The Assisi Problem
The central problem in Giotto studies, the attribution of the Assisi
frescoes, may be summed up as the question whether Giotto ever
painted at Assisi and, if so, what? There can be no reasonable doubt
that he did work at Assisi, for a long literary tradition goes back
to the Compilatio chronologica ofRiccobaldo Ferrarese, who wrote in
or before 1319, when Giotto was alive and famous. Later writers down
to Vasari expanded this and made it clear that Giotto's works were
in the great double church of San Francesco (St. Francis). By
Vasari's time, several frescoes in both upper and lower churches
were attributed to Giotto, the most important being the cycle of 28
scenes from the life of St. Francis of Assisi in the nave of the
upper church and the “Franciscan Virtues” and some other frescoes in
the lower church. (Some of the frescoes in the St. Francis cycle
were damaged by earthquakes that struck Assisi on Sept. 26, 1997.)
The majority of these scenes, mostly narrative, are revolutionary in
their expression of reality and humanity. In these frescoes, the
emphasis is on the dramatic moment of each situation, and, with
details of dress and background at aminimum, the inner reality of
human emotion is intensified through crucial gestures and glances.
In the 19th century, however, it was observed that all these
frescoes, though similar in style, could not be by the same hand,
and the new trend toward skepticism of Vasari's statements led to
the position that rejected all the Assisi frescoes and dated the St.
Francis cycle to a period after Giotto's death. This extreme view
has been generally abandoned, and, indeed, a dated picture of 1307
can be shown to derive from the St. Francis cycle. Nevertheless,
many scholars prefer to accept the idea of an otherwise totally
unknown Master of the St. Francis legend, on the grounds that the
style of the cycle is irreconcilable with that of the later Arena
Chapel frescoes in Padua, which are universally accepted as Giotto's.
This involves the idea that the works referred to (in Giotto's
lifetime) by Riccobaldo cannot be identified with anything now
extant and must have perished centuries ago, so that the early
15th-century sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti, Vasari, and others
mistakenly transferred the existing St. Francis cycle to Giotto.
Five hundred years of tradition are thus written off.
Still more difficult, if Giotto did not paint the St. Francis
frescoes, major works of art, then they must be attributed to a
painter who cannot be shown to have created anything else, whose
name has disappeared without trace, although he was of the first
rank, and, odder still, was formed by the combined influences of
Cimabue, the Florentine sculptor Arnolfo di Cambio, and the Roman
painter Pietro Cavallini—influences which coalesce at Assisi and may
be taken as the influences that formed Giotto himself.
Arising out of the fusion of Roman and Florentine influences in the
Assisi frescoes, there was later a tendency to see the hand of
Giotto, as a very young man, in the works of the Isaac Master, the
painter of two scenes of “Isaac and Esau” and “Jacob and Isaac” in
the nave above the St. Francis cycle. If this theory is accepted, it
is easy to understand that Giotto, as a young man, made such a
success of this commission that he was entrusted with the most
important one, the official painted biography of St. Francis based
on the new official biography written around 1266 by St.
Bonaventura. In fact, the whole of today's mental picture of St.
Francis stems largely from these frescoes. Clearly, a man born in
1276 was less likely to have received such a commission than one 10
years older, if, as was always thought, the commission was given in
1296 or soon after by Fra Giovanni di Muro, general of the
Franciscans. The works in the Lower Church are generally regarded as
productions ofGiotto's followers (there are, indeed, resemblances to
his works at Padua), and there is real disagreement only over the
“Legend of St. Francis.” The main strength of the non-Giotto school
lies in the admittedly sharp stylistic contrasts between the St.
Francis cycle and the frescoes in the Arena Chapel at Padua,
especially if the Assisi frescoes were painted 1296–c. 1300 and
those of the Arena c. 1303–05; for the interval between the two
cycles is too smallto allow for major stylistic developments. This
argument becomes less compelling when the validity of the dates
proposed and the Roman period c. 1300 are taken into account. As
already mentioned, the Assisi frescoes may have been painted before
1296 and not necessarily afterward, and the Arena frescoes are
datable with certainty only in or before 1309, although probably
painted c. 1305–06; clearly, a greater time lag between the two
cycles can help to explain stylistic differences, as can the
experiences that Giotto underwent in what was probably his second
Roman period.
Roman period
Three principal works are attributed to Giotto in Rome. Theyare the
great mosaic of “Christ Walking on the Water” (the “Navicella”),
over the entrance to St. Peter's; the altarpiece painted for
Cardinal Stefaneschi (Vatican Museum); and the fresco fragment of
“Boniface VIII Proclaiming the Jubilee,” in San Giovanni in Laterano
(St. John Lateran). Giotto is also known to have painted some
frescoes in the choir of old St. Peter's, but these are lost.
These Roman works also pose problems in attribution and criticism.
The attribution of the “Navicella” is certain; it is known that
Cardinal Stefaneschi commissioned Giotto to doit. The mosaic,
however, was almost entirely remade in the 17th century except for
two fragmentary heads of angels, so that old copies must be used for
all stylistic deductions. The fresco fragment in San Giovanni in
Laterano was cleaned in the 20th century and was tentatively
reattributed to Giotto on the basis of its likeness to the Assisi
frescoes, but the original attribution can be traced only as far
back as the 17thcentury. The “Stefaneschi Altarpiece,” with its
portrait of the Cardinal himself, must be one of the works
commissioned by him. The fact that he commissioned Giotto to do the
“Navicella” might suggest that this work is by Giotto as well, but
the altarpiece is so poor in quality that it cannot be by Giotto's
own hand. It may be observed that several works bearing Giotto's
signature, notably the “St. Francis of Assisi” (Louvre, Paris) and
the altarpieces in Bologna and Florence (Santa Croce), are generally
regarded as school pieces bearing his trademark, whereas the
“Ognissanti Madonna,” unsigned and virtually undocumented, is so
superlative in quality that it is accepted as entirely by his hand.
During this period Giotto may also have done the “Crucifix”in Santa
Maria Novella and the “Madonna” in San Giorgio e Massimiliano dello
Spirito Santo (both in Florence). These works may be possibly
identifiable with works mentioned in very early sources, and if so
they throw light on Giotto's early style (before 1300). It is also
possible that, about 1305, Giotto went to Avignon, in France, but
the evidence for this is slender.
Paduan period
There is thus no very generally agreed picture of Giotto's early
development. It is some relief, therefore, to turn to the fresco
cycle in the chapel in Padua known as the Arena or Scrovegni Chapel.
Its name derives from the fact that it was built on the site of a
Roman amphitheatre by Enrico Scrovegni, the son of a notorioususurer
mentioned by Dante. The founder isshown offering a model of the
church in the huge “Last Judgment,” which covers the whole west
wall. The rest of the small, bare church is covered with frescoes in
three tiers representing scenes from the lives of Joachim andAnna,
the life of the Virgin, the Annunciation (on the chancel arch), and
the life and Passion of Christ, concluding with Pentecost. Below
these three narrative bands is a fourth containing monochrome
personifications of the Virtues and Vices. The chapel was apparently
founded in 1303 and consecrated on March 25, 1305. It is known that
the frescoes were completed in or before 1309, and they are
generally dated c. 1305–06, but even with several assistants it must
have taken at least two years to complete so large a cycle.
The frescoes are in relatively good condition, and all that has been
said of Giotto's power to render the bare essentials of a setting
with a few impressive and simple figures telling the story as
dramatically and yet as economically as possible is usually based on
the narrative power that is the fundamental characteristic of these
frescoes. These dominating figures, simple and severe, similar to
those in the Assisi cycle but placed in settings of more formal
abstraction and rendered with more grandeur, are the quintessence of
his style, and anatomy and perspective were used—or even invented—by
him as adjuncts to his narrative gifts. He never attained to the
skill that so often, in fact, misled the men of the 15th and 16th
centuries. In the Padua frescoes the details are always significant,
whereas it is a characteristic of the Assisi cycle that there occurs
from time to time a delighted dwelling on details that are not
absolutely essential to the story.
Santa Croce frescoes
Documents show that Giotto was in Florence in 1311–14 and 1320; and
it was probably during these years, before going to Naples (c.
1329), that he painted frescoes in four chapels in Santa Croce
belonging to the Giugni, Tosinghi-Spinelli, Bardi, and Peruzzi
families. The Giugni Chapel frescoes are lost, as are all the
Tosinghi-Spinelli ones, except for an “Assumption” over the
entrance, not universally accepted as by Giotto. The Bardi and
Peruzzi chapels contained cycles of St. Francis, St. John the
Baptist, and St. John the Evangelist, but the frescoes were
whitewashed and were not recovered until the mid-19th century, when
they were damaged in the process of removing the whitewash and then
heavily restored. Much thesame happened to a portrait of Dante in
the Bargello, also in Florence, for which there is a traditional
attribution to Giotto. Writers tended to take more or less account
of theseadditions and restorations according to the view they held
ofthe Assisi problem, but a prolonged cleaning and re-restoration of
both chapels in the mid-20th century has demonstrated that the Bardi
Chapel has few but splendid figures remaining, painted in true
fresco, whereas the Peruzzi Chapel figures are now largely ghosts,
since they were painted in a different technique. The older view,
that the two cycles were contemporary, is no longer necessarily
valid, and there is no evidence for the date of either cycle, except
that both are probably later than the Arena Chapel frescoes.
Naples and the last Florentine period
In January 1330, King Robert of Naples promoted Giotto to the rank
of “familiar” (member of the royal household), which implies that he
had been in Naples for some while, possibly since 1329, and he
remained there until 1332–33. Allthe works he executed there have
been lost, but traces of hisstyle may be distinguished in the local
school. On April 12, 1334, he was appointed capomastro, or surveyor,
of the Duomo in Florence and architect to the city. This was a
tribute to his great fame as a painter and not on account of any
special architectural knowledge. On July 19 of the same year he
began the campanile, or bell tower, of the Duomo. It was later
altered but is known, in part at least, from a drawing in Siena. He
may have designed some of the reliefs carved by Andrea Pisano on the
campanile; certainly the bronze doors of the baptistery by Andrea
show clear traces of Giotto's frescoes in Santa Croce. Indeed the
whole courseof painting in Tuscany was dominated by his pupils and
followers—by Taddeo Gaddi, Bernardo Daddi, Maso di Banco,Andrea
Orcagna, and Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti in Siena—but none of
these really understood all of his innovations.
Giotto achieved great personal fame in his own lifetime; in the
Divine Comedy, Dante says of his relation to his reputed teacher,
the Florentine artist Cimabue, that “Cimabue thought to hold the
field in painting, but now Giotto has the cry, so that the fame of
Cimabue is obscured.” The mere fact that he was mentioned in Dante,
whether or not in a particularly flattering context, was sufficient
to establish and maintain this fame in 14th- and 15th-century Italy,
and legends soon began to crystallize around his name. When, in
1550, the artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari published Le vite de'
pił eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori italiani... (Lives
of the Most Eminent Italian Painters, Sculptors, and
Architects...), he naturally began his history of Italian art
with Giotto as the man who, even more than Cimabue, broke away from
the Middle Ages and ushered in the “good modern manner.” It was not
until the Renaissance, with Masaccio and Michelangelo, that his true
successors arose.
Peter J. Murray
(Encyclopaedia Britannica)
