Early Italian Painting. Joseph Archer Crowe

      Duccio di Buoninsegna, Crevole Madonna, c. 1280.

      Tempera on wood.

      Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena.

      Revival of Art in Siena – Fundamental Difference between Sienese and Florentine Art

      Taddeo di Bartolo, The Adoration of the Magi (detail), c. 1404.

      Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena.

      Duccio was the first great painter of the pure Sienese school. His career began after that of Cimabue yet earlier than that of Giotto; he occupies in the annals of his country almost as much space as they hold together in the annals of Florence. He reformed the old manner, creating a new one which was long second only to that of Florence, clinging firmly to time-honoured forms of composition and old technical methods of execution. His contemporaries and successors Ugolino, Segna, Simone Martini, the Lorenzetti, and Taddeo di Bartolo did no more in the fourteenth century than follow the wake which marked his track. They hardly improved the system which he galvanised into life.

      The Lorenzetti brothers, it is true, assumed and embodied some of the practice of the Florentines, infusing into their grand and admirable works some of the spirit of Giotto. They momentarily cleared the barrier which separated the two great schools of Central Italy. But the effort was short-lived, and Taddeo di Bartolo, at the close of the fourteenth century, was as clearly in the beaten path up to the expansion of his peculiar genius as the ‘second rates’ of Siena.

      Thus confined within a narrow circle, the Sienese remained true to a system of their own, which they corrected in the fullest measure of which they were capable without an abandonment of sacred principles, custom, and prejudice. It was chiefly in technical methods of execution that they followed traditional habits. They had, one would think, the Siculo-Byzantine examples, whose studied and careful execution, whose minute precision of drawing and detail, whose powerful and lively colour and elegant ornament were to be greatly admired. They succeeded in rivalling these models, carrying ornamentation beyond an accessory and making it a principal feature in their pictures. They pursued this path so far that, not merely their draperies, but a nimbus, a gilt background, and the frame, which enlivened the composition, were stamped with the most exquisite designs of leaves and branches, with human heads for flowers or arabesques of a more general form, relieved, coloured, and gilted, with all the delicacy of a tasteful Oriental style. That, in such a pursuit of detail, the essentials of composition and form should not have sunk into complete oblivion is remarkable. The result, however, was a material check to the progress of severe simplicity and grandeur, by which the perfect subordination of each part to the whole, and the grand development which characterised the Florentines, were rendered impossible. That colour should become a special study under these circumstances was natural. Tempera pictures, though brilliant and vigorous in tone, could hardly attain light keys of harmony so long as the old system was maintained. The Sienese adhered to this system with extraordinary persistence; why they did so, when in fresco they followed other methods, is an interesting line of inquiry. For a people of a happy and lively spirit, the Sienese were much more patient as tempera painters than the Florentines. The reason is to be found in their fondness for ornament, which required time and effort to work out. Their rivals, of more simple taste, preferred mastery and breadth of handling. A Florentine altarpiece might be seen at a greater distance, a Sienese panel invited closer attention; however, for this very reason, it demanded more minute finish and more time. A system which had the advantage of affording time for finish might be essential; it was certainly practised by the Sienese, and necessarily involved the continuance of the old technical methods. These methods may be summed up in a few words.

      They prepared their materials with the care peculiar to the oldest painters, and covered their panel with a cloth to keep the joints together, as the artists of every school did at the time; they primed it with a white ground of gesso on which the drawing was engraved with the minutest attention. The flesh tints were then laid on in one general and dense coat of verde, covering the light parts as well as those intended to be in shadow. Upon this universal ground, they began to model by laying in the lights in a copious stippling and seeking the form by the direction of its lines. Having thus obtained light and shadow by the juxtaposition of the stippling with the original verde, they melted the colours together by working them over and over with excessive labour and patience until the forms had gained a sufficient amount of rounding. This slow process was facilitated by the peculiar capacity for moistness in the original verde. Ruddier tones were now stippled on to the cheeks and lips, meant to highlight the most projecting points, and the whole was finally fused together by transparent glazes. But nothing that the artist could do sufficed to produce any more than a low key of harmony, because the deep verde always reappeared and absorbed too much light to allow for a quality of brightness and clarity. The stippling never succeeded in creating perfect semitones, so a sharp contrast invariably existed between the light, which was too yellow, and the shadow, which remained too green. At first, perhaps, these defects were less visible because of the glazes, but, as in Cimabue’s pictures, painted with paler verde on the same principle. Hence, in the altarpieces of Siena, these light and fugitive tints were the first to disappear by abrasion; the surface was left too green in shadow, too red in the lips and cheeks, and too yellow in the highest places. The draperies were produced in another way, where the nature of the colour allowed it, with a general tone strengthened by deeper glazes of the same in shadow, and lighter preparations for the highest lights.

      In fresco, the Sienese never covered the white intonaco with a general verde tint in the flesh. They merely marked the contours and shadows with a reddish brown of a liquid texture, or with red lines and pale verde shadows, from the beginning, mapping out distinct planes, so that light colour never came over dark. In this way, Simone and the Lorenzetti produced frescoes uniting power with brightness and surface clarity. Rejecting in paintings on the wall the system which enabled them to be detailed, as frescoes need not be seen close-up, they attained great perfection, fusing the lights and semitones into the shadows so that at times they even had the defect of flatness, obtaining relief by means exactly the reverse of those employed in tempera.

      True to the old and typical forms of composition which preceding ages had developed, Sienese painters also preserved that vehemence of action which had been traditional, and failed to appreciate the decorous simplicity of the Florentine revival. Hence, there was an absence of balance in pictures, superfluity or insufficiency in composition as in groups and figures. The intention was too frequently better than the result; movements might be found bold and disposed to exaggeration. A stern, sometimes convulsed expression and forced motion in males contrasted with a languid or affected tenderness and grace in females. Gazing eyes in the first proclaimed fearlessness and masculine passion, muscular forms suggested energy and force. In the second, long parallel lids all but closed over the iris, long narrow heads with slender frames, or round faces on corpulent ones were characteristic. Draperies, otherwise massive and of a fine cast, clung to the shape and exposed its peculiarities. Broken, cramped, and strange action of hands and fingers supplied the place of natural gesture. Thin and pointed in females, the extremities were short, coarse, muscular, and bony in males. Superabundance of character, form, and motion in men was the heirloom of earlier art, affected softness and gentleness in women, a pure Sienese element. In this respect, Cimabue furnished the model which artists of the sister republic exaggerated in imitation.

      Maso di Banco, The Miracle of Saint Sylvester, c. 1340.

      Fresco. Bardi di Vernio Chapel, Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence.

      Tuscan Master, Crucifixion and Six Scenes from the Passion of the Christ, 1240–1270.

      Tempera on wood, 277 × 231 cm.

      Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

      Masaccio (Tommaso Cassai), The Holy Trinity, c. 1428.

      Fresco, 667 × 317 cm.

      Santa Maria