re perhaps in their few years than can the youth and the man learn in
a lifetime.

Like the child, the Giottesque painter wished to show a situation or
express a story, and for this purpose the absolute realization of
objects was unnecessary. Giottesque art is not incorrect art, it is
generalized art; it is an art of mere outline. The Giottesques could
draw with great accuracy the hand: the form of the fingers, the bend of
the limb, they could give to perfection its whole gesture and movement,
they could produce a correct and spirited outline, but within this
correct outline marked off in dark paint there is but a vague, uniform
mass of pale colour; the body of the hand is missing, and there remains
only its ghost, visible indeed, but unsubstantial, without weight or
warmth, eluding the grasp. The difference between this spectre hand of
the Giottesques, and the sinewy, muscular hand which can shake and crush
of Masaccio and Signorelli; or the soft hand with throbbing pulse and
warm pressure of Perugino and Bellini,--this difference is typical of
the difference between the art of the fourteenth century and the art of
the fifteenth century: the first suggests, the second realizes; the one
gives impalpable outlines, the other gives tangible bodies. The
Giottesque cares for the figure only inasmuch as it displays an action;
he reduces it to a semblance, a phantom, to the mere exponent of an
idea; the man of the Renaissance cares for the figure inasmuch as it is
a living organism, he gives it substance and weight, he makes it stand
out as an animate reality. Thence, despite its early triumphs, the
Giottesque style, by its inherent nature, forbade any progress; it
reached its limits at once, and the followers of Giotto look almost as
if they were his predecessors, for the simple reason that, being unable
to advance, they were forced to retrograde. The limited amount of
artistic realization required to present to the mind of the spectator a
situation or an allegory, had been obtained by Giotto himself, and
bequeathed by him to his followers; who, finding it more than sufficient
for their purposes, and having no incentive to further acquisition in
the love of form and reality for their own sake, worked on with their
master's materials, composing and recomposing, but adding nothing of
their own. Giotto had observed Nature with passionate interest, because,
although its representation was only a means to an end, it was a means
wh