Giotto was born[37] at the small village of Vespignano, about fourteen miles from Florence, amidst surroundings, the chief characteristics of which are very beautifully described by Mr. Ruskin in the following paragraph:—

"Few travellers can forget the peculiar landscape of that district of the Apennines. As they ascend the hill which rises from Florence to the lowest peak in the ridge of Fiesole, they pass continually beneath the walls of villas bright in perfect luxury, and beside cypress hedges inclosing fair terraced gardens, where the masses of oleander and magnolia, motionless as leaves in a picture, inlay alternately upon the blue sky their branching lightness of pale rose colour and deep green breadth of shade, studded with walls of gleaming silver; and shining at intervals through their framework of rich leaf and rubied flower, the far-away bends of the Arno beneath its slopes of olive, and the purple peaks of the Carrara mountains tossing themselves against the western distance, where the streaks of motionless clouds hover above the Pisan sea. The traveller passes the Fiesolan ridge, and all is changed. The country is on a sudden lonely. Here and there indeed are seen the scattered houses of a farm grouped gracefully upon the hill-sides; here and there a fragment of tower upon a distant rock; but neither gardens nor flowers, nor glittering palace exists. Only a gray extent of mountain-ground tufted irregularly with ilex and olive; a scene not sublime, for its forms are subdued and low; not desolate, for its valleys are full of sown fields and tended pastures; not rich nor lovely, but sunburnt and sorrowful, becoming wilder every instant as the road winds into its recesses, ascending still, until the higher woods, now partly oak and partly pine, dropping back from the central crest of the Apennines, leave a partial wilderness of scathed rock and arid grass, withered away here by frost, and there by strange lambent tongues of earth-fed fire."[38]

Giotto's name is, according to Lord Lindsay, a contraction of Ambrogiotto. In the modern sense of the word, he appears to have had absolutely no education, for we find him when ten years old engaged in tending sheep upon the hill-side. It is noticeable that for one who was to effect the change in art which Giotto subsequently produced, no amount of early training could have been so beneficial, as the silent undogmatic one, that he received amongst the fresh meadows, and under the blue skies. The native genius within him grew gradually in strength, unhelped save by the influences of rustic life, and unhindered by tradition or example. It was no doubt to these early shepherd days, that he owed the strong sympathy with nature that he retained during his whole career, and his power of representing simple facts of animal life. Throughout all his pictures, even those of his latest period, whenever he got a chance of introducing an animal he always seized it eagerly, and the little touches of dog, donkey, and ox nature which may be found scattered here and there in his works, form one of its most peculiar and pleasing features; especially when we consider that this was to artists an absolutely virgin soil. Thus in the fresco at Assisi[39] representing the birth of Christ, perhaps the most remarkable portion of the picture is the manner in which the two donkeys are poking their heads over the manger to examine the child, with that expression of happy placid stupidity, so well known to all who have ever had to do with these animals. And again, in the sculpture of the shepherd, forming one of the series round the base of the Campanile at Florence, the expression of the puppy's face, (grave consideration mixed with a sense of responsibility) as he watches the sheep filing past the shepherd's tent, is wonderfully natural, and worthy of Sir Edwin Landseer, except that it is in one way much too good for him, in its thorough dogginess; Landseer always intensified his animals' feelings to the very verge of caricature. Hence one reason why he was so commonly and universally popular.

At any rate, such was Giotto's early life, spent in simple rural duties, and untroubled by school-boards and science primers; but when he was about ten years old, a strange event occurred which changed the whole current of his history. For there came riding through the valley the famous painter of Florence, Cimabue, then at the height of his reputation, and passed close to where the boy shepherd was sitting neglectful of his duties, trying to draw one of his flock with a piece of sharp slate upon the surface of rock.

We may suppose that there was something in the work which the painter knew to be genius, for according to all the legends, he does not appear to have hesitated in the least, but after asking the boy if he would like to go with him, and receiving a glad answer in the affirmative, he obtained the father's permission, took him to Florence, and installed him in his own studio.

It must be remembered that an artist's studio was a very different place in 1286, from what we call by the same name at the present time. It resembled a workshop, in which the pupils prepared and ground the colours under the master's direction, deriving what instruction they might from seeing him work and hearing him talk; nor were they allowed to touch brush or pencil till they had rendered themselves thorough masters of the preparation of the various colours, temperas, &c. A mastery which, as we have seen, was supposed at that time to take about six years to acquire.

So the boy lived with his master in Florence, and worked, much as a house painter's apprentice works now; drawing, no doubt, at every odd minute in the meantime, in fear and trembling, and thinking art was a very much longer business than he had bargained for, when he left his home to become a painter.

Many days no doubt he looked out from the rough building where he and his fellow pupils were grinding the master's colours, and saw Cimabue standing in the shady garden, before a great glory of crimson drapery and golden background, and many a time his heart sank within him as he looked, and he thought it impossible that he could ever acquire that marvellous skill. But on these early days all the biographies are alike silent, there is not even an apocryphal anecdote of Vasari's to enliven the darkness; and whatever we may fancy, we know absolutely nothing.

The next point of Giotto's life where history takes up the record is at the incident of the O. Briefly told, this is as follows. About 1296,[40] according to Lord Lindsay, Boniface VIII.[41] was desirous of adding to the decorations of St. Peter's, "and sent one of his courtiers from Treviso to Tuscany to ascertain what kind of man Giotto might be, and what were his works." On his way the messenger received designs from various artists in Siena, and then came to Giotto, told him of his mission, and no doubt showed him the elaborate designs which he had received from the Sienese artists. Whereupon Giotto drew with one sweep of his arm a circle in red ink, of perfect accuracy, and gave it to the messenger, refusing to send any other design, "whereby," says Vasari, "the Pope and such of his courtiers as were well versed in the subject, perceived how far Giotto surpassed all the other painters of his time."

Whatever truth there may be in the details of this incident, it is, as Ruskin points out,[42] significant in showing the manner in which the Pope and his counsellors judged of art: i.e., that the best workman was the best man, which for a rough and ready test is not altogether a bad one.

The date of Giotto's visit to Rome is still further fixed by an assertion of Baldinucci's that there is a record in the Vatican in a register, to the effect that the mosaic of the Navicella (which is still in the portico of St. Peter's though enormously damaged), was executed at Rome in 1298. If this be true, and though quoted by Crowe it is not contradicted, it fixes the date of Giotto's visit as at all events not later than that year. Of the works of Giotto at Rome I shall speak in a subsequent chapter, in which I shall endeavour to fix upon the analogy of style, the order in which Giotto painted at Florence, Padua, and Assisi. It should have been noticed that Crowe and Cavalcaselle make the incident of the O occur in the time of Benedict XI, by supposing that that Pope sent from Avignon "at the request of Petrarch, to seek out the best artists of Italy for the purpose of restoring and adorning the churches and palaces of Rome which were falling into decay." This, however, leaves Giotto's first visit to Rome in 1298 unaccounted for, and contradicts Vasari and Lindsay, apparently without sufficient cause, for it seems highly improbable that if the painter had been already engaged in painting and designing mosaics for St. Peter's, that in after years the Pope should have thought it necessary to have a proof of his skill.

However, the date of this visit to Rome is of little importance, as the whole of the works of Giotto in that city have been long destroyed, with the exception of the mosaic of the Navicella, and some small panel pictures in the Sacristy of St. Peter's.[43]

About the year 1300 it seems probable that Giotto returned to Florence, and in the following year painted in the Chapel of the Podesta—commonly called the Bargello. It was here that Giotto introduced (I believe for the first time in the history of mediÆval Italian art) accurate portraits of living people into his picture of Paradise. It is here that the famous portrait of Dante in his early manhood was discovered after having been covered with whitewash for two hundred years.

It was with the greatest difficulty that an American named Kirkup, and Signor Bezzi obtained permission from the Italian government to remove the whitewash from this fresco of Paradise at their own expense.[44] All the frescoes in this chapel are very greatly injured by time and neglect, whitewash and restoration, and especially the Dante portrait, which has suffered most of all from the last-mentioned cause. As I shall have little occasion to refer to the works in this chapel in subsequent chapters, I may here say that in my opinion Crowe and Cavalcaselle have erred in attributing all of them to Giotto.[45] There are many which show little, if any, trace of the master's hand, and others which are apparently imitations by pupils; as, however, the frescoes are all exceedingly defaced, it is not worth while to dwell minutely on this point.[46]

In less than two years from the date of this picture of the Paradise, Dante was exiled to Verona, and for three or four years Giotto did not see him again. In the year 1306, when Giotto went to Padua to paint the Arena Chapel, Dante also settled in that town.[47]

Within a year from the painting of the Bargello, Giotto married a lady, of whom, no matter what may have been her virtues or attractions, posterity knows little or nothing, save that she bore the painter several children, and that her name was Ciuta di Lapo. It was shortly after this period of his life that he produced what must on the whole be considered the greatest work of his life—the decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel at Padua. This was a small barn-like edifice of perfectly plain exterior, which had just been built by Enrico Scrovegni on the site of an old Roman amphitheatre, and dedicated to the Madonna.

According to some accounts, Giotto himself was its architect; but this has only been surmised from the fact of his decoration being so admirably suited to the building. The fact probably being that had the building been of a different or more elaborate shape, he would have treated it in a different manner. As it was, the extreme simplicity of the arrangement of the frescoes, is most happily in harmony with the simplicity of the architecture. Here he seems to have lived for several years, and here as we have said came Dante in 1306, having passed the intervening years of his exile at Bologna. According to Baldinucci, our painter had no less than six children, all of whom were of a surpassing ugliness; and it is recorded that Dante remarked upon this circumstance to him, pretending to be surprised that one who could paint such beautiful figures should have such ugly sons; to which Giotto replied by a jest more suited to his own times, than to ours. Indeed, all that the biography of Giotto amounts to after this, is an account of his various jokes and eccentricities, most of which, I must confess, seem to me of very poor quality, somewhat akin to the pleasantries told at the tea-table of a humorous schoolmaster, or to those which are murmured between the pauses of the work, at the weekly meetings of a Dorcas society. However, all the historians agree in asserting that he was a man of infinite jest, and the humour of these anecdotes may well have evaporated in the course of six hundred years. The following, which I give as it occurs in Vasari, derives a certain interest from the quaint simplicity with which the biographer tells it, and the naÏve way in which justice is depicted as of course being on the side of the best speaker, is not without a certain amount of significance, even in our enlightened nineteenth century.

"Giotto, as we have said before, was of an exceedingly jocund humour, and abounded in witty and humorous remarks, which are still well remembered in Florence. Examples of these may be found not only in the writings of Messer Giovanni Boccaccio, but also in the three hundred stories of Franco Sacchetti, who cites many amusing instances of his talent in this way. And here I will not refuse the labour of transcribing some of these stories, giving them in Franco's own words, that my readers may be made acquainted with the peculiar phraseology and modes of speech used in those times, together with the story itself. He says there in one of these, to set it forth with its proper title:—

"'To Giotto, the great painter, is given a buckler to paint by a man of small account. He, making a jest of the matter, paints in such sort that the owner is put out of countenance.'

"Every one has long since heard of Giotto, and knows how greatly he stood above all other painters. Hearing the fame of the master, a rude artisan, who desired to have a buckler painted, perhaps because he was going to do watch and ward in some castle, marched at once to the workshop of Giotto, with one bearing the shield behind him. Having got there he speedily found Giotto, to whom he said, 'God save thee, master! I would fain have thee paint me my arms on this shield.'

"Giotto, having observed the man and considered his manner, replied nothing more than—'When wilt thou have it finished?' which the other having told him, he answered, 'Leave the matter to me;' and the fellow departed. Then Giotto, being left alone, began to think within himself, 'What may this mean? Hath some one sent this man to make a jest of me? However it be, no man before ever brought me a buckler to paint; yet here is this simple fellow who brings me his shield, and bids me paint his arms upon it as though he were of the royal family of France. Of a verity, I must make him arms of a new fashion.' Thinking thus within himself, he takes the said buckler, and having designed what he thought proper, called one of his scholars and bade him complete the painting. This was a tin scullcap, a gorget, a pair of iron gauntlets, with a cuirass, cuishes, and gandadoes, a sword, a dagger, and a spear. Our great personage, of whom nobody knew anything, having returned for his shield, marches forward and inquires, 'Master, is the shield painted?' 'To be sure it is,' replied Giotto; 'bring it down here.' The shield being brought, our wise gentleman that would be, began to open his eyes and look at it, calling out to Giotto, 'What trumpery is this that thou hast painted me here?' 'Will it seem to thee a trumpery matter to pay for it?' answered Giotto. 'I will not pay five farthings for it all,' returned the clown. 'And what didst thou require me to paint?' asked Giotto. 'My arms.' 'And are they not here,' rejoined the painter; 'is there one wanting?' 'Good, good,' quoth the man. 'Nay, verily, but it is rather bad, bad,' responded Giotto. 'Lord, help thee, for thou must needs be a special simpleton; why, if a man were to ask thee, "Who art thou?" it would be a hard matter for thee to tell him; yet here thou comest and criest, "Paint me my arms!" If thou wert of the house of the Bardi, that were enough; but thou! what arms dost thou bear? Who art thou? Who were thy forefathers? Art thou not ashamed of thyself? Begin at least to come into the world before thou talkest of arms, as though thou wert Dusnam of Bavaria at the very least. I have made thee a whole suit of armour on thy shield, if there be any other piece, tell me, and I'll put that too.' 'Thou hast given me rough words, and hast spoiled my shield,' declared the other; and going forth, betook himself to the justice, before whom he caused Giotto to be called. The latter forthwith appeared, but on his side summoned the complainant for two florins, the price of the painting, and which he demands to be paid.

"The pleadings being heard on both sides, and Giotto's story being much better told than that of our clown, the judge decided that the latter should take away his buckler, and should pay six livres to Giotto, whom they declared to have the right. Thus the good man had to pay and take to his shield; whereupon he was bidden to depart, and not knowing his place had it taught to him on this wise."

In 1307, Giotto appears to have finished his work at the Scrovegni Chapel, and removed to Florence, where he ultimately settled down. Of this period of his life little, if anything, is known. He went to Assisi some time after this, when I have found it impossible to discover.[48] He painted during these latter years at Florence, in four chapels of the Santa Croce, at Ravenna (and at Ferrara and Verona, according to Vasari); probably also he made excursions from Florence into many of the neighbouring towns, but no certain traces of his work exist. In 1328 he was commissioned to paint the portrait of Charles of Calabria, the son of Robert of Naples, and in 1330 was sent for by the latter to adorn some of the Neapolitan churches. On his way back to Florence, he painted at Gaeta and Rimini some frescoes which have quite perished. These were his last works in painting, with the exception of some produced during a brief visit to Milan in 1335, for which he obtained the permission of the government to absent himself from the superintendence of the Cathedral and Campanile. The year previous he had been made master of the works of the Cathedral, and chief builder to the city of Florence; and while he was still engaged upon his bell tower and the cathedral faÇade, before his eyes had lost their lustre, or his hand its cunning, he died suddenly in 1336.

Such is the life of our old master as far as we can gather it from the scanty materials before us: to what does it amount? That a boy showed signs of genius; that a man fulfilled his early promise; that a great painter was for once a prophet in his own country and in his own time; and that all history can tell us of him, is that he made bad jokes, and had six ugly children. Such, I say, is the history of Giotto as I have gathered it from the chronicles of Vasari, Baldinucci, and Lanzi, Kugler, Rumohr, Crowe, and Jameson; but there is another history of the man, of greater worth and fuller meaning than can be found in these musty records; there is that which the painter has written with his own hand, in colours which yet retain much of their pristine brightness. The best record of the artist is neither his questionable witticisms, nor these rough outlines of his life, but that which shines forth clearly still on the walls of Santa Croce and the arches of Assisi. What that record means to us, I will try to explain.