BOOKS.

MR. QUILTER'S " GIOTTO." *

THE introductory chapter of this volume states that it is to form one of Messrs. Low and Co.'s series of " Illustrated Bio- graphies of the Great Artists." From no fault of the author's, it is, however, much more of an essay on the art of the thir- teenth century, and on the emancipation and development which it received at the hands of Giotto, than a biography of the eminent Tuscan painter. There is no new material for such a biography, and the old material is scanty. Had it been much more abundant, it is, indeed, probable that Mr. Quilter, whose bent, like that of the leader of his school, is to expatiate and moralise, would none the less have improved so natural and invit- ing an occasion for criticism and for drawing lessons for his contemporaries from the life of his great subject. The little book has evidently been as much a labour of love as Mr_ Ruskin himself could have made it, and deserves a hearty welcome. For there is no painter the true appreciation of whose position and merits is more needful, to all who make Art their study ; and from the fact that Giotto's work was mainly • Giotto. By Harry Quitter. London : Sampson Low and Co.

in fresco, little can be learned directly of his style in England, and all but the lucky few who are privileged to seek him in his own land must study him, if at all, in the prints of the Arundel Society, with the accompanying notes of Mr. Ruskin, and in works of the biographical-dictionary class. The volume before us supplies a want, and with the other secondary means at hand will enable the student who cannot visit Padua, Assisi, Florence, or Rome to form a not inadequate idea of the great innovator and his surroundings.

The essay begins with a sketch of the Byzantine Art prevailing in Italy at the date of Giotto's appearance on the scene, its mosaics and frescoes rich in sensuous beauties of colour, heightened by the dim, mysterious twilight of the churches, but from which thought had been excluded by rigid tradition, and in which mere symbols, worthy in all

but their subject to find a place in Mr. Lear's Book of Nonsense, represented the gracious persons of the Christian

story. But if on the side of painting the office of the regenera- tor was simply to abolish and supersede, the Lombard Byzan- tine architecture, assimilating the features of all surrounding styles into one of marvellous picturesqueness, was an influence for good, to which Mr. Quilter, following Mr. Ruskin, attributes great importance in the culture of Giotto and his followers.

After a short chapter on the methods of painting which preceded the introduction of oil as a vehicle we come to the biography, the leading facts of which are among the best known of tales, to be found in every sketch of the history of painting and in many a children's magazine. Who has not heard of the shepherd boy of the Apennines above Fiesole and Florence, who was found by the greatest artist of the day, as he accidentally passed, sketching with a stone on a rock, the sheep under his care; and how the artist took him in baud, and brought him up in his studio, until he became the morning star of the firmament of Italian art? Mr. Quilter, like a true hero-worshipper, does scant justice to all but his hero, and Cimabue suffers among others.

The popular enthusiasm with which one of Cimabue's works was received points to a vague sense that there was progress in his brush. And the pictures that have been handed down show to

our eyes, which the sequel has opened more fully, a distinct step towards the freedom and grace of nature, however inconsiderable its immediate result may have been. In breaking the trammels of traditionary art, if anywhere, c'esl le premier pee qui &Wile.

Whether the story of the meeting be literal truth or a myth of later birth, it is clear that Cimabue recognised the free genius of his pupil in its germ, and recognised it because his own genius was akin, though perhaps radically inferior and certainly oppressed by a heavier weight of custom ; and the common verdict justly and inseparably associates the names of Cimabue and Giotto.

Besides the dates of the larger continuous series of Giotto's works, we have anecdotes illustrating the rough humour and forcible character of the man ; among the rest, the celebrated story of the circle :-

" Briefly told, this is as foil ows. About 129G, according to Lord Lindsay, Boniface VIII. was desirous of adding to the decorations of St. Peter's, ' and sent one of his courtiers from Treviso to Tus- cany 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 sub- ject, 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, 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 incident also illustrates the great change which the classi- fication of labour has brought about amongs us, for at the pre- sent clay such a test would certainly rank some painters of signboards before many good artists.

On the return of Giotto to Florence, after his work in old St. Peter's at Rome, he came into contact with Dante, and it was at this time that he introduced the beautiful and well-known profile portrait of the poet into his fresco of Paradise in the Bargello. During his stay at Padua, which followed his work at Florence, he was again a fellow-townsman of Dante.

Mr. Quilter's detailed criticisms of the frescos at Padua and Assisi ate just and acute, as well as enthusiastic, but offer nothing that can be quoted. The following, on the general' style of the master, is, however, as complete as a whole chapter could have made it :-

" I feel my inability to convey to my readers any adequate idea of the general style of Giotto's painting, and this not so much be- cause it is a complicated one or difficult to understand, as because of its very simplicity. A few points may be mentioned in which it differed from that of his predecessors in Italy, from the pictures of the Renaissance period, and lastly from those of our own time; but when all is said, the peculiar beauty of the colouring, the simplicity and purity of the feeling, the strength and directness of tho painter's aim, and the unstudied grace of his compositions will remain to baffle any description that can be given."

And further on, the characteristics are thus summarised :-

"First, a lighter, purer tone of colour than had been in use before the time of Cimabue, and a greater variety and purity of tint than had been attained by that master, especially in the more distant. portions of the picture. Second, the introduction into his composi- tions of a certain amount of natural detail which had been before- totally neglected, and the substitution of the portraits of actual men and women for the imaginary beings that had formerly filled up the backgrounds of the Byzantine pictures. Third, conies the power of illustrating the real meaning of his subject, and not merely suggesting it, as had formerly been the case, allied to which is tho dramatic quality of which I have just spoken. I feel how barren is all this description to explain the progress in art made by this artist—the progress from stagnation to movement, from death to life, from sym- bolical types, to the things themselves."

In a book which is addressed mainly to learners, it waa, how- ever, not expedient to pass over as small defects " lack of depth of hue, and variation of colour in differing light and shade, deficiency in the rendering of form, elementary amount of knowledge of perspective and anatomy." They are great defects, which commonly repel the unpractised eye at the outset, and the thorough recognition of their greatness is a help to the student and docile amateur, and the highest tribute to Giotto's genius, which so wonderfully reconcile us to them upon study.

Mr. Quilter, as is inevitable with a serious man, directs the light of his studies on the condition and prospects of his own days. He conceives British Art to be, in a measure, enslaved to Venice and Florence, as Italy before Giotto was to Byzan- tium; but practical guidance as to its emancipation he has none to offer. " It is not possible now for a regenerator of Art to cause a new departure for Art by plain reference to natural facts. But how long has it been impossible ? For little more than twenty years !"—because the so-called pre-Raffaellites have already caused this new departure. Here we have an injustice to a long series of almost contemporary artists. It ought to be sufficient to remind Mr. Quilter that Ruskin'a Modern Painters, the book which gave the most effective stimulus. to British Art in recent times, was published almost forty years ago ; and if we may believe its author, who has never recanted, there were then a long array of mature artists who had studied nature in a hundred varied aspects. As, however, Mr. Ruskin referred almost exclusively to landscape painters, we ask any of those who can remember the walls of the Academy during forty to fifty years to recall the days when the places of honour were held by Lawrence and Westall, Howard, and the graceful but con- ventional Stothard. Let him cast his eye down the list which follows, of Wilkie and Mulready, Collins and Constable, Landseer and William Hunt, E. Ward and C. Leslie, not to name a throng whose study of nature was obscured, not by reference to the schools of Venice or Florence, but to the stage of their own days. The vices of the period immediately preceding Mr. Ruskin were a flimsy method of handling, and in most cases a want of purpose, springing from defective general' education ; but in varying degrees and manners truth was sought. The pre.Raffaellite movement was not a new depar- ture, but the reinvigorating of a movement already existing.. Its name, and the early productions of its members, really indi- cate their primary bond. A conscientious study of detail and a delighted recognition of the merits of the thirteenth and four- teenth-century Italians, for a time united men so different as the painters of the Huguenots, the Tractariau type of Christ, and the weird heroines of Tennyson. Certainly, except in one of the number, there was little of that " essential truth of nature" which is to be found in the simple, expressive atti- tudes of Giotto. One, the greatest of the trio, has wandered, alas ! into other not fresher fields, but still occasionally lets us see undiminished his absolutely unique power of detaining on the canvas the most fleeting and subtle expressions of the human countenance. Mr. Hunt still rejoices to paint the most gorgeous and exceptional lights of the scenes of Hebrew story, but whether he is producing other "Lights of the World," " Scape- ;oats," or" Shadows of Death," the outer world knows nothing. As a painter, Mr. Rossetti is wholly withdrawn from the vulgar eye. These men have set an example of true study, but formed no school. Mr. Borne Jones alone steadily maintains their standard. His refined reproduction of the style of Botticelli, his un- limited and conscientious labour and delicate taste, his occa- sional glorious colouring, adorn what we must hold to he a false departure, as unlike as possible to the regeneration under Giotto ; for God forbid that his fate-stricken maidens, whose pallid cheeks, colourless lips, and eyes clouded with weeping, seem for ever incapable of a smile—though they represent well enough the wailing phantasms of Shelley's " Prometheus " —should embody the essential truth of life in any genera- tion.

" Nature brings not back the mastodon," and the continual harking back upon old schools never did, and never will, pro- duce art of any kind capable of touching mankind at large, and lifting them to higher thoughts and higher desires. "Forward !" must be the word, and Mr. Quilter, notwithstanding his love for Burne Jones and another contemporary, feels it thoroughly. The day dreamed of by Mr. Ruskin, when England shall be clean and the English working-man beautiful, may give a stimu- lus to Art, if the state of the atmosphere should then justify a wealthy nation in ordering the decoration of St. Paul's, West- minster Hall, and the vestibules of all our public buildings. But Paris, Brussels, Niirnberg, and Madrid are clean, yet look where you will, Art is certainly not better, nor more progressive, than in England ; and Italy, where it is at the lowest, has clean cities, a beautiful peasantry, and Giotto's frescos. Indeed, it can- not be concealed that the difficulties in the way of a great school of painters in our days are great and growing. An art which speaks through the eye and the sense of beauty cannot but suffer, when surroundings destitute of beauty constantly assault the eye. Society, steeped in artificiality, lends no help. One-half nearly of the women in the easy classes submit themselves with complacency in matters of dress to the guidance of the vulgar and meretricious modistes of Paris, and the minority show little stability of taste, but rather a preference for eccentricity. Among the men, convenience, comfort, cleanliness, are the aummum boniton in dress. With the decay or volatilisation of the old religious faith, Art has lost a wide field, where every spec- tator was at home, without need of catalogue or cicerone to point the painter's meaning. At the same time, Englishmen have lost demonstrative manners, such as enabled Giotto, from his own daily observation, to transfer naturally and easily to the plaster his conceptions of the dramatic incidents which still touched every heart. Our truest tragedies, and comedies, too, now-a-days, are unseen. Where feeling is deep, gesture is wholly, and play of countenance all but, suppressed among the majority of modern Englishmen. The sympathetic eye, the imaginative memory, and the masterly hand of Millais and Watts, alone among ancients and moderns, have proved themselves capable of at once detecting and arresting on the canvas those fine traitor-shades of expression which betray English emotion. Yet it is in the direction of this rare refine- ment of faculty that progress must be sought, if Art is to keep pace with general culture. The word " culture " points to another condition. We will not try to define the function of painting further than by saying that, so far as its limits extend, it works on a line parallel with poetry. Heaven-taught genius may overleap barriers, but poetry has never been destroyed in a man by culture. The painter needs the same scope and store of images and thoughts as the poet, and, therefore, the solidest culture of which man is capable. A superficial culture may bring affectation, a deeper one restores men to nature, and the delights of the company and the flattery of idle, half-intel- lectual society, which we have seen too often luring away suc- cessful genius, will lose their power in proportion as those exposed to their temptations have the independence of real education. Yet in full view of the dangers and obstacles which beset modern Art, we recognise distinct advance in the English School, and confidently attribute it to that deep love of Nature to which every now and then it is given to penetrate some of her secrets ; and perseverance in the same course will bring fruit. We conclude with thanking Mr. Quilter for his labour, in keeping before the English mind the great qualities of simplicity and directness in Art which find their plainest expression in Giotto, and for the occasional absence :of which even the genius and skill of a Raffaelle cannot wholly atone.