Király Erzsébet - Jávor Anna szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 1997-2001, Művészettörténeti tanulmányok Sinkó Katalin köszöntésére (MNG Budapest, 2002)

TANULMÁNYOK / STUDIES - ÚJVÁRI Péter: Giotto doktrínája, avagy miért lett a művészetnek elmélete

PÉTER ÚJVÁRI Giotto's doctrina and the Demand for a Theory of Art In his seminal book on Giotto and the Orators, Michael Baxandall analysed the formation of a humanistic discourse on art which found its first systematic formulation in Alberti's De pictura of 1435. The present study attempts at supplementing Baxandall's analysis by examining the question (not put by Baxandall) why Giotto was to become the humanists' standard point of reference when assessing the high intellectual and social value of art. Giotto's canonical role as "the father of modern art" is the heritage of the Trecento, not Vasari's invention. As early as a few years after his death Giotto was eulogized as il più sommo pictore and pictorum nostri aevi princeps. The problem with such eulogies is not so much that Giotto is ranked higher than his fellow-artists (to the pattern of Aristotle ranked higher than his fellow-philosophers), but that the artisan Giotto is praised as an intellectual hero in similar terms as the philosophorumprinceps Aristotle - and all this in an age when painters are scarcely mentioned but in legal documents and, if so, are referred to in terms likepictores et aliae debiles personae. Giotto's reputation in mid-Trecento Italy is therefore exceptional not only as one among painters but also, and first of all, as a painter. All this hints at the singular and very special role assigned to Giotto in those times: that of the deceased genius who created something unprecedented and who can be therefore regarded as the embodiment of the idea "painting" or as the ideal of "The Painter". Thus Giotto's personality is raised above the historical realm and he becomes a mythical hero as best exemplified by the several legendary stories told about him and the frustration of the living manifest in Orcagna's question "who is the best painter, other than Giotto?" The qualities that made, or may have made, Giotto a legendary hero are twofold. On the one hand there are those expressly mentioned by the early humanists to whom Giotto's fame owed and still owes quite a lot. They praised Giotto for his wit, for his ingegno di tanta eccelenza which enabled him to create a deceiving verisimilitude in his paintings. According to them, the visual deceit Giotto achieved in his art was of the same kind, and made the same deep effect on learned and ingenious persons, as those "fanciful" poetic fictions whose legitimity was much debated by old-style intellectuals and was passionately defended by new-style humanists such as Petrarca and Boccaccio. Giotto could be utilized as their fellow-partisan and they knew how to make it profitable for both the promoters and the promoted. On the other hand Giotto's exceptional reputation had a socially more solid foundation than the ideas of the humanist avantgárdé, and was established already in his lifetime. The documents from his last years reveal him as a Florentine social hero: a respectful citizen, a successful businessman, a loyal Guelf, a witty courtier and a renowned master of his profession acting for the benefit of the state. The community - and not only the Establishment, but also its critics like Boccaccio - was proud of this singular personality "who added another candle to the glory of Florence" (Firenze). The reasons behind the general acclaim may have been different in the case of the Florentine Establishment and the painter's humanist promoters, but were surely founded in Giotto's actual art and manners. His wit, fame and high social connections are a very likely case in point. In the near complete absence of any articulated art criticism in the Trecento, however, it is not easy at all to establish which aspects of his art may have contributed to this - all the more so, as we know his oeuvre only to 40 percent at the best. The surviving minor part and the lost major part, of which textual sources of various detail and reliability can give us some idea, allow only hypothetical conclusions. One such conclusion might be that what survived represents, with the exception of the Arena Chapel, the least innovative side of his work - at least as far as iconography is concerned. For even if his Uomini Famosi in Naples (Napoli) falls out due to recent (and justified) doubts, the rest of his major commissions and the little we positively know about his likely cooperation with the proto-humanist Pietro d'Abano reveal Giotto as a pictor doctus specialized in complex representations with innovative iconography and a distinct political or ideological content: the juridical allegories in the Palazzo della Ragione in Padova; the Commune Rubato in the Palazzo della Podestà and the "Allegory of the Christian Faith" in the building of the Guelf Party, both in Florence; the Navicella in Rome; and the Gloria Mondana in Milan. Giotto, "The Painter", was easily the most likely candidate for the role of an alter Apelles or Apelles Florentinus as soon as a need for such a role emerged. It can be also conjectured that the example of the historical Giotto, his "exemplary" fame and personality gave a certain impetus to the humanists to include painting in the list of worthy activities. But whatever the case might be, the intellectual and, consequently, social legitimation of painting could be everything but easy. This is best attested by Filippo Villani's apology. After he excuses himself for having included painters - Giotto and his school - in the list of illustrious Florentine citizens, Filippo makes the point that painters are not inferior to the masters of the liberal arts just because they don't have a doctrine and must rely instead completely on their "inborn talent and tenacious memory". Those addressed by Filippo must have been in the opinion that painting is, on the contrary, not to be compared to the liberal arts particularly because it is based on intuition and experience, not on principles. Painting, could be argued well in line with Aristotle's Metaphysics (980A-981B), lacks an underlying theoretical foundation and therefore the