apparently a clumsy emblem of the supplies
she draws from spiritual fountains the only
clumsy piece of symbolism in the whole fresco,
unless my interpretation of it is wrong. Hope
is robed in white and wears a hawking glove,
a symbol as happy as it was novel. She
looks upwards and raises her hands expres-
sion and gesture charming and most apt.
Charity, accompanied by St. Augustine, is
clothed in seraphic red. She wears a close
red cap with a cross for crest, and carries a
bow and arrow, like any Cupid, an emblem of
obvious interpretation. This is the divine
love, whereof Plato speaks, " bestowed by
the beneficence of the Gods and acceding to
the minds of men through the inspiration of
celestial Cupid."

The division of the roof above this fresco is
fitly occupied by a fresco of Pentecost, in
accordance with the words of the Summa
(i, 2, 68, 2) : " Unless the Holy Spirit con-
tinually prompts and impels the reason, the
reason is not of itself sufficient to attain the



THE SPANISH CHAPEL. 203

ultimate supernatural end, towards which it
tends, when in any degree and imperfectly
directed by the Theological Virtues." It is
worth notice that this vaulting fresco, repre-
senting as it does a purely historical subject,
is frankly Giottoesque and Florentine, in
contrast with the Sienese character of the
emblematic fresco beneath it.

As I have before remarked, that part of the
symbolism and subject of a picture which can
be translated into words is no part of its
pictorial quality of what makes it a work
of art. The fresco we are discussing un-
doubtedly is built upon a fine intellectual
idea ; what we are now interested to enquire
is whether it is a fine work of art, apart from
its symbolical and emblematic qualities. Mr.
Berenson has attacked it on what seem to me
false grounds. He says : "Is there a single
figure in the fresco representing the ' Triumph
of St. Thomas ' which incarnates the idea it
symbolises, which, without its labelling instru-
ment, would convey any meaning whatever ?
One pretty woman holds a globe and sword,



204 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE.

and I am required to feel the majesty of
empire ; another has painted over her pretty
clothes a bow and arrow, which are supposed
to rouse me to a sense of the terrors of war ;*
a third has an organ on what was intended
to be her knee, and the sight of this instru-
ment must suffice to put me into ecstasies of
heavenly music ; still another pretty lady has
her arm akimbo, and if you want to know
what edification she can bring, you must read
her scroll. Below these pretty women sit a
number of men looking as worthy as clothes
and beards can make them ; one highly
dignified old gentleman gazes with all his
heart and all his soul f at the point of his
quill."

If I had not so high an opinion as I possess

* The bow and arrow are in the hands of Charity.

t The italics are mine. If the painter has succeeded in putting all a
man's heart and soul into a gaze he must indeed be a painter worth note.
As a matter of fact this attitude of a man in thought, gazing at his pen, is
an attempt at naturalism. The gesture is not original with this artist. It
will be found in an altar-piece (No. 24) in the Academy at Venice painted
by Michele di Matteo Lambertini, who, curiously enough, worked at Siena
about 1449 5- It i s & \ so found in early German pictures (one of the
Prague school at Vienna), and is, I think, an old traditional attitude, well
understood to suggest a thoughtful writer.



ON ALLEGORICAL PAINTING. 205

of the .excellence and value of Mr. Berenson's
work I should not select this passage for refu-
tation. It is only a writer whose words justly
carry weight that needs to be opposed when
we differ from him. The gist of Mr. Beren-
son's attack on our fresco is that unless we
know what the figures are intended to repre-
sent we should not be able to guess. He
implies a contrast with Giotto's allegorical
figures of the Vices at Padua, which are self-
explaining to a certain degree. The contrast,
however, is between things dissimilar. The
Vices are human passions and therefore easily
prefigurable, because we carry the interpreta-
tion in ourselves. We know an angry man
when we see one ; we know the aspect of
Avarice. Yet no one, I think, would have
named Giotto's Inconstancy if he had met
with the picture alone and unlabelled. The
figure is an ugly illustration of the idea of
inconstancy, but the vice has to be named
before we can discover that the figure is
emblematic of it. The fact is that all em-
blematic pictures and other works of art



206 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE.

presuppose in the spectator a knowledge of
the thing prefigured. It was so, for instance,
with the sculpture in the pediments of the
Parthenon. The figures held emblems and
were identified by them. If we knew no more
about Greek mythology than we do about
that of the Incas, we should no more be able
to guess what the Parthenon pediments mean
than we can guess at the meaning of Inca
pottery. As it is, there are some three dozen
or more different interpretations of this sculp-
ture, yet no one considers that fact an indica-
tion of artistic poverty. The Parthenon
sculptures are fine works of art, apart from
their meaning, and are immediately perceived
to be fine by anyone capable of appreciating
them, even if he has no shadow of an idea
what they are all about.

The painter of the Spanish Chapel fresco did
not mean the spectator of his work to feel
the majesty of empire when he looked at a
sword and crown, or to be inspired with
ecstasies of heavenly music by the sight of an
organ. He was not painting to please the



DECORATIVE PAINTING. 207

modern man at all. He was addressing
Dominican friars of the fourteenth century,
men learned in the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas
and intensely proud of that philosopher as
one of themselves. Not a man amongst the
friars who assembled in the Chapter House of
St. Maria Novella but knew the Summa Theo-
logica well enough to grasp the meaning of the
fresco at a glance. All the painter had to do
from the intellectual side was to suggest the
scheme of the work by a series of emblematic
figures, obscure perhaps to us but of obvious
meaning to the friars of that day. As an
artist his main duty was to decorate a wall-
to cover it with pleasant forms and colours
nicely grouped together. That the forms and
colours of the fresco are petty Mr. Berenson
admits. As a scheme of decoration it seems
to me admirable. In fact, the Spanish Chapel
as a whole is the best example of an interior
decorated by fresco that the fourteenth cen-
tury has sent down to the twentieth, and the
wall we have been considering is the best part
of it. Mr. Berenson says that not a figure on



208 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE.

it possesses " tactile values that is to say,
artistic existence " ; but if the whole be
decorative, the whole, and therefore the parts,
have artistic existence. The fresco might not
be decorative and yet it might have merits.
Michael Angelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling is not
decorative in its present condition, yet it is
a superb work of art. If, on the other hand,
this fresco is decorative we are dispensed
from further enquiry. Its prime duty was to
decorate. It accomplishes that duty. As a
matter of fact it accomplishes much more.
It incorporates an emblematic scheme with
great ingenuity. It translates into pictorial
form, or rather it finds truly pictorial equi-
valents for, a number of philosophical and
religious ideas. Fill your minds with the kind
of understanding about Thomas Aquinas and
his system which a Dominican friar of the
fourteenth century may be assumed to have
had, and then go and sit before the picture,
you will find it not merely suggestive, but you
will find that the painting itself, in its treat-
ment as well as its design, matches your



THE FOUR LAST THINGS AT PISA. 209

Dominican mood, just as music suitably com-
posed accompanies the song for which it was
designed to be a setting.

As an allegorical painting this Spanish
Chapel fresco of St. Thomas and his doctrine
surpasses the frescoes of Good and Bad
Government ; but though probably later
in date it does not surpass the Quattuor
Novissima (c. 1340-1350) of the Pisan Campo
Santo, to which our attention must now be
turned. Copies of them, with some altera-
tions, are said to have been made by Orcagna
in the cloister of Santa Croce (c. 1345-1355),
but they no longer exist. It was probably
for this reason that the Pisan frescoes were
at one time wrongly ascribed to that painter.
Who actually painted them we do not know.
It is clear that he worked under Dominican
influence, for we find Averroes in the very
hottest corner of Hell along with Mahomet
and Antichrist. Moreover, the group of
people whom Death is about to mow down
are obviously designed by the same designer
who was responsible for the fresco on the

14



210 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE.

right wall of the Spanish Chapel. Both groups
of frescoes, in fact, belong to the same school
of design.

Who that has ever beheld them does not
remember these Pisan frescoes, especially the
one popularly known as the Triumph of
Death ? Who does not recall that weird
irresistible figure clothed in a black gauze
garment and borne on large bat-like wings,
sweeping onward, over her prey, brandishing
a scythe broad of blade ? Her mouth is open
uttering " a great and bitter cry." Her long
white hair is like a raging flame. The points
of her fingers, toes, and wings are sharp claws.
Her cheeks are hollow ; her eyes large in the
sockets ; deep are the wrinkles in her power-
ful neck. Her skin is tawny ; her wings
dark green. Her expression is relentless,
but neither angry nor malicious. She appears
unconscious of the sorrow she causes ; prayers
do not affect her. She sweeps onward like a
hurricane, strewing ruin, and that nothing
avails to turn aside. Beneath her are the
princes, courtiers, knights, and judges she has



THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH. 21 r

slain. Overhead, devils and angels fight for
their souls. Behind her are the cripples and
miserable of the earth who cry, " Fortune
has abandoned us ; come then Death, medi-
cine for every care, oh, come and give us the
last meal ! >: But she hears not, nor turns.
Her scythe is about to cut down a group of
courtiers, sitting under pomegranate trees with
their pet animals and their music. Next to
fall will be two lovers over whose heads
two cupids hover, grouped like the genii
holding scrolls carved upon so many Roman
sarcophagi.

An inscription tells the meaning of this
part of the picture : " Nought availeth wisdom
and riches, nobility and prowess for defence
against the blows of this one. Against her,
oh reader, was never yet argument found.
Wherefore be thou firmly minded to stand
ever so prepared that deadly sin bring thee
not under her yoke."

The left half of the fresco enforces the same
moral in a different way. It contrasts the

life of the courtier with the contemplative life

14*



212 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE.

of hermits, dwelling in the country among
tame birds and beasts, where even the fawns
kneel to be milked. We are shown the weird
old tale of Macarius, which arose in France
in the thirteenth century and spread all over
Europe, so that pictures of it existed in almost
every town. As three kings and their cour-
tiers were riding out hawking they came upon
the open coffins of three dead kings. A voice
cried to them, " What ye are that were we ;
what we are that shall ye be."

As a work of Art the left half of the picture
is much inferior to the right. The right half
is symbolical, the left narrative, and no better
than the common run of narrative illustrations
that the Giottists produced in such mono-
tonous profusion. But the figure of Death is
very fine, probably the finest emblematic
figure painted in mediaeval Europe up to that
date. I have endeavoured to describe it, but

V

the figure transcends any description. It is a
painter's conception. It cannot be translated
into language, but must be seen. It requires
no emblem to explain it, beyond the living



" DEATH" IN ART. 213

ahead and the dead beneath. It is the concep-
tion of a man who felt the horror of death
with true mediaeval emphasis. In the year
1348 the neighbouring city of Siena was
ravaged by plague. Eighty thousand citizens
are said to have died of it. It is more than
probable that this picture was painted about
that time and under the shadow of that
terror. The painter may himself have been a
Sienese. The people of those days conceived
of Death as a person. Even Durer, nearly
two centuries later, so thought of it. He
records that, standing by his mother's bedside,
he " beheld how Death smote her three great
strokes to the heart," and how " she closed
mouth and eyes and departed with pain."
In the year of the Pest at Nuremburg he drew
a figure of the King of Terrors, armed with a
scythe and wrote beneath it the words,
" Remember me."

This Death, the triumphant, therefore, was
not a mere emblem to the folk of those days.
It was the image of a mighty personal power,
very near at hand, very terrible. It took



2i 4 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE.

this form in the painter's imagination. He
painted no laboriously constructed emblematic
figure, but a demon that he had beheld in his
mind's eye. Hence the vitality and power of
the picture, rising far beyond mere decoration
into the regions of positive creation. Tech-
nically, the whole picture has faults enough ;
they are not worth naming, for they do not
cloud the vivid impression which the work, as
a whole, produces even on a modern spec-
tator. What the painter conceived, so clearly
that he may be said to have beheld it, we also
behold in the presence of his picture. His
technical powers sufficed for that transference.
It is their ample justification.

We have left ourselves no time to deal with
the neighbouring frescoes of the Last Judg-
ment and Hell ; neither can we pause over
the corresponding works of Orcagna (c.
1355-1360) in the Strozzi Chapel. An ex-
amination of them would only confirm the
conclusions we have already reached. The
important historical facts to remember are
these. At the end of the thirteenth century



A NEW IMPULSE. 215

artists, under the influence of the Franciscan
movement, or in accordance with the popular
feeling of which that movement was another
expression, looked at Nature in a new way
and introduced into Art the expression of a
new ideal. They painted dramatic pictures,
representations of life as vivid as their powers
enabled them to produce. The impulse to
further development of this kind of Art-pro-
duction failed shortly after the death of Giotto,
and was succeeded by an impulse of a different
kind. In response to the demands of com-
munities inspired by the Dominican ideal,
pictures were then painted of an allegorical
character, representing systems of thought.
In order to produce such pictures artists
were obliged to treat their subject in a new
way. The traditions of Giotto did not suffice.
New artistic problems required a new solution.
The effort thus called for gave an impulse to
artistic development. It was perceived that
such wall-paintings should be primarily
decorative. The first efforts in that direction
failed ; but ultimately in the Spanish and



216 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE.

Strozzi chapels greater success was obtained.
Instead of dividing the wall into a number
of rectangular compartments, as Giotto and the
narrative painters naturally did, allegorical
pictures as naturally spread over the whole
area to be decorated. The Spanish Chapel
as a decorated interior far surpasses the Arena
Chapel at Padua. It is, in fact, the best
decorated interior produced after the decay
of the Byzantine and classical schools. All
later examples of well-decorated interiors,
such as the Cambio at Perugia, the Apparte-
mento Borgia at the Vatican, and the like,
descend from the Spanish Chapel.

Moreover, the new demands made upon
artists enlarged their horizon. A Giottist
illustrator of a narrative felt that when he
had told his story he had done enough. An
artist called upon to paint a figure of Music
soon realised that any figure holding a mu-
sical instrument was not as good as any other.
A pretty figure was essential. Hence, the
Spanish Chapel's allegorical figures are all
pretty ; the representative men dignified.



THE TRUE AIM OF ART. 217

Allegory, in fact, introduced the demand for
formal beauty. That was its important con-
tribution to artistic development. It was a
new demand upon painters and sculptors,
and one that could not be fully supplied
till the technical resources of Art were much
enlarged. Artists were thus led to increase
their technical powers, to search for beauty
for its own sake. Once they were firmly set
upon that road the future of Italian Art was
sure.

For Beauty is the true aim of Art. Narra-
tive illustration, allegory, edification, what
you please, may be subordinate aims, but
cannot be principal if Art is to be great. Had
there been no popular movement in the thir-
teenth century, no change in the class for
whom artists worked ; had the aristocratic
and refined class alone remained the em-
ployers of artists, and the classical ideals
been adhered to and developed, it seems pro-
bable that beauty would sooner have been
realised as the artist's aim.^By a roundabout
route and in process of time the same result



218 DOMINICAN INFLUENCE.

was ultimately arrived at, and with this advan-
tage, that in the meantime the taste of a much
larger public was educated to a keen appre-
ciation of beauty. In the full tide of the
Renaissance the cultured classes again ob-
tained control of the Art-Fund, but when they
did so the works that they caused to be made
were a joy not only to themselves but to the
great mass of the people of Central and
Northern Italy. Love of beauty thus entered
the heart of the Italians, where it resides to-
day. Will any corresponding movement ever
infuse into the mass of English-speaking men
and women a similar quality ? There is no
reason why it should not. All we can assert
is that our race as a whole has never yet passed
through the stage of popular artistic educa-
tion which the Italians experienced from the
fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, and
which has left an indelible impression upon
them.



219



CHAPTER VI.

FRA ANGELICO.

THE paintings by the Dominican friar,
generally known as Fra Angelico, have been
found pleasing by men of many periods
and casts of thought ; and this, not for their
comprehensiveness of conception or splendour
of execution, but because through them, as
through transparent crystal, a singularly pure,
gentle, and holy personality may be clearly
perceived. Fra Angelico was born, the son of
of a certain Pietro, in the year 1387 at Vicchio
(between Dicomano and Borgo S. Lorenzo),
not far from Vespignano. His baptismal
name was Guido. He had a brother named
Benedetto, whether elder or younger we do
not know. In the year 1407 both brothers
entered the Dominican Convent on the Fiesole



220 FRA ANGELICO.

hill, at which time Guido took the name of
Giovanni, and presently became known as Fra
Giovanni of Fiesole.

The brothers were sent to the novices'
training-house at Cortona. Owing to troubles
connected with the Papal schism they were
kept away from Florence, with the rest of the
Dominicans, for ten years. In 1418 they re-
turned to Fiesole, where Fra Angelico lived
till 1436. In that year he and his fellows
were transferred to the Convent of S. Marco
at Florence, which he was destined to make
famous, and where he resided till 1445. Then
he went to Rome to work for the Pope ; and
at Rome he died in 1455. His active life,
therefore, covers the first half of the fifteenth
century, and is naturally divisible into four
periods 1408-1418, ten years of novitiate
and wandering, in which he learnt his craft ;
1418-1436, eighteen years of life at Fiesole ;
1436-1445, nine years in Florence ; 1445-
1455, ten years at Rome. It might be shown
that the painter's style passed through four
stages of development, almost synchronous



HIS CHARACTER. 221

with these periods ; but Fra Angelico is not
an artist whose works we study for the sake
of their artistic style. He founded no school ;
he had few imitators." He is remarkable as
the artist who gave to a certain group of
ideas their plainest and most lovely expres-
sion ; his works, therefore, may be considered
most profitably as a whole.

Vasari's life of him is one of the most charm-
ing of the biographies he has preserved for us.
It may have been written by some friar, who
knew the artist personally, or it may merely
incorporate the tradition handed down in the
Convent of San Marco. It contains the fol-
lowing well-known passage :

" Fra Giovanni was a simple man and most
holy in his walk. He shunned all things of
this world, lived a pure and saintly life, and
was such a friend to the poor that I think his
soul must now be in Heaven. He exercised
himself continually in painting, but would
depict none but sacred subjects. He might
have been, but cared not to be rich, saying



222 FRA ANGELICO.

that true riches consist alone in being content
with a little. He might have commanded
many and would not, saying that it was less
wearisome and difficult to obey others. He
had choice of positions of dignity, both among
the Dominicans and elsewhere, yet he esteemed
them not, affirming that he sought no other
dignity save to escape Hell and draw nigh
unto Paradise. ... He was most humane
and sober, and by his virtuous life he freed
himself from the snares of the world. He
used oftentimes to say that one who is an
artist has need of quiet and of a life without
care, and that he who paints the things of
Christ with Christ should continually abide.
Amongst the friars he was never seen in
anger. . . . Quietly smiling he was wont
to admonish his friends. To anyone desiring
a work of him he used to answer, with wonder-
ful meekness, that he must first get the prior's
consent, and then if he came to him he would
not fail him. In fine this father, who cannot
be over-praised, was most humble and modest
in all his works and discourse and in his



HIS CHARACTER. 223

painting both skilful and devout. The saints
which he painted have more the bearing and
similitude of saints than have those made
by anyone else. It was his custom never to
mend or retouch any painting of his, but to
leave it always as it came at the first attempt,
believing (as he used to say) that such was the
will of God. Some relate that Fra Giovanni
would not put hand to pencil without first
giving himself to prayer. He never painted
Christ on the Cross but his cheeks were bathed
in tears. So it came to pass that the warm
Christian faith of his great and sincere mind
was manifest in the faces and attitudes of the
figures he painted."

Upon this tender and devout personality
the Dominican system of thought was imposed
by education. The religious tendency of
Giovanni's mind must have been fixed in his
earliest youth. His works prove it. They
are the works of a man unacquainted with
vice and devoid of passion ; one whose heart
was by nature so pure that he scarcely ex-



224 FR-A ANGELICO.

perienced the power of ordinary temptations.
There is no trace of a conflict to be discovered,
no sign of victory, no scar, no weariness, no
memory even of temporary repulse. From
childhood up to old age was one slow, con-
tinuous advance in character as in Art, along
an unwavering line. Arrived at the age of
twenty, when the tendencies of his nature
had declared themselves, it was to the Domini-
cans that he was drawn ; it was in that order
he looked to find pleasant companionship and
right direction. His mind, submissive by
nature, may have craved for strong govern-
ance, for an initiative power from without,
and for protection from a tumultuous world.
He fled to the Dominicans for shelter. Among
the rank and file of the friars there were
doubtless plenty of simple and devout men,
who lived their lives in quiet and seclusion,
and have left no mark on history. Of the
noisy and disreputable friars we hear enough ;
but if the Dominican body had consisted
mainly of such gentry it would not have
endured as long as it has done.



HIS TEACHERS. 225

Where and from whom Fra Angelico learnt
his Art are questions of minor importance,
though of obvious interest. There seems
little doubt that his master was Don Lorenzo