This is his everlasting claim to greatness, and it is this which will make him a source of highest æsthetic delight for a period at least as long as decipherable traces of his handiwork remain on mouldering panel
Purchase NowGiotto’s paintings, on the contrary, have not only much power of appealing tactile imagination possessed
The risk of seeming to wander off into boundless domain, we must stop at this point for a moment
What is the point at which ordinary pleasures pass over into the specific pleasures derived
Now in what way, we ask, can form in painting give me a sensation of pleasure which differs from the ordinary
I believe, depends upon the fact that art stimulates to an unwonted activity psychical processes
For instance I am in the habit of realising a given object with an intensity that we shall value
Ordinarily we have considerable difficulty in skimming off these tactile values, and by the time they have reached our consciousness,they have lost much of their strength.
Obviously, the artist who gives us these values more rapidly than the object itself gives them, gives us the pleasures consequent upon a more vivid realisation of the object
Furthermore, the stimulation of our tactile imagination awakens our consciousness of the importance of the tactile sense in our physical and mental functioning better provided
The proportions of this small book forbid me 12 to develop further a theme, the adequate treatment of which would require
Let us now turn back to Giotto fulfils the first condition of painting as an art, which condition, as we agreed, is somehow to stimulate our tactile imagination.
We shall understand this without difficulty if we cover with the same glance two pictures of nearly the same subject that hang side by side in the Florence Academy
To recognise these we have 14 had to make many times the effort that the actual objects would have required, and in consequence our feeling of capacity
But how does Giotto accomplish this miracle? 15 With the simplest means, with almost rudimentary light and shade, and functional line, he contrives to render, out of all the possible outlines
The rendering of tactile values once recognised as the most important specifically artistic quality of Giotto’s work
A painter who, after generations of mere manufacturers of symbols, illustrations, and allegories had the power to render the material significance of the objects he painted, must, as a man, have had a profound sense of the significant.
No matter, then, what his theme, Giotto feels its real significance and communicates as much of it as the general limitations of his art, and of his own skill permit. When the theme is sacred story, it is scarcely necessary to point out with what processional gravity, with what hieratic dignity.
But let us look a moment at certain of his symbols in the Arena at Padua, at the “Inconstancy,” the “Injustice,” the “Avarice,” for instance. “What are the significant traits,” he seems to have asked himself in the appearance
For a hundred years after Giotto there appeared in Florence no painter equally endowed with dominion
His immediate followers so little understood the essence of his power that some thought it resided in his massive types, others in the swiftness of his line, and still others in his light colour
We are happily far better situated toward Fra Angelico, enough of whose works have come down to us to reveal not only his quality as an artist, but his character as a man.
Perfect certainty of purpose, utter devotion to his task, a sacramental earnestness in performing 24 it, are what the quantity and quality of his work together proclaim.
