07

THE SHEPHERD BOY PAINTER

P ROBABLY you have never seen a great painting. Few people have, unless they have been abroad or have visited some of the largest art galleries in this country. All they have seen are small pictures of such paintings. That is about the same as seeing a picture post card of Niagara Falls instead of seeing the Falls themselves. We know what the Falls look like, so we know what some of the great pictures look like, but that’s not the same as seeing the real thing. So you have to use your imagination to understand what a great picture in color is like,when all you can see is a small black and white copy of it.

The father of Greek painting, you may remember, was a man named Polygnotus. About two thousand years later, there lived a man who is called the father of Italian painting, His name is Cimabue — pronounced Chee-ma-boo’ay. Cimabue lived in Florence, which means the City of Flowers. It is in the central part of Italy. There are very few of his paintings in existence, and we are not sure that certain pictures are really his. And you may not see from the paintings we have why he was supposed to be such a great painter.

If Cimabue were painting now, probably he would not be considered great, but in his time he was thought very great,because he was so much better than any other painter had been for a thousand years before him. When he had finished painting a large picture of the Virgin Mary, it is said the people of Florence thought it so beautiful they formed a procession and, with trumpets sounding and banners flying,carried the picture through the streets from his house to the church where it was placed.

Another picture that Cimabue painted is of a monk, Saint Francis Monks were holy men who spent their whole time in trying to be good and in doing good. Saint Francis started a society of monks called after him, Franciscans. Those who joined the society promised to try to live as Christ had lived.They could own nothing, they could have no money. They could not marry. They spent all their time in doing good. They worked to earn their daily bread and lodging. They shaved the top of their heads, leaving a circular place bare like a bald spot,and kept it shaved so that every one would know they were monks. This shaved circle was called a tonsure. They wore a rough brown robe with a hood, and they held the robe together with a coarse rope tied round the waist.

Before you turn this page, I must warn you not to expect a pretty picture. It isn’t that. Very likely you will exclaim, “What an ugly old man!” The circle round Saint Francis’s head is called a halo. A halo was painted round the heads of saints to show that they were holy persons. The spots on this saint’s hands are not an accident. It is said that Saint Francis wanted so to be like Christ that an angel came to him and made on his hands and feet nail holes like those that Christ had received on the cross. These nail marks are called stigmata.

But it is not for what he did himself that Cimabue is famous. He is known chiefly as the teacher of some one who became a much greater artist. Cimabue was walking one day in the country, not far from Florence, when he came upon a shepherd boy tending his flocks. The boy, while watching his sheep, was drawing pictures of them on a piece of slate with a sharp stone. Cimabue, looking over the boy’s shoulder, was amazed at the picture he saw and he asked the boy his name.“Giotto,” the boy replied, which was the short pet name for Ambro giotto . (Giotto is pronounced Jotto.)

Cimabue asked Giotto if he wouldn’t like to go to Florence and study drawing and painting. The boy was delighted to have such a chance. So, getting permission from his father, he went to live and study with Cimabue. When Giotto grew up,he painted many famous pictures of Christ, the Virgin Mary,and especially of Saint Francis, whom Cimabue had painted.

Saint Francis lived in a town near Florence called Assisi.In Assis there is a church built in his honor. In fact, there are two churches, one on top of the other. In the upper church,Giotto painted along the walls a series of pictures that told stories from the life of Saint Francis. Among many wonderful things Saint Francis used to do was to preach sermons to the birds that gathered round him to listen. The picture below shows him doing this.

In those days, the paint used was not like that we have now. The paint we use is usually made by mixing colored powder with oil (we call it oil paint), and artists paint pictures on canvas. But in those days, oil was not used in making paint, and the painting was not done on canvas. Artists mixed their powdered colors with water and painted on the fresh plastered walls. Or they mixed their colors with something sticky, like egg or glue, and painted on dry plaster, wood, or copper. The first kind of painting on fresh plaster was called fresco, which means fresh. The second kind of painting was called tempera, which means mixed.

The story is told that the Pope wished to have a picture painted and sent a messenger to Giotto to ask for a sample of the artist’s work. Giotto dipped his brush in some paint and,with a single swinging stroke, painted a perfect circle on a piece of wood and sent this to the Pope to show how skilled he was. Do you think you could draw a perfect circle without a compass with one stroke of a pencil? Try it. Then try doing it with a brush.

But even if you can do this, it does not mean you are a great artist. It is easy to trace a drawing. It is not much harder to copy a drawing without tracing. Thousands of people can paint a basket of fruit, a vase of flowers, a view of the sea or the land. That is just a copy. Thousands can copy the painting of a great artist so well that you can hardly tell the copy from the original. But very few people are able to invent a picture out of their own heads and put the parts together to make a beautiful painting. That is what takes genius!

08

THE ANGEL-LIKE BROTHER

T HE houses where monks lived together are called monasteries. The monks are known as “brothers” because they are supposed to treat one another and every one else like brothers. In some churches the members call one another brother and sister.

In Florence, the City of Flowers, was a monastery called St. Mark’s, for the Apostle who wrote the second book of the New Testament. In this monastery of St. Mark’s lived a monk who, because he was so very good and holy, was called the Angel-like Brother. In his language, which was Italian,Brother Angel-like was Fra Angelico. It may seem strange that a monk should become a great artist, but Fra Angelico had a talent for drawing and painting and he painted Bible pictures on the walls of the rooms in his monastery.

The rooms where the monks slept were called cells because they were so plain and bare that they were almost like cells in a prison. There were forty of these cells and Fra Angelico spent most of his life in painting them so that the monks would have scenes from the Bible to look at and think about. These pictures were painted in fresco, of course.Besides these, Fra Angelico painted movable pictures on wooden panels in tempera, which, as I have told you, was color mixed with something sticky, like egg or glue.

Fra Angelico lived about a hundred years later than Giotto, but his style was very much like Giotto’s style. It is said that always before starting to paint a picture, he prayed long and earnestly. Then when he did set to work on a painting, he never changed a brush stroke, but left everything he did just as he first put it down. For he believed that the Lord had guided his hand, and that therefore no correction should be made. Of course, being such a religious man, he painted nothing but religious pictures — pictures of saints and angels — and he received no pay whatever for his work.

There was one religious subject that painters of that time loved to paint. It is called the Annunciation. You remember the Bible says that an angel came to the Virgin Mary and told her that she was to have a Son who was to be Christ the Lord. This is called the Annunciation — that is, the announcement to Mary that she was to be the mother of the Lord. Fra Angelico painted an Annunciation which, I think, you’ll agree is very sweet and lovely. In this picture, the Virgin Mary is seated on a stool on the porch of her home,with her arms folded across her breast. An angel messenger who has just descended from heaven, half kneels to tell Mary that she is to have a Divine Son.

The monks of St. Mark’s were not allowed to talk to one another except at certain times, as a special treat. They had to keep silent most of the time. Think of keeping silent, for one single day, or even for one hour, if there were any one around to talk to! That rule was made so that the monks might keep their thoughts always on God and religion and not waste their time in gossip or other worthless talk. Over a doorway in St. Mark’s monastery, Fra Angelico painted a picture of Saint Peter with his finger on his lips, to remind the monks that they must be silent.

The monastery of St. Mark has been made a museum for the paintings of Fra Angelico. It now contains most of his movable paintings as well as the fresco paintings on the cell walls. One of these movable paintings now in the St. Mark’s monastery is a picture of the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child. The Virgin Mary is called “My Lady”, and this, in Italian, is Madonna. So such a picture is called a Madonna.

For hundreds of years, thousands of pictures of the Madonna were painted. In fact, every artist painted at least one Madonna and often many Madonnas. Each church had to have one or more Madonnas. And every family that could afford to have any painting at all had a Madonna hanging on the walls, just as every family nowadays usually has at least one Bible in the house.

The Madonna that Fra Angelico painted is in a broad gold frame. Usually the frame of a picture is just a frame — a fence to separate it from the wall and other things on the wall — and has no beauty in itself. But on this particular frame, Fra Angelico painted twelve angels playing different musical instruments. Thousands of colored post cards and other copies of these angels have been made, and you may have one of the pictures in your own house. Have you?