Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 32:127 (Jul 1875)
Article: Early History Of Italian Painting
Author: Francis Howe Johnson

BSac 32:127 (July 1875) p. 525

Early History Of Italian Painting1

Rev. F. H. Johnson

The existence of an authentic history of early Italian painting is a matter of deep interest to all classes of students, but to none more than to ministers. In addition to its value as a means of artistic cultivation, it has for them, in view of the close connection existing between the rise of art in the thirteenth century and the development of a religious movement that was the great fact of its age, a special — we might say, indeed, a professional — interest. The work of Crowe and Cavalcaselle, of which this Article aims at giving some outline, while it does not dwell on the fact of this relationship, or make any particular effort to illustrate it, is, as an art history, one of great thoroughness. It is specially full and satisfactory in its treatment of the earliest period of the revival — giving careful and discriminating analyses of the paintings of Giotto and other artists, the inspiration of whose works was that of a lofty idealism. Its generalizations, also, are, with a few exceptions, carefully made and well sustained.2 We do not hesitate to say that a more clearly denned view of the growth of painting as a whole, and a more distinct impression of the lesser, as well as of the great, epochs in that growth may be obtained from it than from any other one work as yet given to English readers.

After a review of the course of Christian art during the period of its decline from pagan models, the birth-place of

BSac 32:127 (July 1875) p. 526

distinctively Italian painting is found in Giotto.3 Cimabue, though the forerunner of the new birth, is classed as belonging essentially to the old dispensation. From this starting-point the history of painting in Central Italy is followed, with an appearance of great circumspection, through the Giottesque period of idealism completed by Masaccio and Angelico, through the period of the descent into materialistic forms of thought and realism in painting, — when artists, struggling with technical difficulties and engrossed in the imitation of an unselect nature, lost sight of the higher purposes of art, — and part way through the grand period of the later development. Andrea del Sarto is the last painter treated of. Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Leonardo da Vinci are not touched upon. As has been said, a much larger space is devoted to the consideration of the earlier artists than in any preceding history. And to many readers the resulting slow progress of the work, in connection with a somewhat nerveless style, will prove tedious to a degree. The writers take for gran...