only). Then, in
the close of the twelfth and throughout the thirteenth century, the
great system of perfect colour was in use; solemn and deep; composed
strictly, in all its leading masses, of the colours revealed by God
from Sinai as the noblest;--blue, purple, and scarlet, with gold
(other hues, chiefly green, with white and black, being used in points
or small masses, to relieve the main colours). In the early part of
the fourteenth century the colours begin to grow paler; about 1330 the
style is already completely modified; and at the close of the
fourteenth century the colour is quite pale and delicate.

I have not carefully examined the colouring of early Byzantine work;
but it seems always to have been comparatively dark, and in
manuscripts is remarkably so; Giotto's paler colouring, therefore,
though only part of the great European system, was rendered notable by
its stronger contrast with the Byzantine examples.

B. _Greater breadth of mass._ It had been the habit of the Byzantines
to break up their draperies by a large number of minute folds. Norman
and Romanesque sculpture showed much of the same character. Giotto
melted all these folds into broad masses of colour; so that his
compositions have sometimes almost a Titianesque look in this
particular. This innovation was a healthy one, and led to very noble
results when followed up by succeeding artists: but in many of
Giotto's compositions the figures become ludicrously cumbrous, from
the exceeding simplicity of the terminal lines, and massiveness of
unbroken form. The manner was copied in illuminated manuscripts with
great disadvantage, as it was unfavourable to minute ornamentation.
The French never adopted it in either branch of art, nor did any other
Northern school; minute and sharp folds of the robes remaining
characteristic of Northern (more especially of Flemish and German)
design down to the latest times, giving a great superiority to the
French and Flemish illuminated work, and causing a proportionate
inferiority in their large pictorial efforts. Even Rubens and Vandyke
cannot free themselves from a certain meanness and minuteness in
disposition of drapery.

C. _Close imitation of nature._ In this one principle lay Giotto's
great strength, and the entire secret of the revolution he effected.
It was not by greater learning, not by the discovery of new theories
of art, not by greater taste, nor by "ideal" principles of selection,
that he became th