Identifier: historyofmedival00rebe (find matches)
Title: History of mediæval art
Year: 1893 (1890s)
Authors: Reber, Franz von, 1834-1919 Clarke, Joseph Thacher, d. 1920
Subjects: Art, Medieval
Publisher: New York : Harper & Bros.
Contributing Library: Boston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Public Library

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ed like miniatures. It is evident from the dilettanteism andweakness of everything of the kind that has been preserved, thatsuch work was for the most part left to men of inferior training,the skilled artists being engaged upon more monumental tasks.This, however, does not exclude the prevalence of Byzantine tradi-tions in panel painting. The most common subject was the cruci-fixion, the pictures of which, though of painful monotony, rival one i ITALY. 429 another in the expression of an ascetic ecstasy of suffering (Fig. 263).Such a caricature of the pathetic does still surpass the soulless rigid-ity of the Byzantine models, and has in it some elements hopefulfor the future. But this expression of sentiment cannot compen-sate for the lack of all feeling for beauty. This is even the casewith the works of Giunta Pisano,—celebrated in his time, between1202 and 1255,—who, like all his contemporaries, continued, in tech-nical respects not less than in the types of design, to be depen-
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Fig. 263.—Crucifix in the Chapter-house of the Cathedral of Pistoja. dent upon Byzantine models. Giovanni Cimabue was the first toaspire to higher ideals. Working towards the close of the thirteenthcentury, he succeeded in giving to his Byzantine Madonnas someexpression of life and soul. The improvements which he introducedaffected panel painting rather than mosaic. But however crampedby the limitations of the old traditions, and although in many re-spects a hesitating representative of the transitional period, Cimabueshows, in details and accessary figures, many characteristics of theGothic epoch, in connection with which his work is to be considered. 430 PAINTING OF THE ROMANIC EPOCH. The comparative inactivity of miniature painting is to be as-cribed to the subordinate part taken in the culture of the time bythe Italian clergy. During this entire period there were but fewnative productions which could be at all compared with those ofGermany. The coarse pen-drawings of the Easter

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