Giotto: The Life of Giotto, Florentine Painter, Sculptor, and Architect [1266/7-1337]
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Dates and names of artists at work on the decoration of San Francesco are not to be found in contemporary records. The ascription of frescos to Torriti, Cavallini, Cimabue, Giotto, and their respective schools is based on rather vague remarks by later commentaries, especially Vasari, and on modern stylistic criticism. The frescos of the upper church on the walls facing the nave are arranged in three registers, two of them with concordant scenes from the Old and New Testaments, iconographically paired on either side of the vertical windows of the clerestory, while the third and larger series depicting the legend of St. Francis occupies the main part of the nave wall and is divided into a triptych system within each bay. The frescos ascribed to Cimabue and Giotto will be described later under Florentine painting.
The frescos are badly damaged, some beyond recognition, a condition which combines with the complete absence of documentary evidence to make the various problems of authorship and ascription by stylistic analysis most difficult. General factors to be noted, however, are the apparent stylistic development from the scenes of the north wall (Old Testament) to those of the south, and the quite clearly recognizable participation of a number of different artists who reflect in varying degrees the general breaking up of the traditional Byzantine manner. A relationship in iconographical arrangement and possibly in style may be noted between the Old Testament scenes and the lost frescos of St. Paul's-outside-the-Walls. The comparison of the Kiss of Judas and sections of the St. Cecilia frescos
might further substantiate the participation of Cavallini in the work. Likewise the stylistic character of some of the "earlier" scenes bears a general relationship to that of Torriti's mosaic in Santa Maria Maggiore (e.g., the Creation of the World, Creation of Eve, or the Birth of Christ). In any case these frescos reveal a style related and parallel to the art of Rome at the end of the century, and form the connection and immediate background for the new form and lyric enthusiasm developed in the art of Cimabue and Giotto.
Giotto ( 1266/76-1337). The interpretation of the many literary sources on Giotto's life and work as well as the identification of the undocumented works has often been dependent on whether one considers the artist a revolutionary genius who broke the ties of medieval conventionality and created a new monumental art based on the reality of the world about him -- or whether one holds that his genius lay in the re-formation of traditional elements of style into a new spirit and expression. In either case the personal accomplishment of Giotto as the "father" of Italian painting remains as a permanent monument. It is recognized as such by succeeding individualists, such as Masaccio and Michelangelo; it is denied by decorative stylists like the Sienese-Gothic of the fourteenth and the Florentine courtly painters of the fifteenth century. The relationship with tradition, the discovery of new forms, and their perfection into a new style and new tradition, can be followed through the fresco series of Assisi, Padua, and Florence, and have their artistic parallels in the literary development of his contemporaries Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio.
Accepted data about the life of Giotto di Bondone: He was born in Colle di Vespignano, near Florence, either 1266 or 1276, according to the interpretation given to Vasari's sessanta or settanta when he speaks of Giotto's age at his death. The date is probably the earlier, since in 1303 he is spoken of as adkuc satis invenis. Also according to Vasari he was a pupil of Cimabue. Though there are no sources to prove it, he is assumed to have been at work on the decoration of San Francesco in Assisi during the 'gos and was possibly in Rome before 1300 -- in any case certainly before 1313. In 1303-5 he was at work on the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. Then, from 1307 on, he is mentioned intermittently as active in Florence, being listed in the guild of medici e speziali in 1327. Ghiberti names, among other works, a series of allegorical frescos painted by Giotto in the Palazzo del Podestà (destroyed). From 1329 to 1333 he is listed in Naples and was named Familiaris at the court of King Robert. While there he is said by Ghiberti and Vasari to have painted frescos for Robert in the Castello Nuovo and the Castello d'Uovo, a series of portraits of famous men, and scenes from the Old and New Testaments in the church of Santa Chiara, which was built by Robert. In 1334 he was again in Florence and was appointed directing architect for the building of the cathedral. The lower story of the campanile is generally accredited to his plan. Further documentary evidence indicates that Giotto had been active again in Rome (i.e., after the Padua work) and probably in Assisi, as well as in Rimini, Verona, Milan, and Bologna. These, together with Dante's praise of the master, give some indication as to his widespread fame and recognition. He died January 8, 1337, and was buried with all honors in the Cathedral of Florence.The frescos associated with Giotto in the upper church of San Francesco in Assisi are the 28 scenes from the life of St. Francis. Iconographically -- as well as stylistically -- they are a development of the Old and New Testament series on the upper walls, and those in the choir and transepts by Cimabue. The content reveals a very free and personalized interpretation of the saint's stories, taken mostly from St. Bonaventura Life of St. Francis (1261).
Florence was then as now a little city, its population about 100,000 souls, but it was growing. The old second wall of about two miles' circuit was already condemned in favor of a turreted circuit of over six. Up the Arno the forest-clad ridge of Vallombrosa was much as it is today; down the valley the jagged peaks of the Carrara mountains barred the way to the sea. The surrounding vineyards and olive orchards by reason of encroaching forest were less extensive than they are now, but through every gate and from every tower one could see smiling fields guarded by battlemented villas. In the city, the fortress towers of the old nobility, partizans mostly of the foreign Emperor, rose thickly, but already dismantled at their fighting tops, for the people, meaning strictly the ruling merchant and manufacturing classes, had lately taken the rule from the old nobles. Many of these had fled; some had been banished, as was soon to be that reckless advocate of the emperor, Dante Alighieri, an excellent poet of love foolishly dabbling in politics. Other patricians sulked in their fortress palaces. Some shrewdly got themselves demoted and joined the ruling trade guilds. Of these guilds a big four, five, or six, governed the city, while a minor dozen had political privilege. Only guild members voted for the city officers. The guilds combined the function of a trade union and an employer's association, including all members of the craft from the youngest apprentice to the richest boss-contractor. Such a guild as the notaries, must have been much like a bar association, while the wholesale merchants' guild must have resembled a chamber of commerce. The guild folk had early allied themselves with the Pope, the only permanent representative of the principle of order in Italy. The Pope was also the bulwark of the new free communes against the claims of the Teutonic Emperors. So in Florence piety, liberty, and prosperity were convertible terms.
Within the narrow walls was a bustling, neighborly, squabbling and making-up life. Everybody knew everybody else. The craftsman worked in the little open archways you may still see in the Via San Gallo, in sight and hearing of the passing world. Of weavers' shops alone there were 300. No western city was ever prouder than Florence in those days. Her credit was good from the Urals to the Pentland Hills. Her gold florin was everywhere standard exchange. She had secret ways of finishing the fine cloths that came in ships and caravans from Ghent, Ypres, and Arras; she handled the silks of China and converted the raw pelts of the north into objects of fashion.
Her civic pride was actively expressing itself in building. Between 1294 and 1299 she had projected a new cathedral, the great Franciscan church of Santa Croce, a new town hall, and the massive walls we still see. For stately buildings she had earlier had only the Baptistry, in which every baby was promptly christened, and the new church of the Friars Preachers (Dominicans), Santa Maria Novella. In considering this Florence you must think of a hard-headed, full-blooded, ambitious community, frankly devoted to money-making, but desiring wealth chiefly as a step towards fame. Since the painter could provide fame in this world and advance one's position in the next, his estate was a favored one.
The painter himself was just a fine craftsman. He kept a shop and called it such -- a bottega. He worked only to order. There were no exhibitions, no museums, no academies, no art schools, no prizes no dealers. The painters modestly joined the guild of the druggists (speziall), who were their color makers, quite as the up-to-date newspaper reporter affiliates himself with the typographical union. When a rich man wanted a picture, he simply went to a painter's shop and ordered it, laying down as a matter of course the subject and everything about the treatment that interested him. If the work was of importance, a contract and specifications were drawn up. The kind of colors, pay by the job or by the day, the amount to be painted by the contracting artist himself, the time of completion, with or without penalty -- all this was precisely nominated in the bond. Naturally the painter used his shopassistants and apprentices as much as possible. Often he did little himself except heads and principal figures. But he made the designs and carefully supervised their execution on panel or wall. A Florentine painter's bottega then had none of the preciousness of a modern painter's studio. It was rather like a decorator's shop of today, the master being merely the business head and guiding artistic taste. When we speak of a fresco by Giotto, we do not mean that Giotto painted much of it, any more than a La Farge window implies that our great American master of stained-glass design himself cut and set the glass. The painter of Florence had to be a jack-of-alltrades, a color grinder, a cabinet maker, and a wood carver; a gilder; to be capable of copying any design and of inventing fine decorative features himself. He must be equally competent in the delicate methods of tempera painting as in the resolute procedures of fresco.
These two methods set distinct limits to the work and its effects. The colors were ground up day by day in the shop. Each had its little pot. There was no palette. Hence only a few colors were used, and with little mixing. For tempera painting a good wooden panel -- preferably of poplar -- was grounded with successive coats of finest plaster of Paris in glue and rubbed down to ivory smoothness. The composition was then copied in minutely from a working drawing. The gold background inherited from the workers in mosaic was laid on in pure leaf. The composition was first lightly shaded and modelled either in green or brown earth, and then finished up a bit at a time, in colors tempered with egg or vegetable albumen. The paints were thick and could not be swiftly manipulated; the whole surface set and so hardened that retouching was difficult. How so niggling a method produced so broad and harmonious effects will seem a mystery to the modern artist. It was due to system and sacrifice. Though the work was done piecemeal, everything was thought out in advance. Dark shadows and accidents of lighting which would mar the general blond effect were ignored. The beauty desired was not that of nature, but that of enamels and semi-precious stones. These panels are glorious in azures, cinnabars, crimsons, emerald-greens, and whites partaking of all of these hues.
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