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Giotto and his works in Padua, a non-fiction book by John Ruskin |
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18. The Presentation In The Temple |
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_ XVIII. THE PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE This design is one of those which are peculiarly characteristic of Giotto as the head of the Naturalisti.[21] No painter before his time would have dared to represent the Child Jesus as desiring to quit the arms of Simeon, or the Virgin as in some sort interfering with the prophet's earnest contemplation of the Child by stretching her arms to receive Him. The idea is evidently a false one, quite unworthy of the higher painters of the religious school; and it is a matter of peculiar interest to see what must have been the strength of Giotto's love of plain facts, which could force him to stoop so low in the conception of this most touching scene. The Child does not, it will be observed, merely stretch its arm to the Madonna, but is even struggling to escape, violently raising the left foot. But there is another incident in the composition, witnessing as notably to Giotto's powerful grasp of all the facts of his subject as this does to his somewhat hard and plain manner of grasping them;--I mean the angel approaching Simeon, as if with a message. The peculiar interest of the Presentation is for the most part inadequately represented in painting, because it is impossible to imply the fact of Simeon's having waited so long in the hope of beholding his Lord, or to inform the spectator of the feeling in which he utters the song of hope fulfilled. Giotto has, it seems to me, done all that he could to make us remember this peculiar meaning of the scene; for I think I cannot be deceived in interpreting the flying angel, with its branch of palm or lily, to be the Angel of Death, sent in visible fulfilment of the thankful words of Simeon: "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace." The figure of Anna is poor and uninteresting; that of the attendant, on the extreme left, very beautiful, both in its drapery and in the severe and elevated character of the features and head-dress. [Footnote 21: See account of his principles above, p. 13, head C.] _ |
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