Other Italian Schools
What emerged most clearly in the second half of the 14th century was
the vitality of areas outside Tuscany, which had already been
affected by Giotto and his followers, and by the progressive
economic and cultural exchanges with Europe north of the Alps. Such
was the case with the strongly dramatic 14th-century Bolognese art.
or that of Rimini, which was more courtly and emotive. Padua and
Verona, touched by the influence of Giotto and by the emergence of
strong personalities and active studios, were more inclined to
Gothic linearism than to Tuscan plasticity. However, they were
subject to Bvzantine influences, still pre-eminent in the unique
case of Venice. Lombardy. which from the end of the 13th century
tended towards realistic detail and immediacy of expression, created
one of the highest periods of International Gothic. This style was
characterized by a refined, exquisite sense of grace and elegance.
Working in Florence by 1350. was the great innovator Giovanni da
Milano (active 1346-69). whose major surviving work is the
decoration of the Rinuccini chapel in Santa Croce. The great
exponent of the international Gothic style was Gentile di Fabriano
(c. 1370-1427) from central Italy. He became master of the typically
exquisite style that swept through Europe. The circulation of
illuminated books, which had spread artistic innovations in the
early Middle Ages, had now been reinforced by the more direct and
radical migration of artists themselves. In Italian commercial and
religious centres, the ascendancy of Giottesque painting reversed
the flow. Filippo Rusuti was invited by the king of France to paint
at Poitiers and at Saint-Denis in the first decades of the 14th
century: a little after 1320. the great Parisian miniaturist Jean
Pucelle arrived in Tuscany, where he was able to acquire a sounder
mastery of the use of space to pass on to his French colleagues: and
Matteo Giovannetti of Viterbo was involved in the decoration of the
Papal See at Avignon, allowing Italian advances in plasticity to
penetrate the linear style of Burgundy. Artists, perhaps from
Naples, painted frescos in the castle of Esztergom in Hungary:
Charles VI commissioned works from Tommaso da Modena for Prague and
Karlstein; more than once, painters from the Venetian school took
what they had learnt from Giotto and Altichiero (active 1369-84) to
Austria, as in the Abbey of San Floriano and the Stefansdom in
Vienna. During the 14th century, the number of medieval pilgrim
trails increased and led to new destinations comparable with the
established holy routes to Santiago. Rome, and Jerusalem. The
construction sites of cathedrals and palaces were also meeting
places where architects and builders from all over Europe could
exchange ideas. In order to work in these centres, where
architecture, painting, and sculpture interacted to meet the rapidly
changing requirements of the buildings and their patrons, artists
required a grounding in all artistic forms. Of all the arts, drawing
became the unifying factor and. at the same time, an instrument of
visual emancipation, by virtue of its capacity to re-explore
constantly the ideal forms of real objects. Albums of drawings were
compiled, few of which survive today. However, those that do survive
testify to the growing need for common principles, as in the Livre
de Portraiture of Villard d'Honnecourt (13th century), and to the
demand for models and studies, as in the Taccuino of Giovanni De'
Grassi.
Alongside the artist, the figure of the commissioning patron also
became more visible. Inscriptions, or tituli, placed within
paintings, recorded their names, often beside those of the artists.
A later innovation, however, was the inclusion actually within the
painting of the donor's image, almost always shown in an attitude of
devotion, and sometimes positioned to balance the composition, as in
San Ludovico di Tolosa by Simone Martini, where the donor, Robert of
Anjou, appears in the painting. This was one of the ways in which
the artistic convention of portraiture became established.
