Note 4 — Chapter I · GIOTTO AND THE NEW FLORENTINE HUMANISM
Reading edition
Burlington Magazine, Vol. XXXII (1918) pp. 45–6. Mr. Berenson in Rassegna d’Arte, “Dedalo,” Vol. II., (1921) fasc. V, makes this superb Madonna a Constantinople picture of the late 12th century. His confessedly slight argument fails to convince me. Aside from the air of the picture, the form of the wooden throne is specific for Tuscany and the second half of the 13th century.
Cimabue. Andreas Aubert, Cimabue Frage, Leipzig, 1907, is the standard work. The various views on the early frescoes of the Upper Church at Assisi are well summarized in Brown and Rankin, A Short History, pp. 54 and 57–59.
An unsuccessful attempt to reduce Cimabue to a myth has been made by Langton Douglas in his edition of C. &. C., Vol. I., p. 187–193. The constructive and accepted view is that of Aubert. My list differs slightly from his and is:
Louvre Madonna, about 1275, Louvre.
Trinità Madonna, about 1285, Uffizi.
The frescoes of the Choir and transepts of S. Francesco at Assisi, saving possibly the big Ascent to the Cross, circa 1296, Assisi.
Madonna with St. Francis (fresco), after 1290, Assisi, Lower Church of San Francesco.
St. John in mosaic in the Apse of the Cathedral at Pisa, 1301.
Venturi’s endeavor to attach to Cimabue some of the later New Testament mosaics in the vault of the Florentine Baptistry, see Storia, Vol. V., p. 229—is plausible but not convincing. His attribution of lost frescoes in the portico of old St. Peter’s, known from sketch copies, Storia, Vol. V, p. 195—has no solid basis. Two fresco fragments, heads of Peter and Paul, remain, and are published by Wilpert, Die Mosaiken &, bd. I, fig. 144, and by him correctly assigned to Cavallini or some Roman follower.
R. van Marle, in La Peinture Romaine, Strasbourg, 1921, has made a most careful study of all the earliest frescoes in the Upper Church. Generally I concur in his conclusions, but cannot see Cavallini in the far abler work of the Isaac Master. The date, 1296, which Van Marle found in the Choir at Assisi, makes it pretty certain that all the frescoes in the Upper Church were executed between 1293–5 and 1300.
In Toskanische Maler im XIII Jahrhundert, Berlin, 1922, Dr. O. Sirén makes a comprehensive survey of the earliest painters of Lucca, Pisa, and Florence. He endeavors to reconstruct the works of Coppo di Marcovaldo whom he regards as a formative influence on Cimabue. To the usual list of Cimabue’s works Dr. Sirén adds, with Aubert, a great Madonna in the Servi, Bologna; and also a Madonna in the Verzocchi Collection, Milan; and an extraordinarily fine crucifixion in the d’Hendecourt Collection, London. Dr. Sirén also accepts for Cimabue the triptych of Christ, St. Peter and St James, which Berenson first published in Art in America, for 1920. Of these accretions none but the d’Hendecourt Crucifixion is at all persuasive to me.