DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61542#0067
13351 SONG ON VOLUNTARY POVERTY 41
by his strong personality ; while the ready wit and
practical turn of mind which they reveal are exactly
what the study of his works would lead us to expect.
A more serious instance of his power of satire is to be
found in the song against Voluntary Poverty bearing
his name, which Rumohr discovered in the Laurentian
library. In these verses Giotto not only denounces
the vice and hypocrisy often working beneath the
cloak of monastic perfection, but honestly expresses
his own aversion to poverty as a thing miscalled a
virtue, and enumerates all the evils of the grace which
he was so often called to glorify in his paintings.
He concludes by declaring that voluntary poverty is
nowhere enjoined by our Lord, whose words apply to
his own holy life, and who became poor that we might
be saved from the curse of avarice, not that we may
fall into idle unworthy ways of living. The whole
canzone is of great interest, coming as it does from the
pen of the chosen painter of the Franciscan Order,
and showing the independence of Giotto’s character.
The extraordinary industry of the man is shown by
the long list of panel pictures as well as wall-paintings
which are mentioned by early writers. These have
fared even worse than Giotto’s frescoes. The picture
of the Commune crowned and throned and attended
by all the virtues, in the great hall of the Podesta,
which Vasari describes as of very beautiful and in-
genious invention, the small tempera painting of the
Death of the Virgin, on which Michael Angelo loved
to gaze, in the church of Ognissanti, the Madonna
which was sent to Petrarch at Avignon, and which he
left as his most precious possession to his noble friend
Francesco di Carrara, have all perished. One panel,
B 2
by his strong personality ; while the ready wit and
practical turn of mind which they reveal are exactly
what the study of his works would lead us to expect.
A more serious instance of his power of satire is to be
found in the song against Voluntary Poverty bearing
his name, which Rumohr discovered in the Laurentian
library. In these verses Giotto not only denounces
the vice and hypocrisy often working beneath the
cloak of monastic perfection, but honestly expresses
his own aversion to poverty as a thing miscalled a
virtue, and enumerates all the evils of the grace which
he was so often called to glorify in his paintings.
He concludes by declaring that voluntary poverty is
nowhere enjoined by our Lord, whose words apply to
his own holy life, and who became poor that we might
be saved from the curse of avarice, not that we may
fall into idle unworthy ways of living. The whole
canzone is of great interest, coming as it does from the
pen of the chosen painter of the Franciscan Order,
and showing the independence of Giotto’s character.
The extraordinary industry of the man is shown by
the long list of panel pictures as well as wall-paintings
which are mentioned by early writers. These have
fared even worse than Giotto’s frescoes. The picture
of the Commune crowned and throned and attended
by all the virtues, in the great hall of the Podesta,
which Vasari describes as of very beautiful and in-
genious invention, the small tempera painting of the
Death of the Virgin, on which Michael Angelo loved
to gaze, in the church of Ognissanti, the Madonna
which was sent to Petrarch at Avignon, and which he
left as his most precious possession to his noble friend
Francesco di Carrara, have all perished. One panel,
B 2