Leighton and the Venetian Method, Part II

Leighton's Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna is Carried in Procession Through the Streets of Florence
(shown here in detail), was completed in Rome when the artist was just 25.  Not only was the painting
a celebration of Florentine art, it was a statement of the public prestige an artist might attain.⁶

Leighton visited several cities in Italy, including Venice, before eventually settling in Rome during the fall of 1852.  Rome, the cradle of Western civilization, attracted more art students than any other city in Europe,⁷ and for someone like Leighton, trained in the Nazarene philosophy and wishing to study from the antique, it was the logical destination.  While there, Leighton began an ambitious painting to announce his presence to the public art world, the sketches for which he had been accumulating since arriving in Italy.  Unfortunately, Leighton had been suffering from a "creative paralysis,"⁸ and, unable to settle on a composition of his own, returned to his master Steinle for advice;  it is likely that the completed cartoon was actually executed in Frankfort, rather than Rome.  In February 1854, Leighton began the underpainting of the work, and by January of the following year, Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna was finally complete.

Frederic, Lord Leighton
Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna is Carried in Procession through the Streets of Florence; in front of the Madonna, and crowned with laurels, walks Cimabue himself, with his pupil Giotto;  behind it Arnolfo di Lapo, Gaddo Gaddi, Andrea Tafi, Niccola Pisano, Buffalmacco, and Simone Memmi;  in the corner Dante (1854-55)
231.7 cm X 520.9 cm
oil on canvas
on loan to the National Gallery, London, by Her Majesty The Queen

The seventeen foot long painting, executed not long after completing his studies at the Städel Institute, and designed with help from Steinle (as well as from Peter Cornelius, another Nazarene painter, who suggested that the figures to the far left in Leighton's sketch be turned to face the viewer, lest the work appear too much like a frieze⁹), owed much to the Brothers of St. Luke.  The spacing, symmetry, distinct outlines, and the figures' disposition parallel to the picture plane all echo the Nazarene school, but, even in this early work, Leighton had begun to move away from his early training, and incorporate more modern ideas:  the figures were not idealized, but painted from life and represented individual characteristics;  the foliage and landscape were painted naturalistically, after studies made by Leighton in Florence;  the coloring was bright and joyous (which contemporary critics immediately compared to Veronese and the Venetian School)¹⁰;  and the subject, though about a religious painting, was not a religious painting itself, but an exaltation of man, in this case the artist Cimabue.

Paolo Caliari Veronese
The Wedding Feast at Cana (1562-1563)
6.77 m X 9.94 m
oil on canvas
Louvre Museum

At the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1855, Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna was generally well-received.  The critic of the Athenaeum (May 5, 1855, p. 527) found it "one of the best pictures in the exhibition," and the reviewer for the Art Journal (June 1, 1855, pp. 169-170) declared there "had been no production of modern times more entirely excellent than this...  it is faithful to a high purpose:  the conception is worthy of the theme, and that theme is the loftiest, for it elevates and honours and perpetuates the glory of the artist and Art."¹¹  John Ruskin, the champion of the Pre-Raphaelites was not as enthusiastic about the work in the comparison of it to contemporary trends, but in regards to the work's relation to the antique, had this to say:  "This is a very important and beautiful picture," he wrote.  "It has both sincerity and grace, and is painted on the purest principles of Venetian art - that is to say, on the calm acceptance of the whole of nature, small and great, as, in its place, deserving of faithful rendering."¹²

On the advice of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria purchased Cimabue for the Royal Collection on the opening day of the exhibition.  "There was a very big picture by a young man, called Leighton...," wrote the Queen,  "it is a beautiful painting quite reminding one of Paul Veronese, so bright and full of lights.  Albert was enchanted with it, so much that he made me buy it."¹³  With the stamp of royal approval on Leighton's work, the young man was set to accept a successful career, but his own perfectionism would not allow him to rest on his laurels;  though his painting skills were first-rate amongst his countrymen, compared to his French counterparts, he knew he had much improvement to make, and by September of 1855, had relocated from Rome to Paris to study in the world's capital of contemporary art.