Early Italian Painting. Joseph Archer Crowe

Cimabue’s often-quoted title as ‘father of modern painting’ cannot be justified, even in his own city of Florence. The facts on which his traditional celebrity has been founded will be elucidated in ensuing sections, as the opening scene must surely begin with none other than Guido.

      Scenes from the History of Sylvester and Constantine, 1246.

      Fresco. Church of the Santissimi

      Quatro Coronati, Rome.

      Scenes from the History of Sylvester and Constantine (detail), 1246.

      Fresco. Church of the Santissimi

      Quatro Coronati, Rome.

      Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters

      Guido da Siena 13th Century

      Guido da Siena, The Adoration of the Magi (detail), c. 1270–1280.

      Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg.

      Typical art in Siena begins, for the historian, with the works of Guido, which deserve all the more to be studied because a literary tourney has been held in respect of his labours and the chief incidents of his life.

      The earliest picture connected with Guido is a half-length Madonna from the San Domenico of Siena. The Virgin, of tall stature, sits on a large seat and points with her right hand to the infant on her knee, who gives the benediction and grasps a scroll in his left hand. Her round head, a little bent, supported by a slender neck, is disfigured by the clumsiness of its nose, which starts from a projecting angular root, terminating in a broad depression. The arched lines of the brow are but the continuation of a long curved lid extending towards the temple far beyond the outer corner of the eye. The canthus, instead of forming a loop as in nature, is drawn at a drooping angle. The iris is an ellipse, and conveys an unnatural expression of ecstasy. The mouth is indicated by dark strokes, with two black points at the corners. Outlines, red in light, black in shadow, bound the form, which is mapped out in flat tones of enamelled surface with little effort of blending. The hands are thin and inarticulate. The mantle, falling over a close cap to the shoulders and partly covering a red tunic shot with gold, is lined with mazes of angular and meaningless strokes. The nimbus is full of glass stones. The same features, design, and draperies mark the infant Christ, whose ears are of an enormous size.

      This painting, if it is, in fact, by Guido, would prove that he lived at the close of the thirteenth century, and the minute description which has just been given is necessary to elucidate a question which has long engrossed critical attention, which involves the rival claims of Siena and Florence to the title of regenerator of Italian art.

      Guido is unknown beyond the walls of Siena. He remained a stranger to Vasari and his existence is only certified by an altarpiece bearing his name and the date 1221 on a work labelled Madonna and Child Enthroned, which was once in the San Domenico of Siena but is now in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. The state of the picture and the fashion of the signature both reveal a series of manipulations which excites suspicion. The date is too early for the painting and it exhibits a curious variety of handling in several of its parts.

      The subject is the Virgin Mary, sized larger than life and seated on a cushion in an armchair decorated with mosaic patterns. Her head is wrapped in a white cloth which drapes onto the shoulders; a high-waisted red tunic is partly seen beneath a large blue cloak, and both are shot with gold. Her left arm and hand support the infant Christ, who gives the blessing as he sits on her lap while she points, with tapered fingers, to his face as he looks up at her. A clover-patterned arch above the niche of the throne is filled in the spandrels by six figures of winged angels in prayer. In a triangular pediment belonging to the altarpiece but hanging apart in the transept of San Domenico, the space is filled with a half length of Christ in benediction between two angels.

      Guido da Siena, The Flight to Egypt (detail), c. 1275–1280.

      Gold and tempera on panel, 34 × 46 cm.

      Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg.

      Guido da Siena, The Flagellation, c. 1270–1280.

      Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg.

      The treatment of this picture reveals a Sienese artist of the close of the thirteenth century, who painted all but the head and neck of the Virgin and the flesh parts of the infant Christ.

      These are handled in the manner of the Sienese school – of Duccio, Ugolino, or Simone. The variety lies in the spirit, as well as in the technical execution, which not only gives more regularity and nature to the features, but a better and softer run to the outlines. Another advantage displayed in these heads is the comparative lightness and blending and the more pleasant tinge and transparence of the colour. The glaze of the old style has disappeared along with sombre tones and black contours. It has been argued that work like this entitles Guido to a place in art above Cimabue. While the older parts of the picture are below the level of Cimabue, the new parts are above it. The date is apocryphal, having been retouched after some of its letters were obliterated. “We may take it that the altarpiece in its original state was painted by Guido of Siena, between 1270 and 1280, and restored by a later artist of the Sienese school of the fourteenth century.”

      A patient search has failed to bring any records to light proving the existence of an artist called Guido in the earlier years of the thirteenth century. The name of Guido Gratiani is entered in municipal accounts as the painter of a banner in 1278. He superseded Dietisalvi in 1287, 1290, and 1298 as limner of the books of the Biccherna. He completed Majesty between St. Peter and St. Paul in 1295, found in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena. In 1302, he pilloried twelve forgers in a portrait on the front of the tribunal of Justice. He was one of three sons of Gratiano, and lived in the parish of San Donate in Montanini. He brought up to his profession a son named Bartolommeo, or Meo, who afterwards (1319) worked in Perugia. Guido’s brothers, Mino and Guarnieri, or Neri, were also artists. If we concede any value to the inscription on the altarpiece of Guido in San Domenico, we must in turn suppose that the painter is Guido Gratiani and that his work is later than 1221, and dates from the close of the century.

      Following this deduction, Siena could not lay claim to a superiority in art during the thirteenth century. Niccola and Giovanni Pisano furnished the chief ornaments of her cathedral, and under the guidance of these and other strangers, the school of which Agnolo and Agostino were afterwards the ornaments arose in 1300. The Sienese rivalled the Florentines after the time of Cimabue.

      Duccio, Ugolino, Simone, and Lorenzetti are entitled to well-deserved admiration, but their influence remained second to that of Cimabue and Giotto.

      Painting may be said to have followed much the same course at Arezzo as at Lucca, Pisa, and Siena. Crucifixes, portraits of St. Francis, and a few Madonnas were the staple of their production, and these were of a less attractive character than the works of other Italian cities. A small crucifix, of the close of the twelfth century in Santa Maria della Pieve, in which Christ is represented erect and open-eyed; another, of the same character and date in the chapel del Sacramento, contiguous to the Collegiata of Castiglione Aretino; and a third, colossal, of a later period, in San Domenico of Arezzo, in which the feet of Christ are still separate but the body is in a state of contortion, mark the progress of the same decline in Arezzo as elsewhere.

      Christ in the Garden of Olives, 12th to 13th century.

      Mosaic. Nave of the St. Mark Basilica, Venice.

      Giovanni Cimabue 1240–1302

      Giotto di Bondone, Maestà (Ognissanti Madonna), 1305–1310.

      Tempera on wood, 325 × 204 cm.

      Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

      Giovanni