than that of inspiring these noble works of art, they would still have been entitled to no small gratitude from mankind. other works at assisi which most modern critics, but not all, attribute to giotto himself are three miracles of st francis and portions of a group of frescoes illustrating the history of mary magdalene, both in the lower church; and again, in one of the transepts of the same lower church, a series of ten frescoes of the life of the virgin and christ, concluding with the crucifixion. it is to be remarked as to this transept series that several of the frescoes present not only the same subjects, but with a certain degree of variation the same compositions, as are found in the master's great series executed in the arena chapel at padua in the fullness of his powers about 1306; and that the versions in the assisi transept show a relatively greater degree of technical accomplishment than the paduan versions, with a more attractive charm and more abundance of accessory ornament, but a proportionately less degree of that simple grandeur in composition and direct strength of human motive which are the special notes of giotto's style. therefore a minority of critics refuse to accept the modern attribution of this transept series to giotto himself, and see in it later work by an accomplished pupil softening and refining upon his master's original creations at padua. others, insisting that these unquestionably beautiful works must be by the hand of giotto and none but giotto, maintain that in comparison with the paduan examples they illustrate a gradual progress, which can be traced in other of his extant works, from the relatively ornate and soft to the austerely grand and simple. this argument is enforced by comparison with early work of the master's at rome as to the date of which we have positive evidence. in 1298 giotto completed for cardinal stefaneschi for the price of 2200 gold ducats a mosaic of christ saving st peter from the waves (the celebrated "navicella"); this is still to be seen, but in a completely restored and transformed state, in the vestibule of st peter's. for the same patron he executed, probably just before the "navicella," an elaborate ciborium or altar-piece for the high altar of st peter's, for which he received 800 ducats. it represents on the principal face a colossal christ enthroned with adoring angels beside him and a kneeling donor at his feet, and the martyrdoms of st peter and st paul on separate panels to right and left; on the reverse is st peter attended by st george and other saints, receiving from the donor a model of his gift, with stately full-length figures of two apostles to right and two to left, besides various accessory scenes and figures in the predellas and the margins. the separated parts of this altar-piece are still to be seen, in a quite genuine though somewhat tarnished condition, in the sacristy of st peter's. a third work by the master at rome is a repainted fragment at the lateran of a fresco of pope boniface viii. proclaiming the jubilee of 1300. the "navicella" and the lateran fragment are too much ruined to argue from; but the ciborium panels, it is contended, combine with the aspects of majesty and strength a quality of ornate charm and suavity such as is remarked in the transept frescoes of assisi. the sequence proposed for these several works is accordingly, first the st peter's ciborium, next the allegories in the vaulting of the lower church, next the three frescoes of st francis' miracles in the north transept, next the st francis series in the upper church; and last, perhaps after an interval and with the help of pupils, the scenes from the life of mary magdalene in her chapel in the lower church. this involves a complete reversal of the prevailing view, which regards the unequal and sometimes clumsy compositions of this st francis series as the earliest independent work of the master. it must be admitted that there is something paradoxical in the idea of a progress from the manner of the lower church transept series of the life of christ to the much ruder manner of the upper church series of st francis. a kindred obscurity and little less conflict of opinion await the inquirer at almost all stages of giotto's career. in 1841 there were partially recovered from the whitewash that had overlain them a series of frescoes executed in the chapel of the magdalene, in the bargello or palace of the podesta at florence, to celebrate (as was supposed) a pacification between the black and white parties in the state effected by the cardinal d'acquasparta as delegate of the pope in 1302. in them are depicted a series of bible scenes, besides great compositions of hell and paradise, and in the paradise are introduced portraits of dante, brunetto latini and corso donato. these recovered fragments, freely "restored" as soon as they were disclosed, were acclaimed as the work of giotto and long held in especial regard for the sake of the portrait of dante. latterly it has been shown that if giotto ever executed them at all, which is doubtful, it must have been at a later date than the supposed pacification, and that they must have suffered grievous injury in the fire which destroyed a great part of the building in 1332, and been afterwards repainted by some well-trained follower of the school. to about 1302 or 1303 would belong, if there is truth in it, the familiar story of giotto's o. pope benedict xi., the successor of boniface viii., sent, as the tale runs, a messenger to bring him proofs of the painter's powers. giotto would give no other sample of his talent than an o drawn with a free sweep of the brush from the elbow; but the pope was satisfied and engaged him at a great salary to go and adorn with frescoes the papal residence at avignon. benedict, however, dying at this time (1305), nothing came of this commission; and the remains of italian 14th-century frescoes still to be seen at avignon are now recognized as the work, not, as was long supposed, of giotto, but of the sienese simone martini and his school. at this point in giotto's life we come to the greatest by far of his undestroyed and undisputed enterprises, and one which can with some certainty be dated. this is the series of frescoes with which he decorated the entire internal walls of the chapel built at padua in honour of the virgin of the annunciation by a rich citizen of the town, enrico scrovegni, perhaps in order to atone for the sins of his father, a notorious usurer whom dante places in the seventh circle of hell. the building is on the site of an ancient amphitheatre, and is therefore generally called the chapel of the arena. since it is recorded that dante was giotto's guest at padua, and since we know that it was in 1306 that the poet came from bologna to that city, we may conclude that to the same year, 1306, belongs the beginning of giotto's great undertaking in the arena chapel. the scheme includes a saviour in glory over the altar, a last judgment, full of various and impressive incident, occupying the whole of the entrance wall, with a series of subjects from the old and new testament and the apocryphal life of christ painted in three tiers on either side wall, and lowest of all a fourth tier with emblematic virtues and vices in monochrome; the virtues being on the side of the chapel next the incidents of redemption in the entrance fresco of the last judgment, the vices on the side next the incidents of perdition. a not improbable tradition asserts that giotto was helped by dante in the choice and disposition of the subjects. the frescoes, though not free from injury and retouching, are upon the whole in good condition, and nowhere else can the highest powers of the italian mind and hand at the beginning of the 14th century be so well studied as here. at the close of the middle ages we find giotto laying the foundation upon which all the progress of the renaissance was afterwards securely based. in his day the knowledge possessed by painters of the human frame and its structure rested only upon general observation and not upon detailed or scientific study; while to facts other than those of humanity their observation had never been closely directed. of linear perspective they possessed but elementary and empirical ideas, and their endeavours to express aerial perspective and deal with the problems of light and shade were rare and partial. as far as painting could possibly be carried under these conditions, it was carried by giotto. in its choice of 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 ol 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 their founder. as is well known, it was a part of the ordinances of francis that his disciples should follow his own example in worshipping and being wedded to poverty,--poverty idealized and personified as a spiritual bride and mistress. giotto, having on the commission of the order given the noblest pictorial embodiment to this and other aspects of the franciscan doctrine, presently wrote an ode in which his own views on poverty are expressed; and in this he shows that, if on the one hand his genius was at the service of the ideals of his time, and his imagination open to their significance, on the other hand his judgment was shrewdly and humorously awake to their practical dangers and exaggerations. authorities.--ghiberti, _commentari_; vasari, _le vite_, vol. i.; crowe-cavalcaselle, _history of painting in italy_, ed. langton douglas (1903); h. thode, _giotto_ (1899); m. g. zimmermann, _giotto und die kunst italiens im mittelalter_ (1899); b. berenson, _florentine painters of the renaissance_; f. mason perkin, _giotto_ (in "great masters" series) (1902); basil de selincourt, _giotto_ (1905). (s. c.) footnote: [1] not to be confused with giotto di buondone, a contemporary citizen and politician of siena.