Memoirs of the early Italian painters / by Anna Jameson; thoroughly revised and in part rewritten by Estelle M. Hurll.
- Anna Brownell Jameson
- Date:
- 1899
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Memoirs of the early Italian painters / by Anna Jameson; thoroughly revised and in part rewritten by Estelle M. Hurll. Source: Wellcome Collection.
65/335 page 29
![the ignorant might overlook the beauties, but which the learned must regard with amazement.” All writers who treat of the ancient glories of Florence — Florence the beautiful Flor- ence the tree from A illani down to Sismondi, count Giotto in the loll of her greatest men. Antiquaries and connoisseurs in Art search out and study the relics which remain to us, and • recognize in them the dawn of that splendor which reached its zenith in the beginning of the sixteenth century. ISTo vis- itor to Florence ever looks up to the Campanile without a feel- ing of wonder and delight, without thinking what that man must have been who conceived and executed a work so nobly, so supremely elegant; while to the philosophic observer Giotto appears as one of those few heaven-endowed beings whose de- velopment springs from a source within — one of those uncon- scious instruments in the hand of Providence, who, in seeking their own profit and delight through the expansion of their own faculties, make unawares a step forward in human cul- ture, lend a new impulse to human aspirations, and, like the “bright morning star, day’s harbinger,” may be merged in the succeeding radiance, but never forgotten. Before we pass on to the scholars and imitators of Giotto, who during the next century filled all Italy with schools of 'Art, we may here make mention of one or two of his contem- poraries, not so much for any performances left behind them, but because they have been commemorated by men more cele- brated than themselves, and survive embalmed in their works is “flies in amber.” Dante has mentioned, in his Purgato- :io, two painters of the time, famous for their miniature illus- rations of Missals and MSS. Before the invention of printi- ng, and indeed for some time after, this was an important jranch of Art: it flourished from the days of Charlemagne to hose of Charles V., and was a source of honor as well as riches 0 the laymen who practised it. Many, however, of the most weautiful specimens of illuminated manuscripts are the work the nameless Benedictine monks, who labored in the silence nd seclusion of their convents, and who yielded to their com- nunity most of the honor and all the profit: this was not the nse with Oderigi,1 whom Dante 2 has represented as expiating 1 [ I ide Crowe and Cavalcnselle, History of Pain tiny in Italy, vol. ii. p. 187 tfse 7.] J [Purgatorio, canto xi. 80.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24877888_0065.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
