without composition, without charm of
colour, without suggestion of movement or the play of living energy. He
first knew how to distribute figures in the given space with perfect
balance, and how to mass them together in animated groups agreeable to the
eye. He caught varied and transient shades of emotion, and expressed them
by the posture of the body and the play of feature. The hues of morning
and of evening served him. Of all painters he was most successful in
preserving the clearness and the light of pure, well-tempered colours. His
power of telling a story by gesture and action is unique in its peculiar
simplicity. There are no ornaments or accessories in his pictures. The
whole force of the artist has been concentrated on rendering the image of
the life conceived by him. Relying on his knowledge of human nature, and
seeking only to make his subject intelligible, no painter is more
unaffectedly pathetic, more unconsciously majestic. While under the
influence of his genius, we are sincerely glad that the requisite science
for clever imitation of landscape and architectural backgrounds was not
forthcoming in his age. Art had to go through a toilsome period of
geometrical and anatomical pedantry, before it could venture, in the
frescoes of Michael Angelo and Raphael, to return with greater wealth of
knowledge on a higher level to the divine simplicity of its childhood in
Giotto.

In the drawing of the figure Giotto was surpassed by many meaner artists
of the fifteenth century. Nor had he that quality of genius which selects
a high type of beauty, and is scrupulous to shun the commonplace. The
faces of even his most sacred personages are often almost vulgar. In his
choice of models for saints and apostles we already trace the Florentine
instinct for contemporary portraiture. Yet, though his knowledge of
anatomy was defective, and his taste was realistic, Giotto solved the
great problem of figurative art far better than more learned and
fastidious painters. He never failed to make it manifest that what he
meant to represent was living. Even to the non-existent he gave the
semblance of reality. We cannot help believing in his angels leaning
waist-deep from the blue sky, wringing their hands in agony above the
Cross, pacing like deacons behind Christ when He washes the feet of His
disciples, or sitting watchful and serene upon the empty sepulchre. He
was, moreover, essentially a fresco-painter, working with rapid decisio