File:Italian cities (1903) (14773480321).jpg

Identifier: italiancities01blas (find matches)
Title: Italian cities
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Blashfield, Edwin Howland, 1848-1936 Blashfield, Evangeline Wilbour, d. 1918
Subjects: Art -- Italy Cities and towns -- Italy Italy -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York : Scribner's
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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it can beseen and studied. Does it justify the opinion ofthose who consider Duccio a rival of Giotto, or hasthe Florentine still the cry ? Take the best knownof Duccios compositions which through photographyand engraving have become familiar to us: the ThreeMaries at the Tomb or the Betrayal of Christ, andplace them beside Giottos Death of Saint Francisor the Banquet of Herod. The two masters are absolutely different in char-acter. Duccio derives directly from the Byzantines.One would not be surprised to find his figures in amanuscript of the time of Alexander Severus bysome illuminator who, though not as skilful as thoseiconographic sculptors who filled out the series ofimperial busts, was nevertheless full of feeling forsubtle beauty and graceful movement. Giotto is apioneer, an innovator. In his paintings the medi-aeval Italian enters art as a pictured presence, notas the larva of the missal, but the real, living man 78 SIENA OPERA DEL DUOMO DUCCIO DI BUONINSEGNA THE KISS OF JUDAS
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11 .• SIENA of the Novelle of Sacchetti. Imagine a Eavennesemosaic freed from its rigidity and made supple, thecolor somewhat blackened, the faces human andpleasing, and you have Duccios figures. His artwas born in the catacombs and bred at Mont Athos.Giottos is a robust son of the people and of thebusy battle-filled fourteenth century. Duccio lin-gers in the court of the Byzantine palace, butGiotto shoulders aside the gilded prajtorian at itsgate and goes out into the fields. Duccio is the de-scendant of the gentleman of the old Empire, withhis refinement and his limitations. Giotto is themediteval peasant, with all the peasants vigor andcapacity for continued effort. In some respects,Duccio surpasses Giotto, notably in subtlety of feel-ing for beauty in his heads and in a certain delicacyof sentiment, but Giotto is immeasurably Ducciossuperior in inventiveness, in dramatic feeling, incomposition, and, above all, in solidity. Duccio, forall his power and science, is still Byzantine

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