Persecution of Virtue - The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius - Unpublished Selections Explained, Med. XI.32

Meditation XI.32 – Persecution of Virtue - Translated by George Long and rewritten by Russell McNeil

And virtue they will curse, speaking harsh words.¹ (Hesiod, “Works and Days,” 184)

Explanation

(1) The persecution of virtue is a very old theme in world traditions. Hesiod (ca. 900 BCE) was a major source of Greek mythology, and instrumental in the development of the Greek imagination. The Buddha (ca. 563 BCE - 483 BCE) said much the same four centuries after Hesiod, "Virtue is persecuted more by the wicked than it is loved by the good." Perhaps the most familiar New Testament parallel is found in Matthew 5: 3-10, "Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness." This Christian perspective on virtue was likely influenced by Stoicism, the predominant philosophy in the Greco-Roman world in the first century of the Common Era, and during the time of Christ.

The sentiment here reinforces the harsh reality of virtue. Living according to nature generally requires actions that fly in the face of the conventional wisdom of the masses in any era. Most human beings now, and in the past, are guided by emotional and sensual forces. We seek pleasure and we avoid pain. Stoic (and Buddhist and Christian) virtues sacrifice pleasure and often embrace pain. Human beings are fundamentally self-serving. This is what our animal nature seems to dictate. But the Stoic understands that our true human nature is defined by our capacity for reason, and that reason guides us toward other-serving or altruistic ends. Virtue requires that we act in accord with reason, because reason comes to us from the active and divine principle of nature, Logos (the Christian identifies Logos with Christ). Those who see the world and human nature in these terms will of course feel threatened by those who behave in these ways - be these Buddhist, Christian, or Stoic. In more recent times George Eliot (1819-1880) reminded us of this when she famously said, "You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know."

Russell McNeil, PhD, is the author of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: Selections Annotated and Explained by Skylight Paths Publishing. The unpublished selections presented in this Blog are provided as supplemental material to the published selections which are annotated and explained in the book. The published selections are referenced in this Blog by page number and section.

Rogier van der Weyden (c 1399-1464)

Belgian Painter, b. at Tournai, 1399 or 1400; d. at Brussels, 1464. His original name was De la Pasture, which was transformed in Flemish into Van der Weyden. His family, settled in Tournai since 1260, were people of means. He is believed to have commenced his artistic life as a goldsmith, and his figures show that he understood some kind of sculpture. He was apprenticed to Robert Campin in 1427, became a master painter, was admitted into the Guild of St. Luke in 1432, and three years later was painter in ordinary to the municipality of Brussels. He only had the appointment, however, for a year, when the office of town painter was abolished. He was said to have been a pupil of van Eyck, e.g. by Vasari and other writers, but the researches of Weale in Flemish documents proved this incorrect, and showed that Campin was Rogier's master. His work is far more religious than that of van Eyck, and the figures in his pictures much more dramatic, animated, and at times almost tragic. He was full of employment and obtained high prices. He lived at Brussels, and had four children, Cornelius, who became a Carthusian, Peter, who was a painter, John, who was a goldsmith, and one daughter, Margaret. He was a generous benefactor, especially to Carthusian houses. One of his important altar-pieces, now in Berlin, was painted for the Cartuja of Miraflores in Spain, another, now in the Escorial, for the Carthusian house at Scheut, a third, at Antwerp, for the Bishop of Tournai, who desired to give it to a Carthusian house, and a fourth for the Carthusian monastery of Herinnes, where Cornelius resided. The Joys and Sorrows of our Lady of Pity, now at Berlin, the Seven Sacraments, at Antwerp, the Adoration of the Magi, at Berlin, and the marvellous triptych in the Prado, are his greatest works. There are also paintings by him at Frankfort and Munich, and others attributed to him elsewhere. - Malaspina Biography

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Joos van Wassenhove (or Gent) (1410-c 1480)

Netherlandish painter, part of whose career was spent in Italy, where he was known as Giusto da Guanto (Justus of Ghent). He became a member of the Antwerp Guild in 1460, but by 1464 had moved to Ghent, where he was a friend of Hugo van der Goes . At some time after 1468 he went to Rome, and by 1472 had settled in Urbino, where he worked for Duke Federico da Montefeltro. Joos's only documented work is The Communion of the Apostles (also known as The Institution of the Eucharist, 1472-74), which is still at Urbino, in the Galleria Nazionale. Like Hugo's Portinari Altarpiece, it was an important work in spreading knowledge of the Netherlandish oil technique in Italy. Of the other works attributed to Joos, the most important are a series of twenty-eight Famous Men (Galleria Nazionale, Urbino, and Louvre, Paris), commissioned for the Ducal Palace. Their authorship is controversial, and they may have been a work of collaboration between Joos and the Spanish painter Pedro Berruguete. [Adapted from WebMuseum]

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Stefano Di Giovanni Sassetta (1392-c 1450)

Italian painter of the Sienese school. He painted many large altarpieces, scenes from the life of St. Anthony, and Journey of the Magi although the authenticity of some of the works attributed to him is uncertain. - Malaspina Biography

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Sano di Pietro (1406-1481)

Italian painter, Sienese school (b. 1406, Siena, d. 1481, Siena). Siena is situated on three gently swelling hills. The Public Library was donated by Archdeacon Bandini (1663). The Academy of Fine Arts, the Museum of the Cathedral, and the different churches of the city, illustrate almost completely the history of art in Siena; in no other city had art, especially painting, a more local character, and nowhere else did it remain so conservative. Gothic architecture produced here its most excellent monuments, both ecclesiastical and in civic buildings; and the Sienese architects laboured beyond the confines of their state (e.g. the cathedral of Orvieto). Sculpture received its first impulse from Nicolo and Giovanni Pisani, whose Sienese disciples carved the decorations of the facade of Orvieto cathedral. The most renowned sculptors of the fifteenth century were Jacopo della Quercia (1374-1438), one of the pioneers of the Renaissance; Lorenzo di Pietro; Antonio Federighi; Francesco di Giorgio (also an architect); Giacomo Cozzarelli; and Lorenzo Mariano. Sculpture in wood is represented by the brothers Antonio and Giovanni Barili, Bartolomeo Neroni, and others. In painting Siena possessed in Duccio an artist who greatly surpassed his contemporary Cimabue of Florence, both for grace and in accuracy of design. Nevertheless, art developed and was perfected in Florence more rapidly than in Siena. Simone Martini (1285-1344), immortalized by Petrarca, and a citizen of Siena, bears comparison with Giotto. Lippo Memmi (also a miniaturist), Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, imitated with facility the grandiose composition of the school of Giotto. But Bertolo di Fredi (1330-1410); Taddeo de Bartolo (1360-1422); and the fifteenth century painters, Domenico di Bartolo, Sano di Pietro, Vecchietta, Matteo, and Benvenuto di Giovanni, compared with the Florentines, seem almost medieval. Siena therefore turned anew to Florentine, Lombard, or Venetian painters, under whom the ancient fame of the city revived, especially in the works of Bernardino Fungai, Girolamo della Pacchia, and others. The most renowned representatives of the Renaissance in Siena are Baldassare Peruzzi, better known as the architect of the Basilica of San Pietro, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, and Il Sodoma (1477-1549), a rival of Raphael. With Domenico Beccafumi (1486-1551) begins the decadence. In the nineteenth century Paolo Franchi founded a school of painters closely related to the "Nazarenes" (a group of German painters of the early nineteenth century, who imitated the Italians of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries); the chapel of the Istituto di Santa Teresa gives a good idea of their art.

The cathedral of Siena is said to occupy the site of a temple of Minerva. The present building was begun in the early thirteenth century; the cupola was finished in 1464. But in 1339 it was decided to so enlarge the cathedral that the area then occupied by the nave should form the transepts of the new building. In fact the construction of the longitudinal nave, now in part incorporated in the Opera del Duomo, was actually commenced. Though the pestilence of 1348 compelled the citizens to desist from this plan, they determined to complete in a worthy manner the original design. As it stands the building is about 292 ft. long and 80 ft. wide - 168 ft. in the transepts. The facade is decorated with bands of red, white, and black marble, tricuspidal, and richly adorned with sculptures (restored in 1869) and with mosaics (renewed in 1878). In the interior the pavement is of admirable marble mosaic - the work of masters of the fifteenth century, which has been for the most part renewed. The pulpit, entirely in relief, is the work of Nicolo Pisano and his pupils; the high altar is by Petruzzi, the bronze tabernacle by Vecchietta, and the carvings of the choir by the brothers Barili. The chapel of San Giovanni contains a statue of the saint by Donatello, besides statues by other sculptors, and frescoes by Pinturicchio. Scattered through the interior of the cathedral are statues of Sienese popes and the tombs of the bishops of Siena. The library of the cathedral possesses ancient choir-books and other manuscripts, and is adorned throughout with frescoes by Pinturicchio representing scenes from the life of Pius II - the gift of Pius III. In the centre of the library is the celebrated group of the Three Graces, presented by Pius II. In the Opera dei Duomo are preserved the remains of the exterior sculptures and of the pavement of the cathedral, as well as paintings and sacred tapestries. In the Hospital of Sta Maria della Scala (thirteenth century) the church and the pellegrinaro (a large sick room) with frescoes by Domenico di Bartolo are noteworthy; San Agostino possesses pictures and frescoes by Perugino, Sodoma, Matteo di Giovanni, and others. Beneath the choir of the cathedral is the ancient baptistery, now the parish Church of San Giovanni, with its remarkable font, ornamented with sculptures by Quercia, Donatello, and Ghiberti. In Santa Maria del Carmine the cloisters and the Chapel of the Sacrament are particularly interesting. The Oratory of San Bernardino contains works of the principal Sienese artists, especially of Sodoma and Beccafumi. The house of St. Catherine of Siena (Benineasa) has been transformed into a number of chapels, which centuries have vied in adorning. San Domenico (1293) possesses pictures by Sodoma, Fungai, Vanni, and others, and a tabernacle by Benedetto da Maiano. The little church of Fonteguista has frescoes by Fungai, Petruzzi, and Lorenzo di Mariano. Scattered throughout the other churches are works of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Outside of the city is the Convento dell' Osservanza, with majolicas by Andrea della Robbia and paintings by Sodoma, Sano di Pietro, Taddeo Bartolo, and others; here also are shown the cell of St Bernardino of Siena, and the tomb of Pandolfo Petrucci. More distant from Siena are the Certosa di Pontignano, the Abbey of Sant' Eugenio (730), and the monastery of San Galgano (1201). - Malaspina Biography

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Tommaso Masaccio (1401 - c.1428)

Quotation

[all Florentine painters studied Masaccio's frescoes to] "learn the precepts and rules for painting well. - G. Vasari

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Simone Martini (1283-1344)

Summary

(Also known as SIMONE DI MARTINO, and as SIMONE MEMMI). Sienese painter, born in Siena, 1283; died either in the same place or at Avignon in 1344 or 1349. This artist is now declared to have been a direct pupil of Duccio, whom he surpassed in the decorative quality of his work Vasari states that he was a pupil of Giotto, but this statement is refuted by an examination of Simone's works, and also by all the evidence that has been gathered regarding the Sienese school. The earliest of Simone's authentic works is his great fresco in Siena of the enthroned Virgin and Child, painted originally in 1315, and restored by the master himself in 1321, after it had suffered damage from damp. In 1320 he painted an altar-piece for the church of St. Catherine at Pisa, which has now been taken to pieces, and although the greater part is in the Academy at Pisa, two other portions are in other buildings in the same city. In the following year he was at Orvieto, painting an altar-piece for the church of San Dominico which is now preserved in a museum of that city, and then he returned to Siena, where he was busily engaged in 1328 on his splendid portrait of Fogliano, painted in honour of that general's capture of Montemassi. A little later on we hear of him at Assisi, where he painted a wonderful series of works relating to the life of St. Martin, adorning the chapel of St. Martin in the church of San Francesco. The latter part of his life was passed at Avignon in the service of the papal court then resident in that place, and there he decorated various portions of the cathedral and several chapels and rooms in the papal palace. It was in Avignon that he met Petrarch, and there painted the portrait, so famous in later years, of Madonna Laura.

He is said to have painted a portrait at Avignon of Petrarch himself, commissioned by Pandolfo Malatesta, but if he did this, it was during an earlier visit to Avignon, and respecting it we have not much information. We are only certain concerning his second visit to the place after having been called by Pope Clement VI. The exact date of his funeral is proved by certain Sienese records as 4 August, 1344, but the record is not sufficiently clear as to whether his body was transported from Avignon to Siena for burial, or whether he actually died in Siena. There are several of his works in the city of his birth, one at the Louvre, one in Berlin, an exceedingly fine one at Antwerp, and a remarkable signed and dated picture at Liverpool. In the museum at Altenburg there is one of his works, and there are at least three in private collections in America. The portrait of Petrarch attributed to him was sold in 1867 at the Poniatowski sale, and at the same sale there was sold a portrait of Laura, which was undoubtedly his work. [Adapted from Catholic Encyclopedia (1910)]

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Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti (c 1305-c 1348)

Summary

Sienese painters. The time of their birth and death is not known. Their dated works extend over a period of thirty years, from 1316 to 1348. Pietro was the elder. He was the pupil of Simone di Martino, some of whose formulae he has preserved faithfully; but he was profoundly influenced by Giotto. He introduced the dramatic into the Sienese school. Unfortunately he could not control his wonderful feeling for the lifelike and in the end he sometimes failed to distinguish history from the passing events of everyday life. His first known work is the History of St. Humilitas, a religious of Vallombrosa (d. 1310). The picture dated 1316 at the Academy of Florence bears the impress of the liveliest sense of reality. It abounds in small, but often delightful genre scenes. In his Assisi frescoes, where he continued Giotto's Life of Jesus, this realism strangely loses tone. In the Cenacle, for example, Pietro devotes an entire piece to a kitchen interior where lads wash the dishes while a dog licks the plates. This lack of dignity is perhaps mere familiarity coupled with good humour. Fondness for this sort of picture is in part the cause of our liking for the creations of the Dutch school; it cannot even be said that details of this kind may not be impressive as is seen in Veronese's Marriage at Cana. But Pietro, like most of the artists of the Middle Ages, is too lacking in style and in art. Or rather he has only an intermittent sense of them. Some of his pieces at least show of what he was capable; such as the admirable painting at Assisi, which represents the Blessed Virgin in half-life size between St. John and St. Louis, and in which the fresco work attains the beauty of enamelling and of the goldsmith's art, while the countenance of the Virgin, tearfully regarding the Divine Child, expresses most beautifully maternal anguish, reminding us of the darkouoen gelasasa of Homer. In presence of such a canvas it is impossible not to deplore the frivolity of a master who sacrificed his lofty plastic faculties and gift of moral expression to the painting of so many trivial realities and insignificant emotions.

Though still more gifted than his brother, Ambrogio also wasted his talents, but owing to a different error, viz., a craze for the allegoric and didactic. He was however one of the most delicately poetic minds of his generation, and no one at Florence could rival the serious and dreamy beauty of his female faces, as in the St. Dorothy of the Academy of Siena (1326), in which seems to be revived the soul of the adorable saints of Simone di Martino. There is not in the art of the fourteenth century a more impressive canvas than that of the Academy of Florence in which St. Nicholas of Bari, on the shore of a cliff-bordered sea, contemplates the sunset (1332). He excelled in lyric subjects but he attempted painting in a grand philosophical manner. His most important work is that at the Palazzo della Signoria of Siena, the allegory of Good and Evil Government (1338-40). The taste of the Middle Ages for these moralities and psychomachies is well-known. There is hardly a French cathedral in which we do not find sculptured representations of the contest between vice and virtue, allegories of the virtues, the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, the figures of the Church and the Synagogue. Already Giotto had painted at Assisi the allegories of the Franciscan virtues, and Petrarch was soon to compose his Triumphs of Love, Glory, Time, and Eternity.

For the past sixty years the Republic of Siena had been at the summit of its fortunes. It was desirous of immortalizing the memory of its greatness. From this point of view the frescoes of Ambrogio are of great interest; this is perhaps the first example of lay painting and of art used to represent ideas and life, without any religious conception. It was a course in Aristotelean philosophy and at the same time a hymn to the city. The composition is developed on three walls, forming a sort of triptych. The middle fresco displays under a dogmatic form the ideal of democracy. The Virtues which direct the State are seated on a platform; this is the tribunal or the legislative assembly. The most famous of these figures is that of Peace, which, reclining on her throne in magnificent drapery and resting on her arms, is certainly imitated from an antique medal or statue (such imitations are not rare in the thirteenth century: cf. the sculptures of Capua, the work of Giovanni Pisano, and some statues at Reims). But the other figures are little more than abstractions and can be identified only with the adventitious aid of a multitude of inscriptions, devices, and phylacteries.

On the other two walls are similarly developed the effects of good or evil social hygiene. After the theory follows the application. The left wall (Evil Government) is unfortunately almost ruined. But the opposite one, which is more intelligible, suffices to convey an idea of the painter's method. The length of the painting is divided into two halves, one of which shows the city and the other the country. And in each of these parts is a host of episodes, a great collection of little pictures of manners, which analyse in a thousand ways the condition of a happy society. The general idea is resolved into a multitude of anecdotes. We see dances, banquets, children at school, weddings, some peasants leading their asses to market while others are tilling the ground; in the distance is a port whence vessels are sailing away. All these various scenes are most entertaining and furnish much information about Sienese life and customs in the Middle Ages. But one is lost in the complexity of this chronicle and the confusion of this journal. The result is an extremely curious work, though one almost devoid of artistic value.

To sum up, Ambrogio remains one of the most interesting minds of his time by the very variety of his contradictory talents and the turn of mind at once idealistic and realistic which he displayed, without, unfortunately, succeeding in bringing them into unity. As a whole the work of the Lorenzetti (starting from very different points of view) consists in an attempt to reconcile art with observation and familiar reality. Pietro's aim is to move, Ambrogio's rather to instruct. The former is a dramatist, the latter a moralist. Both tend equally to genre painting. Unfortunately fresco, especially in their day, was the mode of expression least suited to this. They required the miniature, or German engraving, or the small familiar picture of the Flemish or the Dutch. Their talent remained isolated and their premature attempt was doomed to failure. In spite of everything they remain the most lifelike painters of their generation; and some fifteenth-century painters, such as Sassetta or Sano di Pietro, owe them much in this respect. Besides, Ambrogio, was the first who attempted in Italy philosophic painting and the picturesque expression of general ideas. His Sermons in pictures have not been lost. He created a tradition to which we owe two of the most important works of the fourteenth century, the anonymous frescoes of the Anchorites and of the Triumph of Death. at the Campo Santo of Pisa and those of the Militant and the Teaching Church in the Spanish chapel. In fact it is from these that the finest conceptions of the Renaissance are derived, and the honour of having indirectly inspired Raphael with the Camera della Segnatura cannot be disputed with Ambrogio Loienzetti. It is a glory which the greatest artists may well envy him. [Adapted from Catholic
Encyclopedia (1910)]

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Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)

Quotation

We cannot live in a world that is not our own, in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light.

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Biographical

Born at Bockelheim on the Nahe, 1098; died on the Rupertsberg near Bingen, 1179; feast 17 September. The family name is unknown of this great seeress and prophetess, called the Sibyl of the Rhine. The early biographers give the first names of her parents as Hildebert and Mechtildis (or Mathilda), speak of their nobility and riches, but give no particulars of their lives. Later writers call the saint Hildegard of Bockelheim, of Rupertsberg, or of Bingen. Legends would make her a Countess of Spanheim. J. May (Katholik. XXXVII, 143) shows from letters and other documents that she probably belonged to the illustrious family of Stein, whose descendants are the present Princes of Salm. Her father was a soldier in the service of Meginhard, Count of Spanheim. Hildegard was a weak and sickly child, and in consequence received but little education at home. Her parents, though much engaged in worldly pursuits, had a religious disposition and had promised the child to the service of God. At the age of eight she was placed under the care of Jutta, sister of Count Meginhard, who lived as a recluse on the Disenberg (or Disibodenberg, Mount of St, Disibod) in the Diocese of Speyer. Here also Hildegard was given but little instruction since she was much afflicted with sickness, being frequently scarcely able to walk and often deprived even of the use of her eyes. She was taught to read and sing the Latin psalms, sufficient for the chanting of the Divine Office, but never learned to write. Eventually she was invested with the habit of St. Benedict and made her religious profession. Jutta died in 1136, and Hildegard was appointed superior. Numbers of aspirants flocked to the community and she decided to go to another locality, impelled also, as she says, by a Divine command. She chose Rupertsberg near Bingen on the left bank of the Rhine, about fifteen miles from Disenberg. After overcoming many difficulties and obtaining the permission of the lord of the place, Count Bernard of Hildesheim, she settled in her new home with eighteen sisters in 1147 or 1148 (1149 or 1150 according to Delehaye). Probably in 1165 she founded another convent at Eibingen on the right side of the Rhine, where a community had already been established in 1148, which, however, had no success.

The life of Hildegard as child, religious, and superioress was an extraordinary one. Left much to herself on account of her ill health, she led an interior life, trying to make use of everything for her own sanctification. From her earliest years she was favoured with visions. She says of herself:

Up to my fifteenth year I saw much, and related some of the things seen to others, who would inquire with astonishment, whence such things might come. I also wondered and during my sickness I asked one of my nurses whether she also saw similar things. When she answered no, a great fear befell me. Frequently, in my conversation, I would relate future things, which I saw as if present, but, noting the amazement of my listeners, I became more reticent.

This condition continued to the end of her life. Jutta had noticed her gifts and made them known to a monk of the neighbouring abbey, but, it seems, nothing was done at the time. When about forty years of age Hildegard received a command to publish to the world what she saw and heard. She hesitated, dreading what people might think or say, though she herself was fully convinced of the Divine character of the revelations. But, continually urged, rebuked, and threatened by the inner voice, she manifested all to her spiritual director, and through him to the abbot under whose jurisdiction her community was placed. Then a monk was ordered to put in writing whatever she related; some of her nuns also frequently assisted her. The writings were submitted to the bishop (Henry, 1145-53) and clergy of Mainz, who pronounced them as coming from God. The matter was also brought to the notice of Eugene II (1145-53) who was at Trier in 1147. Albero of Chiny, Bishop of Verdun, was commissioned to investigate and made a favourable report. Hildegard continued her writings. Crowds of people flocked to her from the neighbourhood and from all parts of Germany and Gaul, to hear words of wisdom from her lips, and to receive advice and help in corporal and spiritual ailments. These were not only from the common people, but men and women of note in Church and State were drawn by tbe report of her wisdom and sanctity. Thus we read that Archbishop Heinrich of Mainz, Archbishop Eberhard of Salzburg and Abbot Ludwig of St. Eucharius at Trier, paid her visits. St. Elizabeth of Schonau was an intimate friend and frequent visitor. Trithemius in his "Chronicle" speaks of a visit of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, but this probably was not correct. Not only at home did she give counsel, but also abroad. Many persons of all stations of life wrote to her and received answers, so that her correspondence is quite extensive. Her great love for the Church and its interests caused her to make many journeys; she visited at intervals the houses of Disenberg and Eibingen; on invitation she came to Ingelheim to see Emperor Frederick; she travelled to Wurzburg, Bamberg, and the vicinity of Ulm, Cologne, Werden, Trier, and Metz. It is not true, however, that she saw Paris or the grave of St. Martin at Tours.

In the last year of her life Hildegard had to undergo a very severe trial. In the cemetery adjoining her convent a young man was buried who had once been under excommunication. The ecclesiastical authorities of Mainz demanded that she have the body removed. She did not consider herself bound to obey since the young man had received the last sacraments and was therefore supposed to have been reconciled to the Church. Sentence of interdict was placed on her convent by the chapter of Mainz, and the sentence was confirmed by the bishop, Christian (V) Buch, then in Italy. After much worry and correspondence she succeeded in having the interdict removed. She died a holy death and was buried in the church of Rupertsberg.

Hildegard was greatly venerated in life and after death. Her biographer, Theodoric, calls her saint, and many miracles are said to have been wrought through her intercession. Gregory IX (1227-41) and Innocent IV (1243-54) ordered a process of information which was repeated by Clement V (1305-14) and John XXII (1316-34). No formal canonization has ever taken place, but her name is in the Roman Martyrology and her feast is celebrated in the Dioceses of Speyer, Mainz, Trier, and Limburg, also in the Abbey of Solesmes, where a proper office is said (Brev. Monast. Tornac., 18 Sept.). When the convent on the Rupertsberg was destroyed in 1632 the relics of the saint were brought to Cologne and then to Eibingen. At the secularization of this convent they were placed in the parish church of the place. In 1857 an official recognition was made by the Bishop of Limburg and the relics were placed on an altar specially built. At this occasion the town of Eibingen chose her as patron. On 2 July, 1900, the cornerstone was here laid for a new convent of St. Hildegard. The work was begun and completed through the munificence of Prince Karl of Lowenstein and Benedictine nuns from St. Gabriel's at Prague entered the new home (17 Sept., 1904).

All the manuscripts found in the convent at Eibingen were in 1814 transferred to the state library at Wiesbaden. Of this collection the first and greatest work of St. Hildegard is called Scivias (Scire or vias Domini, or vias lucis), parts of which had been shown to the Archbishop of Mainz. She began it in 1141 and worked at it for ten years. It is an extraordinary production and hard to understand, prophetic throughout and admonitory after the manner of Ezechiel and the Apocalypse. In the introduction she speaks of herself and describes the nature of her visions. Then follow three books, the first containing six visions, the second giving seven visions, and about double the size of the first; the third, equal in size to both the others, has thirteen visions. The Scivias represents God on His Holy Mountain with mankind at its base; tells of the original condition of man, his fall and redemption, the human soul and its struggles, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the times to come, the son of perdition and the end of the world. The visions are interspersed with salutary admonitions to live in the fear of the Lord. Manuscripts of the Scivias are also at Cues and Oxford. It was printed for the first time at Paris (1513) in a book which contains also the writings of several other persons. It was again printed at Cologne in 1628, and reproduced in Migne, PL 197. The Liber vitae meritorum written between 1158 and 1163, is a picturesque description of a Christian's life of virtue and its opposite. It was printed for the first time in Pitra, Analecta Sacra, VIII (Monte Cassino, 1882). The Liber divinorum operum (1163-70) is a contemplation of all nature in the light of faith. Sun, moon, and stars, the planets, the winds, animals, and man, are in her visions expressive of something supernatural and spiritual, and as they come from God should lead back to Him (Migne, loc. cit.). Mansi, in Baluzii Missell. (Lucca, 1761), II, 337, gives it from a manuscript lost since then. Her Letter to the Prelates of Mainz in regard to the interdict placed upon her convent is placed here among her works by the Wiesbaden manuscript; in others it is bound among her letters. To it the Wiesbaden manuscript annexes nine small essays: on the Creation and fall of man; God's treatment of the renegade; on the priesthood and the Holy Eucharist; on the covenant between Christ and the Church; on the Creation and Redemption; on the duties of secular judges; on the praises of God with intermingled prayers. Liber Epistolarum et Orationum; the Wiesbaden manuscript contains letters to and from Eugene III, Anastasius IV, Adrian IV, and Alexander III, King Conrad III, Emperor Frederick, St. Bernard, ten archbishops, nine bishops, forty-nine abbots and provosts of monasteries or chapters, twenty-three abbesses, many priests, teachers, monks, nuns, and religious communities (P. L., loc. cit.). Pitra has many additions; L. Clarus edited them in a German translation (Ratisbon, 1854). Vita S. Disibodi and Vita S. Ruperti; these Vitae, which Hildegard claims also to be revelations, were probably made up from local traditions and, especially for St. Rupert, the sources being very meagre, have only legendary value. Expositio Evangeliorum fifty homilies in allegory (Pitra, loc. cit.). Lingua Ignota; the manuscript, in eleven folios ves a list of nine hundred words of an unknown language, mostly nouns and only a few adjectives, a Latin, and in a few cases a German, explanation, together with an unknown alphabet of twenty-three letters printed in Pitra. A collection of seventy hymns and their melodies. A manuscript of this is also at Afflighem, printed in Roth (Wiesbaden, 1880) and in Pitra. Not only in this work, but elsewhere Hildegard exhibits high poetical gifts, transfigured by her intimate persuasion of a Divine mission. Liber Simplicis Medicinae and Liber Compositae Medicinae; the first was edited in 1533 by Schott at Strasburg as Physica S Hildegardis, Dr. Jessen (1858) found a manuscript of it in the library of Wolfenbuttel. It consists of nine books treating of plants, elements, trees, stones, fishes, birds, quadrupeds, reptiles, metals, printed in Migne as Subtilitatum Diversarum Naturarum Libri Novem. In I859, Jessen succeeded in obtaining from Copenhagen a manuscript entitled Hildegardis Curae et Causae, and on examination felt satisfied that it was the second medical work of the saint. It is in five books and treats of the general divisions of created things, of the human body and its ailments, of the causes, symptoms, and treatment of diseases. 38 Solutiones Quaestionum are answers to questions proposed by the monks of Villars through Gilbert of Gembloux on several texts of Scripture (P. L., loc. cit.). Explanatio Regulae S. Benedicti, also called a revelation, exhibits the rule as understood and applied in those days by an intelligent and mild superior. Explanatio Symboli S. Athanasii, an exhortation addressed to her sisters in religion. The Revelatio Hildegardis de Fratribus Quatuor Ordinum Mendicantium, and the other prophecies against the Mendicants, etc., are forgeries. The Speculum futurorum temporum is a free adaptation of texts culled from her writings by Gebeno, prior of Eberbach (Pentachronicon, 1220). Some would impugn the genuineness of her writings, among others Preger in his Gesch. der deutchen Mystik, 1874, but without sufficient reason. (See Hauck in Kirchengesch. Deutschl., IV,398 sqq.). Her correspondence is to be read with caution; three letters from popes have been proved spurious by Von Winterfeld in Neue Archiv, XXVII, 297. The first biography of St. Hildegard was written by the contemporary monks Gottfried and Theodoric. Guibert of Gembloux commenced another. [Adapted from Catholic Encyclopedia (1910)]

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Nuno Goncalves (c 1411-1471)

Summary

Portuguese painter, recorded in 1463 as court painter to Alfonso V (1437-81). No works certainly by his hand survive, but there is a strong circumstantial evidence that he was responsible for the St Vincent polyptych (Lisbon Museum, c.1460-70), the outstanding Portuguese painting of the 15th century. The style is rather dry, but powerfully realistic, and the polyptych contains a superb gallery of highly individualized portraits of members of the court, including a presumed self-portrait. There are affinities with contemporary Burgundian and Flemish art, especially the work of Bouts. [Adapted from WebMuseum]

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Giotto di Bondone (c 1267-1337)

Quotation

The human heart is as a frail craft on which we wish to reach the stars.

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Biographical

Giotto di Bondone (better known as just Giotto, 1267-1337) was an Italian painter. Giotto was born in a poor condition in the countryland of Florence, the son of Bondone, a peasant, and he himself was a shepherd. Most authors believe that Giotto was directly his real name, and not an abbreviation of Ambrogio (Ambrogiotto) or Angelo (Angiolotto). The legend says (as reported by Giorgio Vasari in his biographies, derived from Ghiberti's Commentari) that at the age of 10, while attending the sheep, he used to draw on the rocks with a chalk. Cimabue saw him drawing a sheep, so natural and so perfect that he immediately asked his father if he could bring Giotto with him to let him study art, and Giotto's career would have started in Cimabue's bottega. His art was extremely innovative, and is commonly considered as prodromic to that evolution which would have brought, little after, to the explosion of the Italian Rinascimento. He treated the religious themes (quite exclusively used in medieval art) with a new spirit, rendering them with a clear freshness and an unexpected liveness, and many critics talk about a "human emotion" for the most peculiar feature of his works. He received commissions for many works through all Italy, and became a good friend of the king of Naples, as well as of Dante Alighieri. Boccaccio cited him in his Decameron. The legend also tells that he was able to paint incredibly perfect circles by free hand, with no helping instruments.

Detailed Biography

A Florentine painter, and founder of the Italian school of painting, b. most probably, in 1266 (not 1276), in the village of Vespignano near Florence, in the valley of the Mugello; d. at Milan, 8 Jan., 1337. Very little is known of his early history. Vasari relates that Cimabue, rambling one day in the neighborhood of Colle, saw a young shepherd lad drawing one of his sheep on a piece of smooth slate with a pointed stone, and that Cimabue thereupon took the lad with him and instructed him. The story is a pretty bit of fancy. There is no reason for believing that Giotto was ever a shepherd. It is possible that his father was a peasant; if so, he was in easy circumstances and certainly a freeholder. A document dated 1320 styles him vir praeclarus; such an epithet would not be applied to a man in straitened circumstances. As a matter of fact nothing is known of Giotto until he was thirty years old. This unfortunate gap in his personal history robs us of a story which would be of intense interest as showing the growth of his genius, and reduces us to the merest conjectures. However, without in any way detracting from Giotto's pre-eminence in Italian art, it is impossible to accord him that quasi-miraculous, providential importance that Florentine nationalism soon raised to a kind of dogma in the history of art. According to Vasari he arose in a barbarous age and straightway revealed a fully developed art to a wondering world. This is not credible. The thirteenth century, the century of the great cathedrals and of the French school of carving whose numerous pupils were met with in all parts of Christendom, cannot be called a barbarous age. In Italy itself a widespread Renaissance was taking place. At Naples and at Rome the admirable school of the marmorarii of which the Cosmati are the most illustrious, recalled to life much antique beauty of form. The mosaic-workers, with Jacopo Torriti and the artists who created the marvels of the Baptistery of Florence, likewise the painters, with Pietro Cavallini whose fresco cycles in Santa Maria in Trastevere (Rome) exhibit all Giotto's breadth of form, are satisfactory proof of an earlier renewal of artistic spirit and power. The "Rucellai Madonna" by Duccio dates from 1285. Twenty years earlier, perhaps the very year of Giotto's birth, Nicol˜ Pisano had completed the pulpit in the Baptistery of Pisa. That of Siena followed in 1272. The lovely fountain at Perugia dates from 1278. Then came the works of Giovanni Pisano, whose sympathetic genius is in more than one way akin to that of Giotto. Amid this rich and wondrous development of art the young master grew up. Though he was by no means its creator, it certainly reached in him its highest expression.

As an artist Giotto is a true son of St. Francis. It is at Assisi that he is first found, in that very basilica which was the cradle of Italian painting, and which still enshrines the most perfect records of its early history. There every master of note in the peninsula might have been seen at work. Giunta of Pisa was decorating the lower church, while Cavallini or one of his pupils was painting scenes from the Old Testament in the upper church. Cimabue was at the same time ornamenting the choir and the transept. It was doubtless in the train (brigata) of Cimabue that Giotto came to Assisi in 1294, and that he became acquainted with the works of the marmorarii, whose style so influenced his own. In 1296 Cimabue set out for Rome, whereupon Giovanni da Muro, General of the Franciscans (1296-1304), entrusted to Giotto the execution of the wonderful story of St. Francis which the painter accomplished in the famous twenty-eight scenes of the upper church. This is at once the source of Giotto's glory and the earliest example of the Italian School. In these scenes Giotto followed St. Bonaventure's life of St. Francis officially approved by the chapter of 1263 as the only official text. The first twenty-one frescoes are entirely by Giotto's hand; the remaining seven were finished from his designs by his pupils. All have suffered greatly from the humidity and from restorations. They are, nevertheless, incomparable monuments of art, and in many ways the very greatest for the history of modern painting. The intense impression created by St. Francis, the historical nearness of his truly evangelical personality, and his likeness to Jesus Christ borne out by the miracle of the stigmata, thenceforth influenced art to an incalculable degree. For the first time in centuries painters, until then limited to the repetition of consecrated themes, to an unvarying reproduction of hieratic patterns, were free to improvise and create. Painting was no longer an echo of tradition, but rose at once to all the dignity of invention. In the portrayal of the wonderful life-story of St. Francis, to his own age a real image of Jesus Christ, current events and the everyday life of the period were seized on and appropriated. Art no longer worked on conventional models, abstract and ideal; its models were to be the realities of nature, which the humblest intelligence is capable of appreciating. Representation of real life was to become the object of all painting. Henceforth there must always be a likeness between the painting and the object painted. The true portrait of St. Francis had to be given to the public, which must see his actions and the place where he lived, must also grasp all local peculiarities of topography, people, dress, and architecture. This principle of actuality and reality underlay the artistic revolution initiated by Giotto. Since the days of the catacombs nothing so important had occurred in the history of painting.

The germ of all this was to be found in the very earliest portrait of St. Francis, e.g. that of the "Sagro Speco" at Subiaco and in those of the lower church at Assisi and the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, where the figure of the saint is inset between two rows of small panel-pictures descriptive of events in his life. To enlarge these vignettes into frescoes and thereby tell the story of Francis in heroic outlines was equivalent to equating the power of artistic expression and the new vastness of the pictorial framework; this prompted, in consequence, a background overflowing, so to speak, with contemporary life. This much Giotto undertook to do, and his success was marvellous. One is astounded at the multitude of things he suddenly brings within the domain of painting. Such an invasion of realism is not met with again till the seventeenth century, when Rubens gives us its counterpart in his life of Marie de' Medici. All Italy is there; cities and their environs, the walls of Arezzo, the temple of Minerva and the church of San Damiano at Assisi, the fa�ade of the Lateran, the graceful interior of the Greccio church, the landscapes of Alvernia and Subasio, rural scenes like St. Francis's sermon to the birds, domestic interiors as in the "Death of the Lord of Celano", scenes from ecclesiastical life, e.g. chapter meetings and choir services. Every type of existence is laid under tribute: monks, peasants, townfolk, burghers, popes, bishops, singers by the roadside, men at drink, at feasts, and funerals. No peculiarity of place, condition, costume, or person, escapes the far-sweeping eye of the painter. He has put into his paintings every phase of life, and it is all so genuine and accurate, so true to reality that in his work, after five centuries, the Italian trecento still lives for us, despite the deplorable state of the frescoes, the defects of his perspective, and the childlike archaism of certain technical formulae. No painter has ever surpassed Giotto in his power of gathering details from real life, and of surrounding the commonplace with an artistic halo. Herein also lies the power of all literary creators of life, from Dante in his "Divina Commedia" to Balzac in the "Comedie Humaine". The genius of Giotto was brought into further prominence by the works he executed at Rome, whither he was called in 1298 by Cardinal Stefaneschi. It may be noted at once that the "Navicella", i.e. the famous mosaic that adorns the vestibule of St. Peter's, was done in collaboration with Cavallini; moreover, the original has long since disappeared beneath successive restorations. A fourteenth-century copy may be seen in the Spanish Chapel at Florence.

The frescoes from the life of Christ, which Giotto executed for St. Peter's, were destroyed in the time of Nicholas V, when the choir of the old St. Peter's was being remodelled. His Roman masterpieces, however, were the three frescoes ordered by Boniface VIII for the loggia or balcony of the Lateran to commemorate the famous jubilee of 1300. They represented the baptism of Constantine, the erection of the Lateran Basilica, and the proclamation of the jubilee. The first and second have perished, and only a fragment of the third remains, inset in the eighteenth century in one of the great pillars of the basilica, where it is yet visible. The pope stands between two acolytes, in the act of giving his blessing. The loss of this fresco is somewhat compensated for the by a seventeenth-century sketch (in the Ambrosian Library at Milan) which restores the ensemble of the original scene. It was a magnificent representation of an actual spectacle, a vast historical panorama of which the painter must have been an eyewitness, an immense portrait gallery showing the pope, the cardinals, the army, and the Roman people; all this on the occasion of a momentous event in the history of Christendom.

From Rome Giotto returned to Florence, perhaps in 1301, and painted the "Last Judgment" in the chapel of the Podestˆ. This fresco is in a way a political manifesto, being a kind of idealized grouping of all classes of Florentine society, somewhat after the manner of Dante's great poem. Therein can be recognized Dante himself, Brunetto Latini, Corso Donati, Cardinal d'Acquasparta, and Charles of Valois. The "Life of Mary Magdalen", which completed the chapel decorations, is now so faded and discoloured as to be beyond recognition. In 1306, Giotto was called to Padua to paint the Capella dell' Arena, built by Enrico Scrovegni in expiation of the crimes of his father, the famous usurer Reginaldo. On the lateral walls the artist treated in thirty-six frescoes scenes from the life of Christ and of the Blessed Virgin. Beneath these scenes he placed fourteen small cameo figures, allegories of the vices and virtues; on the end wall above the scene of the Annunciation, he painted a "Last Judgment". With this work a new epoch opens in the career of Giotto. It is the first of those vast complete series, or great decorative poems, conceived by him with systematic thoroughness, and meant to develop fully a single great idea. It is truly a living organism, at once once pictorial and theological, such as is met with later in the Spanish Chapel, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and in the Camera della Segnatura. This introduction of allegory, on an elevated and magnificent scale, is his new master-concept. His work is henceforth dominated by an attempt to to bring out the moral meaning and by unity of purpose. The historical element, of course, still held the place of honour; it had not varied for centuries, had been the same since the mosaics of Sant' Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna and Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome. Giotto, indeed, continued to use the earlier conceptions, but could not fail to imbue with his own wonderful realism the traditional treatment of these sacred scenes. There is, perhaps, no pictorial type more striking than Giotto's Judas in the scene of the kiss. Circumstances here forced the artist's genius into a new path. Since his imagination had not in these sacred scenes the freest play, he turned to the perfection of artistic style: consequently the Padua frescoes are a new phase in his realization of the beautiful. In the mind of Giotto life now appears conditioned by art. This preoccupation with the artistic presentation of things is striking at Padua from the earlier scenes, those depicting the story of St. Joachim and the marriage of the Blessed Virgin, where there are charming pastorals rarely equalled, such as "Joachim among the shepherds", the "Meeting at the Golden Gate". One scene in particular, the marriage cort�ge of the Blessed Virgin, is introduced merely that the artist may develop a beautiful plastic theme, a frieze of white-veiled girls, quite like the procession of Greek maidens in the Panathenaean festivals. Ghiberti mentions other paintings made by Giotto for the Friars Minor at Padua. However, the most perfect examples of the master's maturer skill are his frescoes at Assisi, between 1310 and 1320, in the lower church of the famous basilica of St, Francis. He began in the right transept with the addition of two miracles of the saint as a kind of appendix or supplement to the "Life" which he had painted twenty years earlier in the upper church. Facing these he painted nine frescoes of the Holy Childhood, a replica of the Padua frescoes but superior for delicacy and charm. In his quality of historian Giotto never rose above this work, the most exquisite of all his narrative frescoes. His crowning work, however, in this period, was the decoration of the roof-groining over the altar. In it he sets forth the "Triumph of St. Francis", together with the triumphs of the virtues which were the foundation of the order: poverty, chastity, obedience. This is the earliest example of those trionfi which from the Campo Santo at Pisa to Mantegna and Titian are a favourite theme of Italian art. It is moreover the earliest masterpiece of monumental art. The earlier "Psychomachia" of the poet Prudentius, so often treated by French sculptors and outlined by Giotto himself in the aforesaid tiny allegories of the Capella dell' Arena, takes on here a larger development. We seem to hear, as it were, an orchestration of incomparably greater variety and significance. The intimate meaning of life and thought, the power of plastic art, and the genius of beautiful symbols; the majesty of harmonious order, the beauty of the types, personifications and persons; the wondrous blending of fact and fancy; the perfect preservation of the original colours, all combine to make this magnificently planned ensemble one of the immortal works of painting. It seems to breathe the puissant moral ideas of the Middle Ages, while one of its lovely figures, the well-known Lady Poverty, suggests from afar all the mystic and quaintly modern poetry of Botticelli's "Primavera".

The closing years of Giotto's life (1320-27) were spent at Florence. His work at this period in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine and the palace of the Podestˆ, where he painted an allegory of Good Government (a theme of Ambrogio Lorenzetti at Siena in 1337), has almost entirely perished. Of all his work in the Bardi and Peruzzi chapels in the Franciscan church of Santa Croce there survive but some remnants. The Bardi chapel contains in six scenes a new life of St. Francis, besides four figures of the greater Franciscan saints: St. Clare, St. Elizabeth, St. Louis IX, King of France, and St. Louis of Toulouse. (St. Louis of Toulouse was canonized in 1317; the decoration of the chapel must, therefore, be of later date.) The Peruzzi chapel contains six scenes from the lives of St. Paul and St. John the Evangelist. These frescoes were whitewashed over in the eighteenth century, were discovered in 1840, and have suffered much in the course of restoration. In this final evolution of his art, Giotto, now a master and sure of his own powers, seems to lean towards the abstract in the treatment of his subjects. He appears to subordinate all to the rhythm of the composition. An almost excessive desire for balance and symmetry gives to these later works an aspect of stiffness, somewhat the impression of bas-reliefs. They seem somewhat cold and academic. And yet they reveal incomparable beauty and figures of genuine sculpturesque perfection. In the "Resurrection of St. Paul" the group of the Disciples leaning over the empty sepulchre, though two centuries earlier than Raphael, is almost the same as the group of young geometricians in the latter's "School of Athens".

There is no evidence that Giotto ever visited Ferrara, Ravenna, or any of the other places where frescoes are attributed to him. King Robert of Anjou induced him to visit Naples in 1330, and he remained there three years, but left no trace of his influence on the local school. As for the pretended journey to Avignon and his death there, it is well known to be a fiction. Simone di Martino is the true author of the admirable frescoes in the papal palace at Avignon. In his later years Giotto, recognized as chief among Italian artists, was more or less capomaestro or Master of the Works for all public constructions in Florence. We are told that he aided in designing the Porta San Giovanni of the Baptistery, the work of Andrea Pisano (1330). It is certain that he drew the plans for the Campanile in 1334. Perhaps the designs for the fifty-eight bas-reliefs by Andrea are partly his, recalling as they do in more than one particular the "Virtues and Vices" at Padua. There are very few of Giotto's panels, properly so-called. One large "Madonna di Maest" in the Accademia at Florence is interesting when compared with that of Duccio. A triptych of the "Life of St. Peter" painted in 1298 for Cardinal Stefaneschi is preserved in the sacristy of the canons at St. Peter's. Finally, his "St. Francis receiving the Stigmata", at the Louvre.

No painter ever made such an impression on his age as Giotto. All fourteenth-century art betrays his influence. No school was ever so numerous nor so homogeneous as the Giotteschi. Taddeo and Agnolo Gaddi, Orcagna, Spinello, and others, it is true, are weak imitators of their master. Indeed, outside of Florence there is no originality save at Siena where Simone di Martino and the Lorenzetti worked, and later at Padua in the days of Jacopo Avanzo and Altichieri. The triumph of Giotto, and the thorough manner in which his successors imitated him, proved how fully he embodied the national genius. In painting he invented that dolce stil nuovo, that vulgare eloquium which Dante created in the realm of poetry. He is truly the founder of the art of painting in Italy.

He was not handsome, says Petrarch, who was his friend, as was also Dante, whose portrait he so often painted. Nor must it be imagined that this great painter of St. Francis was either a mystic or an ascetic. He loved life too well for that. He has left us in a canzone, mediocre enough as poetry, a satire on "Holy Poverty" and the excesses of the "Fraticelli", the radicals among the Franciscans of that time. Moreover, the Florentine novelists, Boccaccio and Sacchetti, tell many anecdotes of him in which he figures as a bon-vivant, jovial, good-natured, with a sense of humour and a pardonable eccentricity. He may have been wealthy, as he worked diligently and charged good prices for his work. He married Cinta di Lapo del Pela by whom he had eight children. The eldest, Francesco, registered in 1341 as a member of the guild of painters at Florence. [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Giotto di Bondone. and Catholic Encyclopedia (1909)]

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Piero della Francesca (c 1416-1492)

Summary

Painter, b. at Borgo San-Sepolcro, about 1420; d. there, 1492. The most usual form of his name is the traditional one, PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA, which is better authenticated in contemporary documents than what in late research had been supposed to be the more correct form, PIERO DEI FRANCESCHI (Gronau, Repertorium fur Kunstwissenschaft, xxiii, 392-4). He was the son of a notary, Ser Benedetto, a member of an influential family long identified with the government of the town - the Franceschi. His earliest artistic training is unknown, but he was active at Perugia in 1438, probably as an assistant to Domenico Veneziano, and he was certainly employed in the same capacity in the Church of Sant' Egidio, Florence, in 1439-40. To Domenico and probably also to Paolo Uccello, Florentine Realists who did much for the technical side of painting, we may ascribe the formative influence in his art. Piero first appears as an independent master in 1445, when he painted a still surviving altar-piece of many panels for the Brotherhood of the Misericordia in his native town. He is said to have laboured with Domenico at Loreto, and he was certainly at Rimini in 1451, when he painted a remarkable fresco in the chapel of San Francesco, representing Sigismondo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, venerating his patron saint, Sigismund. After this he was active at Ferrara and Bologna, and, according to Vasari, he also decorated a room of the Vatican for Pope Nicholas V. In 1454 he was again at Borgo San-Sepolcro, where in 1460 he painted a fresco of St. Louis of Toulouse, now preserved in the town hall. It was probably between this date and 1466 that he painted his masterpiece, the frescoes in the choir of San Francesco at Arezzo, which may, however, have been begun earlier. The subject is the Story of the True Cross, involving incidents beginning with Adam and including the story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, Constantine and St. Helena, Heraclius and Chosroes. These frescoes rank with those by Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel as epoch-making in the decorative art of the fifteenth century.

In the spring of 1469 Piero was at Urbino, lodging in the house of Giovanni Santi, the father of Raphael, in which city a large part of his later activity occurred. From this period probably dates the remarkable diptych of the Uffizi, containing the portraits of the Duke (then Count) of Urbino, the ideal prince of the Renaissance, and the mild and refined image of his wife, Battista Sforza, with allegorical triumphs of these rulers on the reverse sides.

About this time he also painted the well-known Madonna with saints and angels, venerated by the Duke of Urbino, now in the Brera, Milan; and the Flagellation of Christ, a beautiful architectural composition in the cathedral of Urbino. According to a well-established tradition recorded by Vasari, Piero became blind in later life. At this time he wrote his celebrated treatises: De quinque corporibus regularibus, which show him as a great geometrician, and his Prospettiva Pingendi (Treatise on Perspective), a manual for painters. This work reveals him as the greatest master of the theory of perspective in his day, and gave him a reputation beyond Italy. His testament is recorded 5 July, 1478, and he was interred in the present cathedral of his native town in 1492.

His principal frescoes, besides those mentioned, include: the Resurrection, in the town hall of Borgo San-Sepolcro, a marvelous piece of foreshortening and perspective; a Hercules, now in the possession of Mrs. J. L. Gardner of Boston; and an imposing Magdalen in the cathedral of Arezzo. Among his panel pieces are the Triumph of Chivalry (New York Historical Society); the Baptism of Christ and the Nativity, both in the National Gallery, London, the latter the first moonlight scene in modern painting; an Annunciation in the Gallery at Perugia; St. Michael in London; and St. Thomas Aquinas in the Poldo-Pezzoli Museum at Milan. The charming Portrait of a Young Girl attributed to him in this gallery, as well as similar portraits in other European galleries, is now generally ascribed to another artist. Piero's position in the development of Italian art is a unique and important one. He is the greatest of that group of pathfinders, the Realists, whose scientific experiments created the grammar of modern painting. In mural painting he towers above his contemporaries as the worthy successor of Masaccio, and the connecting link between his art and that of Raphael. In the Central Italian painting of the Renaissance his position was a dominant one; he may be called the founder of the school. The chief masters of the following generation - Perugino and the rest - either studied under or were influenced by him. Of his more intimate pupils, Melozzo da Forli carried perspective to the highest perfection, while Luca Signorelli developed figure-painting to the greatest excellence attained before Michelangelo. To Florentine excellence of draughtmanship Piero united the superior colour sense of the Umbrians. Most remarkable was his rendition of light and air, in which he easily surpassed his contemporaries. His types are seldom beautiful, but they are strong and primeval, admirably modelled, and as impassive as the sculptures at the Parthenon. Perhaps the most striking feature of his art is this wonderful objectivity, in which regard he stands rivalled by Holbein and Velazquez alone in modern painting. [Adapted from Catholic Encyclopedia (1912)]

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Jean Fouquet (c 1420-1480)

Summary

French painter and miniaturist, b. at Tours, c. 1415; d. about 1480. He was perhaps the son of Huguet Fouquet, who about 1400 worked for the Dukes of Orleans at Paris. At the end of the fourteenth century French painting had reached a period of incomparable brilliancy. Everything heralded the Renaissance, and little was wanting to make it a distinctively French movement, which, however, the disasters of the monarchy prevented. Paris ceased to be the centre of the new intellectual life. Art, driven from its centre, retreated to the outlying provinces in the North, the East, and the South-East, to the Duchy of Burgundy. The principal centre was Bruges, while secondary centres were established at Dijon in Provence. Each of these had its masters and its school. The only remnant of truly French life found refuge in the valley of the Loire, in the neighborhood of Tours, since the time of St. Martin the true heart of the nation in every crisis of French history. Here grew up the first of our painters who possesses not only a definite personality but a French physiognomy. Fouquet was the contemporary of Joan of Arc, and his character is as national as that of the heroine herself. For the basis of his style we must look to the School of Burgundy, itself simply a variant of that of Bruges. Tours is not far from Bruges and Dijon, and in Fouquet's work there is always something reminiscent of Claux Sluter and of the Van Eycks. To this must be added some Italian mannerisms. It is not known on what occasion Fouquet went to Italy, but it was certainly about 1445, for while there he painted the portrait of Pope Eugene IV between two secretaries. This famous work, long preserved at the Minerva gallery, is now known only from a sixteenth century engraving. Filarete and Vasari speak admiringly of it, while Raphael paid it the honour of recalling it in his Leo X of the Pitti Palace.

Fouquet remained under the charm of the early Italian Renaissance. The influence of the bas-reliefs of Ghiberti and Della Robbia, the paintings of Masaccio, Paolo Uccello, Filippo Lippi, and Gentile da Fabriano which he saw at Florence and at Rome may always be traced in his work. He appears to have been in France in 1450. Some critics are inclined to believe that he made a second journey, for they find it hard to believe that Fouquet never saw the Lives of St. Lawrence and St. Stephen by Fra Angelico in the chapel of Nicholas V. It is these Italian works which most closely resemble his own. The harmonizing of the two Renaissance movements (North and South), the intimate and natural fusion of the genius of both in the creative soul of one French artist, without any effort or shadow of pedantry, narrowness, or system, constitutes Fouquet's charm and originality. If French character consists in a certain effacement of all racial characteristics, in the power of assimilation (cf. Michelet, Introduction a la philosophie del'histoire), no artist has ever been more "French" than Fouquet. Withal he does not lack the savour of his country. Without poetry or depth of thought, his style has at least two striking characteristics. In depicting the human countenance, he possessed to a rare degree the gift of taking life, as it were, by surprise, and not even Benozzo could tell a story as he could.

We know through a contemporary that Fouquet painted pictures in the church of Notre-Dame la Riche at Tours, but it is not known whether they were mural or altar-pieces. He is known to have been charged with the preparations for Louis XI's entry into the city in 1461. Of all his works, however, there remain to-day a half dozen portraits and about a hundred miniatures. The oldest of these portraits appears to be the Charles VII in the Louvre, a portrait striking for its sadness, its fretful expression, and the force of its ugliness and veracity. At the Louvre also is the portrait of Guillaume Juvenal des Ursins, magnificently obese and bloated, radiant with gold. Another portrait has a curious history. It is that of Etienne Chevalier, the great patron of the painter, and was formerly to be seen in the church of Melun. The work is charming in breadth of style. The figure of St. Stephen presenting his client recalls Giorgione by its vigour and delicacy. In 1896 this piece found its way to the Berlin Museum. It formed part of a diptych, the other wing of which shows the Virgin, surrounded by angels, nursing the Infant Jesus. The Virgin is also a portrait, that of the beautiful Agnes Sorel of whom Chevalier was a favourite. This second wing is at Antwerp. The two parts, having been separated, were never reunited except for a short time at Paris during the Exposition of the French "Primitives" in 1904. Still another of Fouquet's portraits must be mentioned: the bust of a young man (Lichtenstein collection), dated 1456, which is admirable in the intensity of touch displayed in the colour scheme, with its greyish tone and deliberate reserve. This would be the master's best portrait, were it not for the precious little enamel at the Louvre, in which he himself is depicted in golden lines on a black background.

His work as a miniaturist at present comprises three series: (1) the fragments of the Livre d'heures d'Etienne Chevalier (1450-60), forty of which are at Chantilly, two at the Louvre, one at the Bibliotheque Nationale, and one at the British Museum; (2) twenty feuillets of the Jewish Antiquities of Josephus at the Bibliothèque Nationale. The second volume, discovered by Mr. Yates Thomson, was presented to the French Republic by King Edward VII in 1908 (Durrieu, op. cit. infra); (3) part of the illustrations of the Chroniques de France (Fr. 6465, Bibl. Nat.). To these must be added: (4) the frontispiece and miniatures for a French translation of the works of Boccaccio at the Royal Library of Munich (c. 1459), and the frontispiece of the statutes of the Order of St. Michael (c. 1462) at the Bibliotheque Nationale. The most important of these works, as well as the most famous and the most beautiful, is unquestionably Etienne Chevalier's Book of Hours, the Quarante Fouquet, which is one of the treasures of Chantilly. Of the forty-four pages of the Book of Hours hitherto recovered, twenty-five (following the order of the Breviary) tell the story of the Gospel and of the life of the Blessed Virgin, fourteen are scenes from the lives of the saints; one, dealing with the story of Job, is an Old-Testament scene; and one, The Last Judgment, is from the Apocalypse. The frontispiece, two pages reproducing the diptych of Melun, and the page of the Office for the Dead, are consecrated to the memory of Etienne Chevalier. We are impressed immediately with the exquisite clearness, animation and life. Italian mannerisms abound in the details; the artist speaks with a more flowery tongue than in his portraits. This work is one of joy in which the imagination delights in lovely caprices. Here are chubby-faced little angels, flowing draperies and garments, Burgundian luxuriance with the large folds of its draperies; to one side are the playing children (putti), musicians of Prato and Pistoia, pilastered niches, classic cornices, the Corinthian acanthus, and architectural foliage like the Florentine cypress and yew. His style is extremely composite. Nowhere else are its elements so deftly combined. There is gold everywhere, golden skies and golden hatching, an enveloping tissue delicately gilt. Since his time, no one has been able to master the process, which is in fact only the radiant atmosphere of the artist's ideas and the colour of his spirit.

The fundamental note is wonderfully sustained despite the appearance of playful improvisation. Although the artist delights in allowing free play to pleasant reminiscences, and has made use of his sketches of travel as adornments for his ideas, the basis of all is an ardent love of reality, and he glances at them only to refresh his memory. As a story-teller and dramatist he has the regard for the letter and the text which was to become the predominant trait of the great French historical painters, Poussin and Delacroix. But above all he feels the craving for truth, which underneath the embellishments of his style constitutes the real merit of his miniatures and his portraits. Fouquet is a naturalist from conviction. This he is after his own fashion, but as truly as Van Eyck or Filippo Lippi. He resembles them in being of their time, but he differs from them inasmuch as with him imitation never prevails over his passionate worship of nature.

This naturalism was so strong that Fouquet lacked the power to conceive what he had not seen. He did not dispense with models and all his works were not only observed but posed. He fails completely in ideal scenes and those of intense expression (e.g. Calvary) for which he could have no model. If his Last Judgment is a thrilling picture, it is because the memory of the glass-worker came to the aid of the painter, for the artist beheld heaven as the rose window of a cathedral (Dante, Parad., xxxi). In The Martyrdom of St. Apollonia he depicts quite clearly a scene from a popular mystery; it is, indeed, the most exact document we possess as to the scenic effects in the mysteries of the Middle Ages (Emil Male, Le renouvellement de l'art par les mysteres in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1904, I, 89). This influence of the theatre is seen throughout the Book of Hours, in the costumes, the decoration, and local colour, the capricious and grotesque appearance of which proceeds directly from the store of dramatic accessories and the tinsel adornments of the actors. It was thus that the age of Fouquet conceived historical painting. Finally another custom of Fouquet was to give as background to the scenes taken from the Bible or the Gospel, instead of Palestine of which he knew nothing, France or Touraine which he knew so well. Thus the representation of Job has as a decorative background the castle keep of Vincennes. The Paschal Supper takes place in an inn, and through the open door is seen the roof of Notre-dame de Paris. Calvary is placed on the hill of Montrouge. The excess of naïvete must not lead us to think that Fouquet knew not what he did. The anachronism of the Primitives is a conscious and voluntary system. Fouquet was not at all naif, as has been too frequently asserted, when in the scene of the Epiphany he substituted for one of the Magi of history the portrait of King Charles VII, in a mantle ornamented with fleurs-de-lis, surrounded by his guards and rendering homage to the Blessed Virgin. Perhaps this was a way of bringing home the teaching of the Gospel and of expressing its eternal truths and undying realities rather than the historical incident. Above all it was the parti pris of an age which, weary of abstractions and symbols, underwent a passionate reaction towards the youthful, and towards life. No contemporary expressed life better than Fouquet. He loved it in all its forms, in art, whether Italian, Flemish, Gothic, or Renaissance, in the theatre as well as in nature. He loved beautiful horses, beautiful arms, rich costumes, gay colours, beautiful music (his works are full of concerts). He loved the elegance of the new architecture, and he loved also the tapering spires, the cathedral windows, and the pointed towers on the pepper-box roofs. A thousand details of the life of his times would have been lost except for him, e.g., a row of quays on the banks of the Seine at the extremity of the city, a view of Paris from Montmartre or the Preaux Clercs, the performance of a mystery, a funeral scene, the interior of the ancient basilica of St. Peter. He is the best witness of his time; he is in turn good-natured, bantering, tender, and emotional. Neither a dreamer nor a mystic, he is full of faith and purity. Nothing could be more chaste than his work, which appeals at once to the learned and to the masses. The mind of this humble miniaturist was one of the best informed and most well-ordered of his time. Above all he had also a creative side, for he is one of the great landscape painters of the world. No one has depicted as well as he the charming countrysides of France. Nothing could be more sweetly rustic than his Sainte Marguerite. In this Fouquet immediately foreshadows Corot. His Mount of Olives and his Nativity are two of the most beautiful nocturnal scenes ever painted. The Alps in his Grandes Chroniques are perhaps the earliest example of mountain landscape.

Fouquet's influence has been considerable. He had numerous pupils, the best-known of whom are his two sons (one of them has a Calvary in the church of Loches) and Jean Colombe, the brother of the sculptor, while the greatest was Jehan Bourdichon, who in 1507 painted the famous Hours of Anne of Brittany. But none of these artists comes near to the master in merit. Fouquet remains the sole type of a French Renaissance which died out with his pupils. After 1500 Italy took a decided lead over the rest of Europe, and France was unable to contest her prestige. For more than two centuries she lost even the memory of her first original master. It is only in modern times that he has been drawn from obscurity and restored to his rank among the most charming men of genius of the early Renaissance. [Adapted from Catholic Encyclopedia (1909)]

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