In Cimabue's painting the Virgin is seated on a highly-decorated throne holding in her lap the Child; on either side are three kneeling adoring angels, arranged one above the other in strictly architectural order. The figures are graceful and symmetrical; the drapery with its narrow folds recalls the Byzantine school, but is broader and more flow ing; the coloring, though still dark, is far more clear and lively than that of previous artists. Finally, the composition is good and the whole effect majestic and impressive. In fact, if we were to judge Giotto by a comparison of his rendering of the same subject (now in the gallery at Florence) with that by Cimabue, we should be inclined to give the palm to the latter, so much less grand is Giotto's work, in which we find a lack not only of religious fervor, but also of strength and symmetry.
Ciniabue was one of the last masters who was a mosaicist as well as a painter on wall and panel. Unfortunately, the frescos which may be ascribed to him in the upper church of S. Francesco at Assisi are not sufficiently well preserved to allow of a decisive judgment and a com parison with the works by Giotto in the same church.
School: association of Dante and Giotto is spontaneous, and discloses one side of the painting of the four teenth century in Italy—the allegorical. The other characteristic is more important, as it lies at the root of the new development: it is the psycho logical spirit which governed Giotto and his successors. Up to the present time the religious element had been so dominant in art that the human element had remained subordinate. Whether the figures brought into the picture were exact copies of living men and women seemed of little consequence in comparison with the great religious and moral lessons taught by the themes of Christian art.
But Giotto founded a school whose influence spread over all Italy, carrying with it a naturalistic and a dramatic spirit. Giotto, though a pupil of Cimabue, was not his artistic successor, but broke loose from his master's ideal and set up one of his own. Woltmann remarks: "Giotto's embodiments of Scripture and legend are in their main lines consistent with the tradition represented by the works of the Romanesque period and the prescription of the Mount Athos manual, but in the details we see how tradition is transmuted by his independence and penetration of thought. Ile gets hold with surpassing insight of the kernel of human interest in every subject, letting the actions shape themselves according to their inward springs, and in that way really giving them the appear ance of truth and life."
Giotto's innovations were numerous, but one of the most important was the new treatment of drapery: he entirely abandoned the thin and narrow folds of the Byzantine school and substituted broad and picturesque masses of drapery, of greater simplicity. It is important to observe by what gradual approaches naturalism penetrated the realm of painting. Giotto's figures and bodies are still typical rather than individual, and the drawing is conventional; the animals introduced are too small in proportion to the figures, and are carelessly drawn, being given merely as necessary accessories; in the landscape, also, there is no attempt at a realistic rendering. Giotto may almost be called the founder of fresco painting. His immediate predecessors had confined themselves largely to panel-paintings, and wall-paintings, once so popular, had gone out of fashion. Giotto adopted the process of fresco and a system of coloring which differed from that previously in use.
Frescos of the Arena Chapel at Padita.—The series of frescos with which the great master covered the walls of the Arena Chapel at Padua are per haps the most interesting and characteristic of Giotto's works. The dec oration of the vault consists of medallions containing busts of Christ, the Virgin, and the prophets. On the walls of the nave and the arch of the choir are thirty-eight subjects, arranged in three tiers, giving the legend ary history of the Virgin and the life of Christ. A number of minute paintings are inserted in the borders.
Among the larger compositions we select the Resurrection of Lazarus (pl. 29, fig. 2), as being one in which Giotto shows his quiet dramatic power. The calm and majestic figure of Christ, behind whom are two of his disciples, stands in front of a striking group. At his feet kneel in vehement supplication the sisters Mary and Martha. In the back ground is the open tomb, hewn in the mountain-side, whose door has been removed by two attendants. In the midst of a group of men and women is held upright the swathed body of Lazarus; two women are pro tecting themselves from its obnoxious exhalations, while the men with varied gestures express their astonishment.