The Rebirth of the Arts (1095–1300)

The Rebirth of the Arts (1095–1300)

I – The Aesthetic Movement

What was the cause that enabled Western Europe in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to reach such a peak of art that it was comparable to Athens in the age of Pericles and Rome in the time of Augustus? The invasions of the Norse and Muslim peoples had been repelled and the Hungarians had been tamed. The Crusades fanned the fire of creative energy and brought thousands of artistic ideas and forms from the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic East to Europe.

The reopening of the Mediterranean, the opening of the Atlantic to Christian commerce, the securing and administration of trade along the rivers of France and Germany and the northern seas, and the development of industry and finance produced a wealth that had not been seen since the time of Constantine. New classes came into existence that had the material means necessary for art, and prosperous communities stepped onto the scene, each determined to build a cathedral far more magnificent than the previous ones. The treasuries of the elders of the monasteries, the bishops, and the popes were filled with the tithes of the people, the gifts of merchants, and the financial assistance of the nobility and kings. The iconoclasts had been defeated; the stigma of idolatry no longer branded the forehead of art. The Church, which had once feared art, now saw it as a suitable means for instilling its faith and ideals among the illiterate masses and for encouraging people to a devotion that raised the towers of the church like the prayers of the faithful into the heart of the heavens. The new cult of the Virgin Mary, which arose spontaneously from the hearts of the people, poured the love and trust they had for the Mother of God into magnificent temples so that thousands of her children could gather there without delay, bow their heads at her threshold, and seek her help.

The ancient techniques and skills that had survived here and there from the destructions of the barbarian tribes and the decline of urban foundations. In the Eastern Empire the ancient arts had never disappeared, and artistic subjects and themes, especially from the Greek East and Byzantine Italy, entered a life that the West had resumed. Charlemagne summoned Greek artists who were fleeing from the Byzantine iconoclasts into his service, and from this the art of Charlemagne’s capital blended the delicacy and mysticism of Byzantium with the solidity and worldliness of Germany. Artists in the ranks of the Cluniac monks, in the tenth century, inaugurated a new era in Western architecture and decoration. The beginning of this movement was an imitation of Byzantine models. In the new artistic school, which first appeared in the monastery of Monte Cassino under the leadership of its abbot Desiderius (1072), Greek teachers began to teach artistic subjects in the Byzantine style. When Honorius III (1218) wished to decorate the church of San Paolo fuori le Mura, he sought help from mosaic masters from Venice, and the artists who accepted his invitation were highly skilled in Byzantine traditions. Colonies of Byzantine artists could be found in several important cities of the West, and it was their painting style that served as a model for figures such as Duccio, Cimabue, and the early style of Giotto himself. Byzantine or Eastern decorations—including palm-leaf forms, acanthus leaves, and animal figures within circular medallions—all came to the West on textiles, ivory objects, and illuminated religious books and remained in Romanesque decorations for several hundred years.

Various forms of architecture from Syria, Anatolia, and Iran—including the crypt, the dome, the twin façade, the composite column, and the placement of two or three windows under one arch—again entered the architectural style of the West. History knows no leaps, and with the passage of time nothing is destroyed.

Just as the evolution of life requires both diversity and the factor of heredity, and the evolution of a society needs both experimental innovation and stabilizing customs, in the same way the evolution of art in Western Europe not only included the continuity of tradition in artistic skills and forms and stimulation from seeing the works of Byzantine and Muslim artists, but at the same time it was necessary for the artist to turn his back on the school and face nature again and again, to turn from ideas to objects, to look from the past to the present, and to cease imitating models and express his own condition. One characteristic of Byzantine art was a kind of heaviness and stillness, and in the decorations of Islamic artists there existed a kind of delicacy and fragile refinement that could never be the language of artists of a world that had just emerged from the valley of savagery, had taken on new life, and was full of manly joy and youthful vigor. The nations that had risen from the darkness of the centuries and were moving toward the sun of the thirteenth century preferred the radiant splendor of the women in Giotto’s paintings to the stiff figures of women depicted on Byzantine mosaics, laughed at the Semitic horror of statues, and turned dry and empty decorations into the smiling angel of Reims Cathedral or the golden Virgin of Amiens Cathedral. In Gothic art the joy of life triumphed over the fear of death.

It was the monks themselves who, by preserving classical literature, kept the techniques and subtleties of Eastern, Greek, and Roman art safe from the ravages of time and spread and disseminated them. Since the purpose of every monastery was self-sufficiency from the outside world, within the four walls of these monasteries both decorative art and practical crafts useful in daily life were taught. The church attached to the monastery needed a chalice and a vessel for the sacred bread, a reliquary and a place to preserve holy relics, a prayer book, a chandelier, and perhaps various mosaics, wall paintings, and statues for giving information and inspiring piety. Most of these needs were met by the monks themselves with their own hands. In fact, the design and construction of the monastery itself was in many cases carried out by this community without the help of others. Just as today the monastery of Monte Cassino is being built by the Benedictines themselves. Most monasteries had large workshops; for example, in Chartres, Bernard of Tirón founded a monastery and, as it is said, “gathered there artists skilled in both carpentry and metalworking, engravers and goldsmiths, painters and stone carvers … and many others who were masters in all the fine arts.” Almost all the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages were the work of monks; the finest textiles were woven by monks and nuns; the architects of the great cathedrals founded in the early days of the Romanesque style were all monks; in the eleventh century and the early twelfth century most of the architects of Western Europe and many painters and sculptors came from the monastery of Cluny; and in the thirteenth century the monastery of Saint-Denis was a flourishing center of various arts. Even the Cistercian monasteries, which in the days of Saint Bernard had closed their doors to any kind of decoration, soon fell to the temptation of form and the snare of the riot of color and began to build monasteries that were in no way inferior in elegance to those of Cluny or Saint-Denis. Since the English cathedrals were usually all chapels attached to monasteries, until the end of the thirteenth century the regular and permanent clergy, or priests who were primarily monks, still had influence in the construction and architectural style of the churches of England.

But it must be kept in mind that however much a monastery may be an unparalleled school and a pleasing refuge for spiritual calm, since it has withdrawn from the other activities of society as a treasury of traditions and is not the arena of the experiences of the living generation, it is therefore rejected; it is more suited to the preservation of the manifestations of art and civilization than to innovation. As long as the expanding desires of a wealthy non-clerical class did not warm the market of free artists, medieval life could not gush forth like a copious spring into non-vulgar forms and raise Gothic art to the highest degrees of perfection. At first in Italy, then more than anywhere in France and less than anywhere in England, the non-clerical individuals of the twelfth century, who had gained freedom and specialized in various techniques, formed groups, took the arts out of the hands of the monastic teachers and monks, and laid the foundations of the great cathedrals.

II – The Adornment of Life

Nevertheless, the one who wrote the most complete and clearest concise collection about the arts and crafts of the Middle Ages was a monk. Theophilus—“lover of God”—in the monastery of Helmarshausen, near Paderborn—around the year 1190 compiled a list describing the various arts, and in the preface of this book he wrote: Theophilus, this weak servant, … addresses all those who wish, with the fruits of their own labor and with joyful thought about everything that is new, … to set aside all mental sluggishness and spiritual confusion. … (Such persons, by reading this collection, will become aware of) all the secrets that Greece has about colors and various mixtures, all the knowledge of the Tuscans about enameling … all the subtleties that the Arab masters know about rolling, melting, and engraving metals, all the vases and jewels and carved ivory that Italy adorns with gold, all the information that France considers precious in preparing various kinds of expensive windows, and all the techniques that are praised and admired in the use of gold and silver and copper and iron, or in the delicate work on wood or stone.

Here, within one paragraph, we reach another aspect of the age of faith—we see that the men and women of this age, including monks and nuns who were in no way inferior to the monasteries, strove to satisfy the motive that existed in their minds for expressing their wishes; to enjoy proportion, harmony, and form; and to be eager to beautify every useful thing. The medieval environment, however full of religion it was, was above all the image of a society in which women and men were occupied with work. The first and most fundamental goal of the art of this community was to adorn their manner of work, their bodies, and their houses. Thousands of carpenters used knives, drills, chisels, gouges, and polishing materials in making and carving tables, chairs, benches, chests, cupboards, staircase posts, ceiling boards, beds, cabinets, dish shelves, statues, altar railings, choir stalls, and the like.

They carved an infinitely varied range of shapes and subjects in relief or intaglio, and often, in carving the shapes, their hands were subject to a mischievous and playful nature that recognized no boundary between blasphemy and sanctity. On the tips of sharp daggers one can encounter the shapes of miserly persons, gluttons, chatterboxes, and enormous misshapen birds and animals with human heads. In Venice, carpenters and woodcarvers sometimes made frames that were far more beautiful and expensive than the paintings inside them. In the twelfth century the Germans began to carve astonishing wooden figures that in the thirteenth century became a great art.

Metalworkers competed with carpenters and woodcarvers. Iron had many uses: as iron bars for windows, courtyards, and stoves; for making huge hinges in the form of all kinds of flowers and bushes on the bodies of very large doors (like the doors of the church in Paris); and for lattice windows in front of the choir stalls in cathedrals. These lattice windows “resembled iron in strength” and were like netting in delicacy. Iron or bronze or copper was melted in the furnace or hammered into the shape of vases, cups, cauldrons, chandeliers, censers, boxes, and exquisite lamps. Bronze plates covered the doors of many cathedrals. Armorers liked to adorn the swords and daggers, helmets, cuirasses, and shields they made with shapes and figures. The magnificent bronze chandelier that Frederick Barbarossa presented to Aachen Cathedral was clear evidence of the skill of German metalworkers; likewise the great bronze candelabrum of Gloucester (c. 1100), now preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, is a true witness to the skill of English artists. The interest of medieval people in introducing art into the simplest objects is well evident from the decorations of latches, locks, and keys of this age. Even the weathercocks they made to show the direction of the wind were decorated with the utmost care, even though a telescope would be necessary to see their details.

The metal and gem industries flourished amid general poverty. The Merovingian kings had gold plates, and Charlemagne gathered a treasury of goldsmiths’ work in the city of Aachen. The Church also followed the same method; perhaps the Church’s action is pardonable, since it claimed that if gold and silver adorn the tables of nobles and bankers, they must certainly do the same for the silver and gold vessels of the house of the King of Kings. The altars of some churches were of engraved silver, and others, like the altar of the church of Saint Ambrose in Milan and the cathedrals of Pistoia and Bal, were of engraved gold.

Gold was used for the place of the sacred bread of the Eucharist, for the vessel in which the bread was offered to the faithful as the pure body of Jesus for veneration, for the cup into which the sacred wine was poured, and for the box in which the objects and relics of the saints were kept. These vessels were often made far more exquisite than the most precious cups of modern competitions are made and engraved. In Spain, goldsmiths made very magnificent vessels for the sacred bread, and the handles with special ceremonies moved these vessels through the streets of the city. In Paris, Bonaw (1212), the famous goldsmith, used one thousand five hundred and forty-four ounces of silver and sixty ounces of gold in making a reliquary for the bones of Saint Genevieve. The importance of the goldsmiths of this age is evident from the fact that Theophilus devoted seventy-nine chapters of his book to such masters.

From the writings of this monk it appears that in the Middle Ages every goldsmith was expected to be in reality an artist like the Italian Cellini—that is, to melt the gold himself, carve and enamel the figures, set the jewels, and inlay them. In the thirteenth century the city of Paris had a powerful guild of goldsmiths and jewelers, and by that date Parisian jewel cutters had gained fame for preparing imitation jewels.

The small seals that the nobility used for stamping wax on letters and envelopes were designed and carved with the utmost care. Every archbishop had an official ring; and every man who, rightly or apparently, considered himself among the nobility had at least one ring on his finger. Those who satisfy human vanity were less likely to die of hunger.

Small medallions, usually made of precious material and engraved in relief, were very common among the wealthy. Henry III, king of England, had a large seal whose price was estimated at about two hundred pounds (forty thousand dollars). Baldwin II brought a much more desirable medal from Constantinople and placed it among the treasures of Sainte-Chapelle. Throughout the Middle Ages ivory was carved with great effort and used in making combs, boxes, door handles, drinking horns, statues, book covers, diptychs and triptychs for writing, bishops’ croziers, crucifixes, reliquaries, saintly shrines, and the like. An astonishing ivory carving, almost without any flaw, has survived from the thirteenth century that is now in the Louvre Museum in Paris and depicts the lowering of the body of Jesus Christ from the cross. Near the end of that century, romantic feelings and delicacy of temperament triumphed over religious feeling, and artists with the utmost delicacy engraved very sensitive scenes on the covers of mirrors and cosmetic boxes of ladies who could not always remain chaste in the same way.

Ivory was one of the primary materials usually used in the art of inlay. In inlay, several different kinds of wood might simply be used together, meaning that first a piece of wood was chiseled into the desired shape, then the other pieces were attached to the main piece with glue and pressure so that the desired design would result from the whole. One of the more mysterious industries of the Middle Ages was niello (derived from the Latin word nigellus meaning “black”) and consisted of placing a black paste of silver, copper, sulfur, and lead on a cut metal surface; when this layer hardened, the metal surface was filed until the silver mixed in it became shiny. It was on the basis of this technique that later in the fifteenth century Finiguerra perfected the method of engraving on copper.

With the return of the Crusaders from the East and the awakening of Europe from the sleep of the dark centuries, the craft of pottery, which was dedicated to industrial work, again became the ceramic arts. The enameling technique known as cloisonné came to the West from the Byzantine Empire in the eighth century. In the twelfth century, enameling reached a stage of its development that French artists called champlevé, and the finest example of it is a decorative plaque of the “Last Judgment.” In this style, usually the design or pattern that had been impressed on a copper plate was made in relief and all the hollow lines around it were filled with enamel paste. Limoges, a city in France famous since the third century for making enameled vessels, in the twelfth century became the greatest center of Byzantine cloisonné and champlevé style enameling in Western Europe. In the thirteenth century, Moorish potters in Christian Spain covered clay vessels with an opaque glaze or enamel of tin or enamel to serve as a base for the necessary decorations. In the fifth century, Italian merchants imported such ceramic vessels with merchant ships from Majorca; for this reason, these vessels became known among the Italians as maiolica.

The art of glassmaking, which had almost reached its peak in ancient Rome, returned to Venice from the Byzantine Empire and the land of Egypt. Even in 1024 we hear of the story of twelve Venetian glassmakers who, because of the variety of their goods, forced the government to place the glassmaking industry under its protection and stipulated that from then on the title “gentleman” would belong to every glassmaker. In 1278, the glassmakers were transferred, partly for the sake of their personal safety and partly to keep the secrets of the craft hidden, to a special quarter on the island of Murano. Strict laws were passed that prohibited the departure of Venetian glassmakers from the country and the disclosure of confidential information related to this craft. From that “one inch of land,” for four centuries the Venetians had complete supremacy over the glass art and industry of the Western world. Enameling and gilding of glass developed extraordinarily; Oliviero di Venezia made fabrics from glass; from the island of Murano, mosaics, beads, and glass beads, small medicine and drinking glasses, food vessels, even mirrors of glass like a flood were sent in all directions; it was in the thirteenth century that Venetian mirrors gradually replaced the mirrors that until then had been made of polished steel. France, England, and Germany also made glass in this age, but almost all the glass products of these countries were used industrially, except for one very important item, and that was colored glass for church windows.

III – Painting

1 – Mosaic

The pictorial art in the age of faith manifested itself in four major forms: mosaic, miniature, wall paintings, and stained glass.

The art of mosaic at this time was an old art, but in the course of the two thousand years that had passed since its invention, it had learned many subtleties and refinements. Mosaic workers, to prepare the gold background that was extremely popular with them, wrapped thin sheets of gold around glass cubes and covered the sheets with a thin layer of glass so that the gold would not tarnish in the air; to prevent dazzling reflection, they placed the golden cubes on a slightly uneven surface; since light fell on those cubes from different angles and gave almost all the mosaic a special shine and gleam.

It is very likely that it was Byzantine artists who in the eleventh century covered the eastern altar and the western wall of a cathedral in Torcello (an island near Venice) with the most magnificent mosaics in the history of the Middle Ages.

The mosaics of the church of San Marco in Venice, from the point of view of style and the individual style of the artists, consist of works by masters of seven different centuries. The doge of Venice, Domenico Selvo, entrusted the construction of the first internal mosaics of this church in the year 1071 to masters of the craft, who apparently were Byzantine artists. The art of mosaic in the year 1153 was still under Byzantine supervision, and it was from the date 1450 onward that Italian artists gained supremacy in decorating the mosaics of the church of San Marco. The mosaic of the Ascension of Christ belonging to the twelfth century on the body of the central dome of the church is the peak of the development of mosaic art, but there is another plaque mosaic similar to this and that is the image of Joseph on the body of the narthex dome of this church. The marble mosaic of the corridors after seven hundred years of the passage of passers-by still remains.

In another corner of southern Italian soil, Greek masters and Saracens joined hands and created the masterpiece of mosaic work of the kingdom of Sicily in the Norman period; examples of the art of these masters can be seen in the Cappella Palatina and the Martorana in the city of Palermo, the monastery of Monreale, and the cathedral of Cefalù (1148).

The papal wars with the opponents of the thirteenth century probably prevented the progress of art in Rome; nevertheless, in this same period magnificent mosaics were being made for the churches of Santa Maria Maggiore, Santa Maria in Trastevere, San Giovanni in Laterano (Lateran), and the church of San Paolo fuori le Mura. One of the Italian artists, Andrea Tafi, designed a mosaic for the baptistery of Florence, but the work of this master did not reach the level of the work of Greek artists in Venice or Sicily. The monastery that was built under the supervision of Suger in Saint-Denis (1150) had a very magnificent mosaic floor, part of which is preserved in the Cluny Museum. Also the corridor of the Westminster monastery in London (c. 1268) is a very pleasing combination of mosaic chiaroscuro. But the art of mosaic never flourished north of the Alps, and the art of making stained glass overshadowed it; even in Italy itself, with the appearance of skilled painters like Duccio, Cimabue, and Giotto, wall paintings also diminished the prestige and importance that mosaic had.

2 – Miniature

Illuminating manuscripts with miniature images and decorating with gold and silver leaf and colored inks remained a desirable art that, since it was compatible with the piety and calm of the life of monastery dwellers, monks accepted it with open arms.

Miniature making, like many arts and activities of the Middle Ages in Western Europe, reached its peak in the thirteenth century, so that from that date onward nothing was ever made again that could equal the miniatures in delicacy and innovation, or in terms of abundance. The stiff figures and garments and the garish green and red colors of the eleventh century gradually disappeared, and shapes with more graceful and delicate colors with blue or gold backgrounds took their place. The Virgin Mary, even while dominating the Church, also conquered the world of miniature.

In the “Dark Ages” many books were destroyed, and what remained was twice as precious, because in reality it had the value of a thin thread that saved human civilization from complete destruction. Psalters, the four Gospels, rules and instructions for religious rites, prayer books, and other collections containing prayers and religious duties were all cherished like tools for divine revelations. Any effort to adorn and decorate them was considered small and insignificant. An artist might spend at least a whole day writing the first letter of a name, or a week writing the title of a book. A monk from the monastery of Saint Gall, named Hartker, in the year 986, perhaps thinking that when the century ended the world would come to an end, vowed that he would not leave the four walls of his small cell for the last four years of the world’s life; in practice he did not step out of that corner of seclusion until fifteen years later when he died, and it was there that by drawing images and decorations he illuminated the famous book of the Saint Gall antiphonary.

In this particular period, perspective and imitation of nature did not reach the precision, delicacy, and splendor of the paintings of the Carolingian age. The miniaturist or illuminator sought depth and splendor of color; he wanted the image to be rich and alive in terms of details rather than creating the illusion of three-dimensional space for the viewer. Often the subjects that the miniaturist drew were taken from the Holy Scripture or the Apocryphal Gospels, or based on traditions about the saints; but sometimes the image of a plant or animal seemed necessary, and in that case the artist took pleasure in making the image of real or imaginary plants and animals. Even in the case of religious books, as much as the ecclesiastical regulations in Eastern Europe were explicit and specific for choosing the subject and the way of developing it, in Western Europe there was no such thing; and the painter was allowed, within the four walls of his small room, to freely let his imagination and humor run wild.

Animals with human heads, human bodies with animal heads, a monkey in the shape of a monk, a monkey that with the calmness and dignity of a doctor is examining a glass full of a urine flask, a musician who is entertaining by rubbing two pieces of a donkey’s jawbone—these were all images that adorned a Book of Hours of the Virgin Mary. In other manuscripts, whether sacred books or non-religious collections, the painters’ pens brought to life scenes of hunting, military festivals, or battle; a thirteenth-century psalter had many images, one of which showed the interior scene of an Italian money changer. The world of unbelief that had freed itself from the horror of its own eternity now invaded the sacred realm of religion.

The monasteries of England prospered in this art that was accompanied by calm. The East Anglian school of illumination prepared famous psalters; one of these psalters is in the Brussels Museum, another copy (Ormesby) is in Oxford, and a third (Saint Omer) is in the British Museum in London. But the finest illuminated manuscripts of this age were prepared in the country of France. The psalters that were illustrated for Louis IX gave rise to a new style that from then on, in imitation of it, every miniature became a concentrated composition on one page, with scenes divided into a series of medallions around each other, recounting various scenes and subjects and apparently an imitation of the colored and painted glass industry that was used in churches. The Low Countries shared in this movement. The monks of Liège and Ghent incorporated some of the same passionate feeling and the same harmonious beauty that was seen in the statues of the cathedrals of Amiens and Reims into their miniatures. Spain alone produced the greatest masterpiece of thirteenth-century illumination in a book containing spiritual hymns addressed to the Virgin Mary—known as the Psalter of King Alfonso X (c. 1280). The one thousand two hundred and twenty-six miniature pieces of this book are evidence of the sincere and devoted effort that could be devoted to the illumination of medieval manuscripts. Naturally, in the preparation of such books both calligraphy and illustration were used. Sometimes only one artist was responsible for copying or composing and writing the text and illuminating it. In the case of several manuscripts, one sometimes wonders whether the illumination is more beautiful or the text of the book. It is true that the invention of printing brought many advantages, but from an artistic point of view humanity paid a heavy price for printing.

3 – Wall Paintings

It is difficult to say to what extent the miniatures influenced wall paintings, very tall images, statues, paintings on ceramic vessels, relief sculptures, and stained glass in terms of subject and design, and to what extent these arts influenced the art of illumination.

From the point of view of subject and style, there was a kind of free give-and-take among these arts, meaning that each constantly influenced the other types, and reciprocal influences arose between them; sometimes the artist was engaged in all these arts at the same time. When we clearly separate an art from other arts, or arts in general from the life of their own age, in reality we are being unfair to both art and the artist. Reality is always more complete than our history, and the historian, naturally for the ease of his own work, separates the elements of civilization whose parts flow like a single connected river. Our effort should be not to separate the artist from the elements of his cultural life—that nourished and taught him, granted him artistic traditions and subjects, praised or tormented him, sucked his essence, buried him in the soil, and often forgot his name.

The Middle Ages, like every age of faith, rejected individualism as an insolent wickedness and commanded people, even the geniuses of the age, to make their will and independence obedient to the affairs and daily flow of their age. The Church, the government, society, and the guild were enduring realities; the real artists were these, and individuals were like the agents of society. When a great church was founded and completed, the spirit and body of that building was like the spirits and bodies of all the individuals who had devoted themselves to its design, construction, and decoration and had endured great hardship. For this reason, history has completely erased the names of all the individuals who painted on the walls of medieval buildings before the thirteenth century, and war, revolution, and the effect of time have almost completely destroyed their works. Should this be considered the result of the style of the painters’ work? For preparing wall paintings, the artists of this age used the same ancient methods—that is, they either painted on walls that had just been plastered, or they painted on dry walls with colors that had acquired adhesive properties with special binding materials. The purpose of both methods was the durability and stability of the color on the plaster, with the difference that in one it was by penetration and in the other by adhesion. Nevertheless, over time the colors peeled and fell off, so that today almost nothing remains of the paintings before the fourteenth century. Theophilus (1190) described the method of preparing oil colors in his book, but this technique was not used until the Renaissance period.

Apparently the ancient Roman painting traditions were lost as a result of the invasions of the barbarian tribes and the centuries of wretchedness that followed. When wall painting was revived among Italian artists, this time their source of inspiration was the styles prevalent in the Byzantine Empire, that is, the half-Greek and half-Eastern style, not the styles of the ancient ages. In the early thirteenth century we encounter a number of Greek painters working in Italy, and among them were Theophanes in Venice, Apollonius in Florence, Melormus in Siena, and the like. The long paintings that were made on walls and frames in this particular period of Italian art history and that are signed are mostly the work of Greek painters. These individuals brought with them to Italy styles and subjects that were peculiar to the Byzantine world, including symbolic shapes and mysterious religious motifs, none of which claimed the slightest resemblance to natural scenes and states.

Gradually, as wealth and taste increased among the people of thirteenth-century Italy and greater rewards were given to artists and better talents appeared for acquiring money and fame, Italian painters—Pisan in Pisa, Lapo in Pistoia, Guido in Siena, Pietro Cavallini in Assisi and Rome—gradually abandoned that vague and mysterious Byzantine style and injected the colors and passionate feelings of Italy into their painting style. It was in the church of San Domenico in Siena that Guido’s pen drew a painting of the Virgin Mary (1271) whose “innocent and graceful face” had absolutely no connection with the emaciated and lifeless shapes of the Byzantine paintings of that age. One can almost say that the Italian Renaissance began with this image.

One generation later, Duccio di Buoninsegna, with his famous painting, the Majesty of the Virgin Mary, raised art to a point where the people of the city of Siena fell into a frenzy of beauty-worship. The fortunate people of the city of Siena decided that an image of Mary, the mother of their feudal lord, that is, the Mother of God, must be drawn that was very magnificent and worthy, and for this important task they summoned the greatest artists of the age from wherever they might be. When the lot fell to one of their own fellow citizens, Duccio, they rejoiced at this matter; they promised him gold, prepared food and opportunity for him, and watched every stage of his work with the utmost care. After three years his painting was completed (1311), and Duccio added this effective sentence as his signature at the foot of the painting: “O holy Mother of God, grant peace to Siena and life to Duccio who portrayed you in this way.” Then groups composed of bishops, priests, monks, government officials, and half the people of the city followed that image (which was 25.4 meters long and 15.2 meters wide), amid the sound of bells and trumpet blasts, heading for the cathedral. This work of Duccio was still half-Byzantine in style, because it showed more religious feelings than realistic depiction. The nose of the Virgin Mary seemed excessively long and straight, and her eyes seemed excessively melancholic, but the figures of those around her had splendor and dignity, and the scenes from the life of Mary and Jesus that were depicted on the platform of the altar of the church and around its ceiling had unparalleled delicacy and radiance. On the whole, Duccio’s painting was the greatest work that appeared before Giotto.

Meanwhile, in Florence, Giovanni Cimabue founded a series of painters who from then on ruled the world of Italian art for nearly three centuries. Giovanni, who was born into an aristocratic family, undoubtedly caused the displeasure of his parents and relatives by abandoning the study of law and pursuing painting. He was an artist of noble character who, whenever he or anyone else saw the slightest flaw in his work, might immediately throw away his work. Cimabue, while like Duccio benefiting from the Italian and Byzantine school, with all his nobility and strength brought about a revolution in the world of painting, and the abandonment of the Byzantine style in his art was far more evident than in the art of Duccio who was a more worthy painter; in this way, Cimabue’s action opened a new path for progress in painting. He made those inflexible lines of his predecessors soft and curved, gave spirit to the body, gave color and warmth to the body, granted a human tenderness to gods and saints; and by using red, pink, and blue colors for the clothes, he gave life and radiance to his paintings that had been unprecedented in medieval Italy before him.

Nevertheless, all these merits that we have mentioned are from the opinions of Cimabue’s contemporaries. Numerous images are attributed to him, but it is difficult to consider any of them without doubt and hesitation as the work of his own pen; for example, the Virgin and Child with Angels, which was painted on plaster for the Rucellai Chapel in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, is most likely the work of Duccio and not Cimabue. According to a doubtful tradition that is probably correct, the image of the Virgin Mary and Child among four angels, which was painted on plaster in the lower church of Saint Francis in Assisi, is attributed to Cimabue. This enormous fresco, which is usually dated to 1296 and was restored in the nineteenth century, is the first surviving masterpiece in Italian painting. The figure of Saint Francis is extremely realistic—we see a man who has become skin and bone from the sight of Christ and the fear of meeting him.

The four angels are the prelude to that unity that in the Renaissance arose between religious subjects and feminine beauty.

Cimabue was appointed in the last years of his life to the position of chief master of mosaic art in the cathedral of Pisa; and it is famous that there, for the altar of the church, he showed a mosaic of Jesus in his special glory among the Virgin Mary and Saint John. Vasari recounts a delightful story about Cimabue: one day he saw a ten-year-old shepherd boy named Giotto di Bondone who with a piece of charcoal was drawing the image of a lamb on a board. Cimabue accepted him as a pupil and took him with him to Florence. There is no doubt that Giotto di Bondone painted in Cimabue’s workshop and after his death resided in the master’s house, and in this way the greatest series of painters in the history of art began.

4 – Stained Glass

Italy was one century ahead in wall painting and mosaic, and one century behind in the technique of architecture and stained glass art compared to Northern Europe. Stained glass art was not unprecedented in ancient times, but it existed only in the form of glass mosaic. Gregory of Tours filled the windows of the church of Saint Martin with glass of “various colors”; and in the same century Paul the Silentiary, the Greek poet contemporary with Justinian, praised the splendor and majesty of the sunlight that shone into the interior of the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople from the colored windows. As far as we know, in these cases no attempt had been made to create images by placing pieces of colored glass. But around the year 980, Adalbero, archbishop of Reims, adorned his cathedral with windows whose glass “contained historical events.” In the year 1052, in the book of the acts of Saint Benignus a description is given of “a very old stained window” that was in a church located in Dijon and depicted Saint Paschasius. This was one of the oldest cases in which a historical person or event had been depicted on glass; but, apparently, in this case the glass was painted by hand and the images were not inside the glass itself. When Gothic architecture reduced the pressure on the walls and created space for larger windows, the entry of more light into the interior of the church itself promoted and in fact caused the creation of stained glass. In this way, every kind of motive for finding a way to make glass with more stable colors was provided.

The use of color in the glass itself was perhaps a derivative of the art of glass enameling. Theophilus described this new technique in 1190. A “sample” or painted design was placed on a table, it was divided into small pieces, and on each of them a mark was placed for a desired color. Then pieces of glass, whose length or width rarely exceeded 25 millimeters, were cut so that they exactly fit the multiple sections of the painted design. Then each piece of glass was colored with a mixture of ground glass and various metal oxides—for example, cobalt for blue color, copper for red or green, and manganese for purple and so on. Then the colored glass was placed in the furnace so that the enameled oxides would fuse to the glass. When the melted pieces of glass cooled, they were placed on the original sample and joined together with strips of lead. When the human eye looked at this glass mosaic on the window, it did not feel the lead strips at all, but saw a single colored surface. The artist was interested above all in color, and his purpose was to blend different colorful shades; he had no perspective in mind and was not seeking to depict the realities of the outside world; he gave the strangest colors to objects and beings in the images on glass, for example turning camels green and lions pink, and making the faces of knights blue. But his ultimate purpose was achieved, meaning that he created a durable and radiant image and, by means of this art of his, made the light that shone into the church colorful and pleasing, and a means of instruction and a cause of veneration for the believer.

The windows—even those large round windows that have floral decorations—were often divided into frames, decorative moldings, circles, lozenges, or square pieces so that on one window multiple scenes from the description of the life of one person or a particular subject could be described. The prophets of the Old Testament were placed opposite their counterparts in the New Testament, or in front of the fulfillment of the prophecies they had made; with depictions of events from the Apocryphal Gospels, whose delightful stories were extremely dear to medieval people, they exaggerated the work on the New Testament. Events from the lives of the saints were depicted on the windows far more than the adventures mentioned in the Holy Scripture. Such were the adventures of Saint Eustace on the windows of Chartres Cathedral, and also in Sens, Auxerre, Le Mans, and Tours. Events that had no connection with religious subjects and characters were less often depicted on stained glass.

Half a century after the oldest period of the flourishing of stained glass art in French soil, this technique reached its peak in Chartres. The windows of this city’s cathedral served as a model for the artists who worked on the decoration of the cathedrals of Sens, Laon, Bourges, and Rouen. From there the art came to England and became a source of inspiration for the stained glass of Canterbury and Lincoln. In the treaty signed between the two countries of France and England, it was explicitly mentioned that one of Louis VII’s painters who specialized in making stained glass should be allowed to enter England. In the thirteenth century the components of the large window frame became larger and color lost some of the penetrating delicacy and refinement that existed in the early works of this craft. Near the end of this century, a new style became popular that consisted of drawing decorative designs with very thin lines in red or blue on a uniform background that was usually gray. This style replaced the novel colorful sets that were popular in the great cathedrals of the West.

The mullions that divided the window into several sections, with far more complex designs than before, played a more important role in the image. Although these Gothic tracery decorations themselves became a delightful art, the skill of the masters who made the colored glass declined. The splendor of stained glass art had begun with the Gothic architectural style in building cathedrals, and when the sun of Gothic greatness declined, the passion for color also tended toward decline.

IV – Sculpture

Most Roman statues were looted by the victorious barbarian tribes, or destroyed, or, as shameful relics of the pagan era, were eliminated by newborn Christianity; a few of those treasures, especially in France, remained and served as a stimulus to the imagination of the tamed barbarians and the flourishing Christian civilization. In this branch of art, like other types, the Eastern Roman Empire preserved the ancient skills and models from the ravages of time, added mysticism and a series of inventions of Asian peoples to it, and in this way sowed seeds again in the Western land that originally sprang from Roman civilization. After the Greek princess Theophano became the wife of Otto II (972), Greek sculptors went to Germany and some turned to Venice, Ravenna, Rome, Naples, Sicily, and perhaps Barcelona and Marseille.

The sculptors of the age of Frederick II most probably learned the secrets and subtleties of their craft from such men and from the Muslim artists of the two Sicilies. When barbarism became rich, it gained the ability to find pleasure in beauty, and when the Church became rich, it made sculpture, like other types of art, a tool for consolidating and promoting its faith and rites. It was exactly in this way that the great arts developed in Egypt and Asia, and in Greece and Rome. Great art is always born from a victorious faith.

Sculpture, like wall painting, mosaic, and stained glass, was not recognized as an independent and separate art, but from the beginning it was considered a facet of complete art for which there was no name in any language—in other words, this part of the fine arts was considered a means of decorating worship. The duty of the sculptor was first of all to adorn the house of God with statues and relief sculptures; secondly, to make images or statues that would lead people in the home to follow the commands of religion; and after that, if there was opportunity and means, he could carve statues of non-clerical persons or adorn objects and places that had no connection with religion. For the statues that were a means of decorating the church itself, materials that had durability and permanence were used, such as stone, various types of marble, and bronze. But the Church preferred wood for small religious statues, because Christians could carry these kinds of figures without hardship and fatigue during processions, in memory of a religious event, or in religious gatherings. Like the religious art of ancient ages, in this period too the statues were colored, and often in the figure that the artist carved, adherence to objective realities was more evident than the tendency to embody the ideal. The principle was that the believer should feel the presence of the saint through the statue. This purpose was so well fulfilled that Christian individuals, like the followers of more ancient religions, also expected miracles from the statues, and if they heard that, for example, the arm of the marble statue of Christ had been raised as a sign of blessing, or that milk had flowed from the breast of the wooden figure of the Virgin Mary, it was less likely that they would become suspicious.

Any study of medieval sculpture must begin with repentance and heartbreak. A vast part of the statues of this period in England was destroyed by Puritan iconoclasts, and sometimes by order of Parliament, and in France as a result of the “artistic terror of the Great Revolution.” In England, the reason for the opposition of these new iconoclasts was that they said Christian holy places should not be decorated with statues from the pagan period. In France, the goal of the opponents was the collections of statues and tombs of the detested aristocratic class. Throughout these countries we encounter statues without heads, with broken noses, shattered stone sarcophagi, and ruined and collapsed reliefs, capitals, and inscriptions; the hatred that people had stored in their hearts against the clergy or the tyranny of the feudal nobility had broken the dam and finally burst forth as a destructive satanic flood. Time and the natural elements—like its obedient slaves—seemingly conspired with the intention of destroying such works, secretly erasing the designs, melting the stones, scraping the inscriptions, and beginning a weaponless and silent war against the artistic manifestations of man that would never end. And the children of Adam themselves, in thousands of kinds of battles and wars, in competition with one another, engaged in destruction and ruin to prevail over one another. We know the sculpture of the Middle Ages only from fragments of statues and ruined and destroyed reliefs and carvings.

If we attempt to judge by looking at scattered samples of medieval statues in various museums of the world, we add misunderstanding to injustice. These kinds of statues were not made to be shown individually. Each of them was part of a religious subject and a detail of a whole in architecture. What today may seem ugly and unseemly in isolation was probably, in its proper place, in conjunction with other stone components, skillfully used. The statue in the cathedral was only one of the constituent elements of the artistic composition. It was installed in its specific place, and naturally, in obedience to the long vertical lines of the church building, the statue was made taller than usual: the legs were shown joined together, and the two forearms were shown joined to the body, and sometimes the figure of a saint was made thin and stretched so much that it covered the entire length of each of the columns on the sides of the entrance. Sometimes it happened that the architect used a statue in horizontal decoration. In that case the figures he placed above the door might be made plump and flat—as we observe above the entrance of Chartres Cathedral—or he might place a man or animal in a compressed form above a column, just as the Greek architects gathered a Greek deity in the adornment of a centaur. Gothic sculpture, which had appeared for the decoration of architecture, became so intertwined with architecture that its like had never been seen before.

This obedience of the statues and relief decorations to the purpose and lines of architecture, especially became one of the characteristics of the art of the twelfth century. The thirteenth century witnessed a violent rebellion on the part of the sculptor; he now boldly turned from the style of formalism to realism and moved from the stage of sanctity to the stage of humor, satire, and love of worldly life.

The statues that came from the hands of artists in the twelfth century and adorned Chartres Cathedral are stiff and melancholy figures, whereas the statues of the masters of the thirteenth century in Reims Cathedral all seem as if they were depicted on stone by the sculptor while they were carelessly engaged in their work and warmly conversing. Each of these figures has its own characteristics and peculiarities. Beauty and dignity radiate from their appearances and states.

Many of the stone figures of the two cathedrals of Chartres and Reims resemble long-bearded peasants that one can still encounter in the villages of France. The shepherd who warms himself by the fire above the western door of Amiens Cathedral is in no way different from the shepherd of the fields of modern Gascony or Normandy. No statue in the history of art can be found that can equal in sincerity and originality the whimsical reliefs of the Gothic cathedrals. In a small decorative corner inside Reims Cathedral that is divided into four petals or pieces, we encounter these various shapes: a philosopher with the head of a pig who is thinking; a doctor who is half human and half goose and is examining a small glass urine flask; a music master, who is half man and half rooster, giving an organ lesson to a being that is human from head to waist and horse from waist to foot; and finally a man who by the power of a magician’s magic has been turned into a dog while he still has his boots on. In Chartres, Amiens, and Reims, small comical figures crouch in fear under the statues. There was a capital in Strasbourg Cathedral that was later reformed and made more respectable. This relief showed the funeral ceremony of Reynard the Fox, in such a way that a boar and a goat carried his coffin, a wolf held a cross, a rabbit with a torch showed the way to the others, and a bear sprinkled holy water, a deer read the Mass, and a donkey, from a book that was placed on a cat’s head, was busy reciting the special prayers for burial. In the great church of Bourley, a fox wearing a monk’s hood is preaching from a pulpit to a congregation of pious geese.

The cathedrals were each a treasury of many things, including stone reliefs of all kinds of birds and animals that man is aware of, and the image of many animals that existed only in the imagination of medieval people. On the body of the towers of Laon Cathedral the image of sixteen buffalo heads can be seen; it is said that the reason for drawing the image of these huge animals was that for several years, with great patience, they carried large pieces of stone from the quarries to the top of the hill, which was the location of the construction of the church. There is another delightful legend about the building of this church to this effect that one day a bull, while pulling a load toward the top of the hill, fell from exhaustion. The load that the bull was pulling had been placed in a dangerously precarious position on the edge of the precipice when suddenly a miraculous bull appeared, put the harness of the previous bull around its neck, pulled the cart up to the top of the hill, and then disappeared again in a miraculous way. We smile at hearing such legends and again turn to our own romantic and criminal stories.

The cathedrals also found a place for a garden of plants. Beside the image of the Virgin Mary, angels, and saints, what decoration could be better for the house of God than the plants, fruits, and flowers of the villages of England, France, or Germany? In the Romanesque architectural style (800–1200) the main elements of the Roman decorative design, which consisted of acanthus leaves and vine leaves, remained. In the Gothic style these formal and simple decorative elements turned into a wonderful harvest of native plants that were carved everywhere in relief—from bases and capitals, the corners between arches, arches, niches, columns, pulpits, choir stalls, and the pews of the church nave. These shapes cannot in any way be considered ordinary; these are often various individual shapes that in every place, by the command of the interest and taste of the people, have taken on a unique form and taken on new life. Sometimes these shapes, as another play of Gothic imaginative power, have the value of composite plants, but again, thanks to the feeling of nature, they are fresh and new. Trees, branches, twigs, leaves, blossoms, flowers, fruits, ferns, buttercups, plantains, watercress, comfrey, rose bushes, strawberries, brambles and marigolds, parsley and chicory, cabbage and celery—all these are there and flow from the inexhaustible and blessed garden of the church.

The intoxication of the wine of spring was in the head of the sculptor and his chisel led him into the heart of hard stone. Not only spring but all the seasons of the year can be seen in these carvings. All the hardship and consolation of the peasant at the time of sowing seed, harvesting the crop, and throwing grapes into the press are depicted on these inscriptions, and in the entire history of sculpture no relief can be found that equals in delicacy the capitals and carvings of Reims Cathedral.

But this world of plants and flowers and birds and animals was a derivative of medieval sculpture; the main subject was the life and death of man. In Chartres, Laon, Lyon, Auxerre, and Bourges some of the early reliefs present the story of creation. In Laon, the Lord counts on his fingers the days he has at his disposal for performing his great task, and in the subsequent scenes we observe him, exhausted from enduring his heavenly hardships, leaning on his staff, sitting on the ground to rest, and sleeping. This is a god whose essence is easy for every peasant to understand. Other reliefs and carvings show the different months of the year, each with its specific work and joy. Some others recount the occupations and backgrounds of man, for example depicting farmers in the field or at the press; we see some horses and bulls plowing the land with the plow or pulling a cart; some show the scene of shearing wool or milking; and finally we encounter figures of a group of millers, porters, merchants, artists, researchers, and even one or two philosophers. The sculptor wanted, by presenting examples, to direct the viewer’s mind toward abstractions: in these inscriptions, Donatus is cited as an example of grammar, the purpose of Cicero is eloquence, Aristotle recounts logic, and Ptolemy is the representative of astronomy. Philosophy is the form of a woman whose head is among the clouds, in her right hand is a book, and in her left hand is a scepter; her name is the queen of the sciences. The shapes that have come out two by two from under the sculptor’s chisel depict faith and idolatry, hope and despair, generosity and greed, chastity and debauchery, peace and quarrel. The reliefs around a door in Laon Cathedral recount a battle between the virtues and vices of man. On the western façade in front of the building of Notre-Dame de Paris we observe the image of a beautiful woman whose eyes are covered with a cloth; this woman is the representative and symbol of the Jewish synagogue, while opposite we notice the statue of a woman even far more beautiful than the first, who has a royal mantle on her shoulders and looks with an commanding state; and that statue is the bride of Christ, that is, the Church of Christ. Jesus himself sometimes appears kind and sometimes terrifying; in one place Mary has lowered him from the cross; in another place he has raised his head from his tomb, and near him is a lion that by breathing into the mouths of its cubs gives them life; and again in another place he severely calls the dead and the living to account. Everywhere in sculpture and in the paintings of the churches an attempt has been made to depict the Day of Judgment well. This was an environment that never allowed man to forget the day of reckoning. Here too a person could make only one intercessor for the forgiveness of his sins. In this way, in the art of sculpture, like the prayers of the churches, the Virgin Mary, a mother who was herself an ocean of compassion and mercy, found the most exalted position. This was an intercessor who did not allow her son to accept word for word those terrifying words that had reached the ears of the people of this age—that is, many are called, and only a few are chosen and among the close ones of the divine court.

In this Gothic sculpture, we notice a deep feeling, multiple shapes and the force of life, a kind of empathy with all plants and animals, a kind of tenderness and gentleness and beauty; we confess to the miracle of the sculptor’s art, because what we see on the stone recounts the spirit and not the body; it is a miracle that sits in the heart and satisfies us, especially when the physical superiority of the Greek statues (perhaps because of our own old age) has somewhat lost its usual attraction and pull. The robust gods of the Parthenon reliefs, in comparison with the living figures of the age of medieval faith, have the value of a handful of cold and dead shapes. From the point of view of technical rules and principles, Gothic sculpture is imperfect; in this style nothing can be found that can equal in completeness and perfection the reliefs and carvings of the Parthenon or the handsome athletes and lustful goddesses of Praxiteles, or even the matrons and senators of the Altar of Peace in Rome, and there is no doubt that that good-looking youthful warrior and those soft-tempered moon-faced ones were once the manifestation of the joy of healthy life and love. But our religious and native prejudices, which have always forgotten the horrors of religion and hung its beauty on the ear, repeatedly direct our minds to those magnificent cathedrals; in the scale of our judgment, the figures that come from the statue of the beloved Lord in Amiens, the smiling angel in Reims, and the Virgin Mary in Chartres outweigh the others.

As soon as the skill of the medieval sculptor increased, he nurtured in his heart the desire to free his art from the bonds of architecture and create works that would satisfy the ever-increasing worldly desires of kings, archbishops, nobles, and the bourgeoisie. In thirteenth-century England the beautiful marbles that were extracted in the town of Purbeck, located in Dorsetshire, gained great fame and credit for ready-made finials and capitals, and for carving the bent figures that adorned the tombs of wealthy deceased. Around the year 1292 William Torel, one of the goldsmiths of London, cast statues of Henry III and his bride Eleanor of Castile for their tombs in Westminster Abbey—these two statues are among the finest bronze works of that age. In this particular period, noteworthy schools for sculpture were established in Liège, Hildesheim, and Naumburg; and around the year 1240, one of the unknown masters of the age carved simple and powerful figures of Heinrich, nicknamed the Lion, and his lioness from stone for Brunswick Cathedral, on whose body Heinrich had a very magnificent garment. In terms of quality, the sculpture of the Romanesque style (twelfth century) and Gothic style (thirteenth century) of France was the leader and model of Europe, but most of these kinds of works formed an essential part of the churches of that country, and the best way to study them is to look at these kinds of churches.

Sculpture in Italy, like France, was not to this degree closely connected with architecture, society, and the guild. There in the course of the thirteenth century we gradually encounter artists one by one whose personality rules their works and makes their names enduring. Nicola Pisano was an artist who absorbed various influences into himself and from their totality created a unique combination. Pisano was born around the year 1225 in Apulia and benefited from the stimulating environment that the government of Frederick II had created; it was here that he apparently learned what had remained and been recovered from ancient art. After he moved to the city of Pisa and inherited the Romanesque tradition, the fame of the Gothic style, which at this time had reached its peak of power in France, reached his ears. When he was carving a pulpit for the baptistery of Pisa Cathedral, he took one of the Roman sarcophagi of the age of Hadrian as a model for his work. Pisano was extremely influenced by the strong yet beautiful lines of the ancient figures. Although his pulpit was adorned with arches of both the Romanesque and Gothic styles, most of the statues on it had Roman clothing and facial features; the shape of the garments of Mary, in the frame dedicated to the offering, was an imitation of Roman matrons; in one corner, a naked athlete revealed the spirit of ancient Greece. The dignitaries of the city of Siena, who were in doubt from seeing this masterpiece, in the year 1265 hired Nicola, his son Giovanni, and his pupil Arnolfo di Cambio to carve a pulpit far more delicate than this for Siena Cathedral. Success accompanied these three artists in this work, and the pulpit they carved from white marble was placed on columns whose tops, in the Gothic style, ended in flowers and herbs, and on the body of the pulpit the same subjects that had previously appeared in the carvings of the Pisa pulpit were repeated, with a confused inscription that recounted the crucifixion of Christ. Here the influence of Gothic triumphed over the style of ancient ages, but in the statues of the women that adorned the columns the same ancient spirit was manifested in the unadulterated embodiment of healthy and lively beings. Later Nicola, as if he wanted to cross out his classical feelings and inclinations, on the stone tomb of an ascetic hermit like Saint Dominic in the city of Bologna, in the style of the pagan age, carved strong male figures full of the joy of life. In the year 1271, he again joined his son Giovanni and his pupil Arnolfo to together carve a marble fountain that to this day still remains in the middle of the public square of the city of Perugia. Seven years after this event, Pisano, who was still relatively young, died, but in this short period of his life he had paved the way for Donatello and the revival of classical sculpture in the Renaissance movement.

His son Giovanni Pisano equaled him in influence, but surpassed his father in technical skill. In the year 1271, the city of Pisa hired Giovanni to build a cemetery worthy of the men who in that age were busy dividing the western Mediterranean with Genoa. For this cemetery, which became famous as the Camposanto (sacred field), pure soil was brought from Mount Golgotha, and Giovanni surrounded the lawn with gates and beautiful arches that were a mixture of the Romanesque and Gothic styles in the shape of a rectangle. He gathered masterpieces of carving for the decoration of the covered corridors of this place, and the sacred field remained as a souvenir of Giovanni Pisano until the Second World War turned half of its arches into a forgotten ruin. After the fighters of the city of Pisa were defeated by the warriors of Genoa (1284), they no longer had the means to hire Giovanni for this work. For this reason he headed for Siena and there helped in the design and construction of the statues and carvings of the façade of the cathedral of the city. In 1290, he again paid for carving some of the reliefs for the strange façade of the cathedral of Orvieto. From there Giovanni again turned north and went to Pistoia and for the church of Sant’Andrea in that city carved a pulpit from stone that, although it did not reach the level of his father’s pulpit in Pisa in terms of solidity, was far superior to it in terms of naturalness and delicacy. This pulpit is in fact the most beautiful product of Gothic sculptural art in Italy.

The third individual in this circle, Arnolfo di Cambio, because of the favor of patrons like the popes, several of whom were originally French, continued to follow the Gothic style. He participated in the work of carving the façade of the church in Orvieto and made a beautiful sarcophagus for Cardinal de Braye. In 1296, with the same skill that was peculiar to the masters of the Renaissance, he began the design and execution of the decorations of the three buildings that are considered the three glories of Florence and are in order: the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, the church of Santa Croce, and the Palazzo Vecchio.

With the mention of the name and stone carvings of Arnolfo, it is now time to turn from sculpture to architecture. Now all the branches of art had taken on life and health again. The ancient skills had not only been revived, but with a bold vigor they caused the creation of new techniques and daring methods. The various arts came together in the existence of one artist and manifested themselves in that particular branch in such a way that such unity had no precedent until that age and has never been seen since. Everything was ready for the period of the perfection of medieval art to combine all these parts in complete perfection and use them, and to place its name on a style and an age.