DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51584#0053
GIOTTO.
49
execution : there was no new method ; the Greek-
ish types were everywhere seen, more or less mo-
dified—a Madonna in the middle, with a couple of
lank saints or angels stuck on each side ; or saints
bearing- symbols, or with their names written over
their heads, and texts of Scripture proceeding from
their mouths ; or at the most a few figures, placed
in such a position relatively to each other as sufficed
to make a story intelligible, the arrangement being
generally traditional and arbitrary : such seems to
have been the limit to which painting had advanced
previous to 1280.
Giotto appeared ; and almost from the beginning
of his career he not only deviated from the practice
of the older painters, but stood opposed to them.
He not only improved—he changed ; he placed
himself on wholly new ground. He took up those
principles which Nicola Pisano had applied to
sculpture, and went to the same sources, to nature,
and to those remains of pure antique art which
showed him how to look at nature. His residence
at Rome while yet young, and in all the first glow-
ing development of his creative powers, must have
had an incalculable influence on his after-works.
Deficient to the end of his life in the knowledge of
form, he was deficient in that kind of beauty which
depends on form; but his feeling for grace and
harmony in the airs of his heads and the arrange-
ment of his groups was exquisite; and the longer
49
execution : there was no new method ; the Greek-
ish types were everywhere seen, more or less mo-
dified—a Madonna in the middle, with a couple of
lank saints or angels stuck on each side ; or saints
bearing- symbols, or with their names written over
their heads, and texts of Scripture proceeding from
their mouths ; or at the most a few figures, placed
in such a position relatively to each other as sufficed
to make a story intelligible, the arrangement being
generally traditional and arbitrary : such seems to
have been the limit to which painting had advanced
previous to 1280.
Giotto appeared ; and almost from the beginning
of his career he not only deviated from the practice
of the older painters, but stood opposed to them.
He not only improved—he changed ; he placed
himself on wholly new ground. He took up those
principles which Nicola Pisano had applied to
sculpture, and went to the same sources, to nature,
and to those remains of pure antique art which
showed him how to look at nature. His residence
at Rome while yet young, and in all the first glow-
ing development of his creative powers, must have
had an incalculable influence on his after-works.
Deficient to the end of his life in the knowledge of
form, he was deficient in that kind of beauty which
depends on form; but his feeling for grace and
harmony in the airs of his heads and the arrange-
ment of his groups was exquisite; and the longer