Necessarily, you might think, being full of monks' dresses. Not so. Was
there any need for Giotto to have put the priest at the foot of the
dead body, with the black banner stooped over it in the shape of a
grave? Might he not, had he chosen, in either fresco, have made the
celestial visions brighter? Might not St. Francis have appeared in the
centre of a celestial glory to the dreaming Pope, or his soul been seen
of the poor monk, rising through more radiant clouds? Look, however,
how radiant, in the small space allowed out of the blue, they are in
reality. You cannot anywhere see a lovelier piece of Giottesque colour,
though here, you have to mourn over the smallness of the piece, and its
isolation. For the face of St. Francis himself is repainted, and all
the blue sky; but the clouds and four sustaining angels are hardly
retouched at all, and their iridescent and exquisitely graceful wings
are left with really very tender and delicate care by the restorer of
the sky. And no one but Giotto or Turner could have painted them.
For in all his use of opalescent and warm colour, Giotto is exactly
like Turner, as, in his swift expressional power, he is like
Gainsborough. All the other Italian religious painters work out their
expression with toil; he only can give it with a touch. All the other
great Italian colourists see only the beauty of colour, but Giotto also
its brightness. And none of the others, except Tintoret, understood to
the full its symbolic power; but with those--Giotto and Tintoret--there
is always, not only a colour harmony, but a colour secret.
Pages:
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77