the embroidered edges of
the dress, is of great value in opposing and making more manifest the
severe and grave outlines of the whole figure, whose impressiveness is
also partly increased by the rise of the mountain just above it, like
a tent. A vulgar composer would have moved this peak to the right or
left, and lost its power.

This mountain background is also of great use in deepening the sense
of gloom and danger on the desert road. The trees represented as
growing on the heights have probably been rendered indistinct by time.
In early manuscripts such portions are invariably those which suffer
most; the green (on which the leaves were once drawn with dark
colours) mouldering away, and the lines of drawing with it. But even
in what is here left there is noticeable more careful study of the
distinction between the trees with thick spreading foliage, the group
of two with light branches and few leaves, and the tree stripped and
dead at the bottom of the ravine, than an historical painter would now
think it consistent with his dignity to bestow.

* * * * *

XX.

MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS.

Of all the series, this composition is the one which exhibits most of
Giotto's weaknesses. All early work is apt to fail in the rendering of
violent action: but Giotto is, in this instance, inferior not only to
his successors, but to the feeblest of the miniature-painters of the
thirteenth century; while his imperfect drawing is seen at its worst
in the nude figures of the children. It is, in fact, almost impossible
to understand how any Italian, familiar with the eager gesticulations
of the lower orders of his countrywomen on the smallest points of
dispute with each other, should have been incapable of giving more
adequate expression of true action and passion to the group of
mothers; and, if I were not afraid of being accused of special
pleading, I might insist at some length on a dim faith of my own, that
Giotto thought the actual agony and strivings of the probable scene
unfit for pictorial treatment, or for common contemplation; and that
he chose rather to give motionless types and personifications of the
soldiers and women, than to use his strength and realistic faculty in
bringing before the vulgar eye the unseemly struggle or unspeakable
pain. The formal arrangement of the heap of corpses in the centre of
the group; the crowded standing of the mothers, as in a choir of
sorrow; the actual