Giotto and his followers, then, in the fourteenth century painted, as we have seen, the religious, philosophical, and social conceptions of their age.  As artists, their great discovery was the secret of depicting life.  The ideas they expressed belonged to the Middle Ages.  But by their method and their spirit they anticipated the Renaissance.  In executing their work upon the walls of palaces and churches, they employed a kind of fresco.  Fresco was essentially the Florentine vehicle of expression.  Among the peoples of Central Italy it took the place of mosaic in Sicily, Ravenna, and Venice, as the means of communicating ideas by forms to the unlettered laity, and as affording to the artist the widest and the freest sphere for the expression of his thoughts.[160]

FOOTNOTES: 

[118] In the History of Painting in Italy, by Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle.

[119] Nothing is more astonishing than the sterility of Genoa and of Rome.  Neither in sculpture nor in painting did these cities produce anything memorable, though Genoa was well placed for receiving the influences of Pisa, and had the command of the marble quarries of Carrara, while Rome was the resort of all the art-students of Italy.  The very early eminence of Apulia in architecture and the plastic arts led to no results.

[120] Milan, it is true, produced a brilliant school of sculptors, and the Certosa of Pavia is a monument of her spontaneous artistic genius.  But in painting, until the date of Lionardo’s advent, she achieved little.

[121] See Vol.  I., Age of the Despots, pp. 182-188, for the constitutional characteristics of Florence and Venice; and Vol.  II., Revival of Learning, pp. 118-120, for the intellectual supremacy of Florence.

[122] A glance at the map shows to what a large extent the Italians owed the progress of their arts to Tuscany.  Pisa, as we have already seen, took the lead in sculpture.  Florence, at a somewhat later period, revived painting, while Siena contemporaneously developed a style peculiar to herself.  This Sienese style—­thoroughly Tuscan, though different from that of Florence—­exercised an important influence over the schools of Umbria, and gave a peculiar quality to Perugian painting.  Through Piero della Francesca, a native of Borgo San Sepolcro, the Florentine tradition was extended to Umbria and the Roman States.  Perugia might be even geographically claimed for Tuscany, inasmuch as the Tiber divides the old Etrurian territory from the Umbrians and the duchy of Spoleto.  Lionardo was a Tuscan settled as an alien in Milan.  Raphael, though a native of Urbino, derived his training from Florence, indirectly through his father and his master Perugino, more immediately from Fra Bartolommeo and Michael Angelo.

[123] If Vasari is to be trusted, this visit of Charles of Anjou to Cimabue’s studio took place in 1267; but neither the Malespini nor Villani mention it, and the old belief that the Borgo Allegri owed its name to the popular rejoicing at that time is now somewhat discredited.  See Vasari, Le Monnier, 1846, vol. i. p. 225, note 4.  Gino Capponi, in his Storia della Repubblica di Firenze, vol. i. p. 157, refuses however to reject the legend.