File:Giotto (1905) (14753463206).jpg

Identifier: giotto00dese (find matches)
Title: Giotto
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: De Selincourt, Basil, 1876-
Subjects: Giotto, 1266?-1337
Publisher: London : Duckworth and Co. New York, C. Scribner's Sons
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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Text Appearing Before Image:
e principal incidents depicted willat once be recognised, and the reader may be referred,for an account of them, to the twelfth and fourteenthchapters of the Revelation. The Raising of Drusiana which occupies the centralspace, is perhaps the most remarkable instance inGiottos work of that power of reconciling apparentlyconflicting claims, of which he has appeared alreadyand in numberless ways so great a master. It has beenshown above that Giottos treatment of architecture andof landscape is frankly conventional. Deliberately heasks no more from either than that they shall form asuggestive and harmonious background to the humanaction ; it is on this he chooses to concentrate hisinterest. Indeed, art can only be effective, when it iswilling thus to accept restrictions, or voluntarily toimpose them: it depends for its power upon the choiceof a single purpose, and the elimination of all that doesnot directly contribute to the fulfilment of that purpose.* Mornings in Florence, p. 8i, note.
Text Appearing After Image:
< «2 sj VJ ^ ^ ^ < J:Dc^ Q O o I—I <Pi THE PERUZZI CHAPEL 195 Now it is usual, in estimating the achievement of Giotto,to assume that the conventionalities of his pictorialtreatment were part and parcel of his ignorance, thatindeed nothing better was to be expected of him consi-dering the primitive condition of science in his times.And of course it is obvious from the Vision of S. Johnin this chapel, and the Stigmatisation of S. Francis)us,toutside it, that he was unable, even at the height of hispower, to give a realistic appearance to a natural scene.Yet it would be dangerous to assert of Giotto that heerred through ignorance or incompetence. The limita-tion, in part at least, was self-imposed. I have attemptedin another place to show that in spite of the extraor-dinary development which appears in his treatment ofarchitectural accessories, his conception of their meaningand value remained permanently unaltered. The samewas the case with his idea of landscape. To reprodu

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