If we would gain a true and adequate conception of the works and merit of any painter, it is necessary for us not only to examine his special productions, but to become in some measure acquainted with the state in which art was during his time. And not only is it necessary to take into account the actual amount of progress then manifested in one particular branch, such as painting, but to consider also the tendencies of the age, if we would separate the influence exercised by the artist's work, and define its true significance. Therefore readers will not think it irrelevant to the right telling and understanding of the life of Giotto, if they are first asked to consider for a short time the condition of art in the year 1276; and in order to thoroughly comprehend this condition, we must for a moment carry our thoughts back a thousand years further still, and think of those days when art and paganism flourished side by side in the Grecian republic.

It would be difficult at any time, impossible in the short space at our disposal, to explain the peculiar action and reaction of Greek art upon Greek religion; we must content ourselves with noting the fact that the two were absolutely inseparable—that the religion owed its influence over men's minds in no small degree to the power of art, is as indisputable as that art gained enormously in dignity and strength by being considered as the greatest exponent of religion, and by all its most important achievements being consecrated to that service. But if the Greek art was on the one hand indissolubly connected with the national religion, it was, on the other, no less connected with the national life. If the wisdom of Zeus, the pride of Juno, and the tenderness of Venus ornamented one side of the amphora, the struggles of the chase and the contests of the gymnasia adorned the other; nor did it seem to the people that there was anything extraordinary in thus mingling the doings of their neighbours, and the actions of their gods. Why! their gods, after all, were but neighbours of a higher order, and had even been known to succumb to the craft or bravery of men. The barrier between seen and unseen scarcely existed; but nature passed through almost imperceptible gradations, from the dryad of the woodland, to the ruler of Olympus. Had their religion, their art, and their life stood apart, as, unhappily, religion, art, and life stand apart now, the rise of Christianity could never have produced the withering effect upon all works of imagination which we know occurred; for it could not have taken away, at one blow, both the motives and the subjects of art, however it might have changed the mode of their representation; nor would Christianity have been opposed to it in like manner, had it not clearly perceived that it was one of the great instruments in the hands of the pagan priests. Unable to pervert to spiritual conceptions an art whose only conception of spiritual things was the perfection of bodily ones, ascetic Christianity had no choice but to discourage the practice of art altogether, and this is what actually happened. Gradually as the study of the nude figure was abandoned, the ignorance of the artists of the real outlines of the human form increased; and gradually, as the first broad Christian theory of fellowship and brotherhood, faded through the help of the priest into a stern, asceticism, enforced by Church tradition, all representations of vigour and manly beauty were considered to verge upon the profane, till at last we find in the work of the fifth to the tenth centuries, an almost total absence of all study of either nature or man; the former being totally disregarded, the latter represented under rude types, which were repeated from age to age without variety or improvement. Splendour of material and colouring were made to atone for poverty of conception and absence of thought, and the great art of those ages was one which the Greeks had only considered worthy to decorate the floors of their palaces. This art of mosaic, which about the fourth century[5] began to supersede painting in tempera and encaustic, was peculiarly fitted to be the servant of asceticism. In the course of its practice all the flowing lines of drapery became harsh and stiff, the limbs lost their suppleness and movement, the face its expression and life, and in fact the whole picture became less a representation of an occurrence, than a type to recall some subject to the mind. If we remember that many of the facts of the Christian religion were such as almost to defy absolute representation, we shall discover another reason for the adoption of this work. It is to be noted that, according to Pliny, mosaic began to be in vogue in Rome about 170 years before Christ. Kugler asserts that this art was an invention of the Alexandrian age, but in this he appears to be mistaken, and it is more probable that the Greeks received it from Persia and Assyria (through their Ægean colonies and the histories of Phoenician merchants), in which countries the art seems to have been of great antiquity,[6] The finest examples of these wall mosaics are to be found in Rome and Ravenna, and, at a later date, in the decoration of St. Mark's, at Venice, to which we shall hereafter have occasion to refer. Another kind of art of great importance at this time was Illumination, the earliest traces of which are found towards the close of the second century, when the present form of leaves sewn together at the back superseded the rollers which had been previously used. The first embellishments were simple enlargements and variety of colouring in the letters; from this, the advance to borders and illustrative designs was comparatively rapid.[7] The earliest examples of importance remaining at the present day, are the Dioscorides, in the library at Vienna, and the Virgil, in the Vatican, both of which are supposed to be of the fourth century.

The influence of tradition, asceticism, and sacerdotalism, acted in a precisely similar way to restrain the art of illumination, as it did to destroy that of painting and sculpture. At first the Byzantine school of illuminators greatly surpassed those of the Western world, but, as Humphreys says, "They belonged to a sinking and not a rising civilisation, and we find them gradually deteriorating after the tenth century, and never originating a new style or gradually progressing to more intricate or beautiful treatment of their subjects, but on the contrary, uninfluenced by the change and progress that was at work in Western Europe, they plodded on in the traditional track; the ancient costume and the bright gold of their miniatures of the fifth century still continuing in practice to the later period of Byzantine illumination; and even in the year 1846, M. Papetie found the monks of Mount Athos decorating portions of their monastery with figures of the apostles and evangelists of the old approved pattern, and painted on the traditional gold grounds, the exact counterpart of those of the fifth century."[8]

We have spoken of the Byzantine mosaic and illumination, and have only to mention their architecture to complete our account, for it must be remembered that almost every artistic impulse of these centuries was due either mediately or immediately to the influence of Constantinople, which, however stationary, or even declining in its civilisation, was yet the great centre of enlightenment.

It is quite impossible I believe to give in a few lines any description of the peculiarities of Byzantine architecture, dependent as that style was upon a combination of the Grecian, Roman, and Arabian methods of building. We know that one element in the style was the combination of the round dome with the ancient temple, and that the shape and size of the building was in the first place determined by the necessities of its worship. As is pointed out by Professor Brown,[9] "the Christian mode of worship required a style of building considerably different from the heathen temple. Instead of a mere sacristry for the priest, the term at which the pomp of processions ended, and in the front of which, under the vault of the sky, sacrifices were performed, shelter was now required for the multitude offering their prayers, according to ritual, and receiving instruction from their pastors. New places for sacred edifices were therefore required, and those of great dimensions, with ample space and superior accommodation within the interior." The result of this demand led to the selection and adaptation of the most suitable buildings which were then available, and these happened to be the ancient basilicas or halls of justice, of which, as they are the origin of all Christian churches, the following description may be interesting to some of my readers:[10] "A basilica was a public edifice of the ancient Romans, consisting of an oblong interior divided in its width into three divisions by two rows of columns. At the upper end it had a large niche or tribune, where courts of justice were held. The basilica was a place of general resort, like an exchange of modern times. These places also became to be used by the Christians for their place of meeting, and afterwards churches were built on the model of the basilicÆ, and the name of basilicÆ is still affixed to the principal churches in Rome. To a building of this kind there was added a transept, to give a cruciform shape; and so the general plan of our churches came to be adopted."

If the exigencies of room and haste led to the transposition of these ancient exchanges into churches, and fixed the form of the Christian architecture of the future; the zeal of the new faith also determined in no small measure the style of adornment of their interiors. For, again, the haste for their decoration was so great that the importation of marble from the quarries nearly twenty miles from Rome was too slow a method for the Christians to adopt, and they "immediately commenced the work of demolition among the classic edifices of antiquity erected by the pagan Romans, chiefly for the value of the materials."[11] This was probably the origin of the method of incrustation, which forms such a remarkable feature in the Byzantine architecture, and indeed is, according to Ruskin, its most typical feature. The process of changing a basilica into a cathedral being somewhat akin to that of changing a barrack into a palace, the rich materials had to be used as sparingly as possible, in order to make them sufficient for the concealment of the original poverty of the structure, and this naturally led to the blocks of marble being divided into thin slabs, in order to gain as much surface decoration as possible, and caused also the delicate proportions of symmetry and uniformity in the Grecian temples to be neglected, since the proportions had to be taken as they were found, and made the best of. If we then add to this first origin of the Christian architecture, the influences which were likely to attend upon its transference to the East, we easily perceive how its more elaborate decorations and peculiarities arose. The employment of coloured marbles, which arose first from the necessity of making use of the scattered fragments of the ancient temples, was continued, through a love for the picturesqueness of the effect produced; the elements of size, proportion, and simplicity, on which the structure of the Grecian temples had been founded, once lost sight of, those of variety and intricacy took their place. Eastern magnificence covered the walls with gold and colours, while the necessities of excluding the fierce sunshine of the East, narrowed the windows, and produced the chequered gloom, through which the lustre of the golden crucifix, and the silver lamp, alone shone clearly. Such was the rise of the Byzantine architecture, which, however lacking it may be in strictness of taste and correctness of method, has always been powerful over men's minds to an almost unparalleled extent.[12]

And in this architecture and decoration everything was subordinated to the religious impression; from its meanest detail, to the very shape of the church itself, everything was a type of the Christian faith and hope, and was neither valuable nor precious, save as the symbol of the unseen divinity. It can be easily imagined how quickly art sank wholly under this influence, and became the mere servant of the popular superstition. As in ancient Greece, so in Byzantium, the priests used art for their great lever to move the imaginations of the people; the difference being only that as the religion was of a different kind, so was the art. This world was a hospital; "health and heaven were to come";[13] that was practically the belief of these early ages of the Christian Church. It is indeed the theory of the Church at the present day. So art no longer sought to find her gods in an apotheothised humanity, but substituted arbitrary types for the things unspeakable; thus a hand reaching down from the sky typified the Almighty; a dove was the recognised symbol of the spirit, and so on.[14]

And as the Church gradually encroached more and more upon the lives of the people, and as with its increasing influence it asserted its supremacy on every domain of human life; so it extended its power of repression upon the subjects as well as upon the methods of art. Not only was the barrier raised against all representations of bodily strength, grace, and beauty, but even in the delineation of sacred subjects, the artist was forbidden to render them in any way human by using his powers of conception and modification. Hardly even was a variation of grouping or the introduction of a figure allowed in the treatment of the religious events; and for hundreds of years St. John and the Virgin stood in the same attitude, at the right and at the left hand of the cross, and Christ, in the centre of the picture, gazed upon the spectators with the placid eyes of divine power, of which no agony could avail to dim the Godhead. To the end of the eleventh century all expression of pain upon the face of the Saviour was entirely absent, absolutely forbidden by the priesthood. He was depicted as standing upon the cross with erect head and widely open eyes,[15] and in aspect, as Crowe says, "either erect or menacing." While this spirit of representation continued, it was manifestly impossible for art to improve. All study of the nude discouraged, if not forbidden, all the worth of material beauty despised, all originality of conception sternly interdicted, and all expression of human emotion considered as irreligious, the unhappy painters had no opening left them for anything but slavish imitations of their predecessors. It would take me too long to show how this anti-naturalism of the Church came to be in some degree modified; probably one of the chief causes was the recognition by the priesthood of the progressive tendency of the times, and the consequent relaxation of the harsh restrictions which had fixed the limits of pictorial art. In every age the essential principle of the Catholic religion in its dealings with secular matters has been an adoption of the tendencies which it could not repress, and the endeavour to turn them to its own advancement. It may well be that the growing naturalism of pictorial representation from the twelfth century to the end of the thirteenth was sanctioned by the Church from this cause. In any case, during this period religious art took its first hesitating steps in the right direction. Slowly the crucifixes represented the Saviour with downcast head and closed eyes, and his body no longer stood erect upon the cross, but swayed outward in the pain of death.

Such was the state of painting at the beginning of the thirteenth century, purely devoted to religious subjects, and representing those subjects according to established forms—influenced chiefly by the traditions of ancient art which were received from the schools of Byzantium, but fettered by those traditions being embodied in Christian types, and complicated by the introduction of Church symbolism. Thus, for instance, in the treatment of the drapery in the mosaics executed at Venice by the Greek, Apollonius, something of the ancient manner may be observed through all the figures; but the rigidity of the lines, the meagreness of the bodies, and the lifelessness of the composition are entirely due to the influences of asceticism which prevailed in the early Church.

Sculpture was in an identical position till the celebrated pulpit at Pisa was made by Niccola Pisano in 1260; in which the same imitation of the antique, combined in a lesser degree with the restraining influences above mentioned, forms a nearer approach to the Gothic naturalism of Giotto than we can trace elsewhere. Pisano's gift in design was a far lower one than Giotto's, though he was much greater in sculptural skill, for in his works the new element is not so much the rejection of tradition for the sake of nature, as the partial rejection of ascetic religion for the sake of imitating the antique. It is true that by this adherence to the form of Grecian sculpture he far exceeds the works of his contemporaries and predecessors of the Middle Ages, but that is only because the schools he imitated had studied nature so devotedly; there is in his work much of the spirit of the antique, but little of the spirit of nature on which the antique was founded. According to Crowe,[16] in the later work of Niccola Pisano there is a reference to natural models observable, but I have not seen the pulpit at Siena of which he is speaking; and it is notable that there were several pupils of Pisano engaged upon this work, and that Crowe admits that where the references to nature occur, precisely there "is the master's ability least visible," so it is at least possible that they may not have been the work of his own hand. Many other architects and sculptors of the thirteenth century there are; but we cannot spare space to do more than mention their names. Arnolfo, Giovanni Pisano, Fra Guglielmo, and the three Florentines, Lapo, Donato, and Goro are the chief; their doings are described by Crowe in his chapter on the progress of sculpture in the first volume of the History of Painting in Italy, in which there is a full description of the manner of each, and an examination of the questionable statements of Vasari concerning them.

What is interesting with regard to the subject of our biography in respect of these sculptors is, that they were the forerunners of that revival of the study of nature, in which he subsequently played the most important part. It does not appear to me that they actually attempted, as is asserted by Crowe, "to graft on the imitation of the antique a study of nature," but rather that their imperfect naturalism arose from a misrepresentation of the antique work, and an almost total rejection of the Byzantine formalism. It is a curious example of Ruskin's dictum that the energy of growth in any people may be almost directly measured by their passion for sculpture or the drama, that just at the time when Italy was beginning that splendid forward movement which crowned, with a blaze of light, the dark mountain of the Middle Ages; just then sculpture should have as it were leapt into full life after a sleep of nearly a thousand years.

According to Lanzi[17] the improvement of mosaic followed that of sculpture, and a Franciscan friar named Fra Jacopo Torriti, surpassed all the contemporary Greek and Roman workers in mosaics. "On examining what remains of his works at Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, one can hardly believe that it is the production of so rude an age, did not history compel us to believe it. It appears probable that he took the ancients for his models, and deduced his rules from the more chaste specimens of mosaic still remaining in several of the Roman churches, the design of which is less crude, the attitudes less forced, and the composition more skilful, than were exhibited by the Greeks who ornamented the church of San Marco at Venice. Mino surpassed them in everything. From 1225 when he executed, however feebly, the mosaic of the tribune of the church of San Giovanni at Florence, he was considered at the head of living artists in mosaic. He merited this praise much more by his works at Rome; and it appears that he long maintained his reputation."

There is no doubt that the art of mosaic was in full practice in Italy at this period, and was not, as has been supposed, confined to the Greeks. There is a curious passage in the work of the AbbÉ Montfaucon[18] who made an extensive tour through Italy in 1695, to the effect that in the cathedral of Spoleto above the front entrance, he saw a piece of mosaic work made in the year 1207, with the following inscription:—

"Hic est pictura quam fecit sat placitura,

Doctor Solfernus hac summo in arte modernus.

Annis inventis cum septem mille ducentis

Operarij Palmenus," &c., &c.