This shade
explains the whole scene in a moment: gives prominence to the curtain
and coverlid of the homely bed, and the rude chest and trestles which
form the poor furniture of the house; and conducts the eye easily and
instantly to the three figures, which, had the scene been expressed in
outline only, we should have had to trace out with some care and
difficulty among the pillars of the loggia and folds of the curtains.
So also the relief of the faces in light against the dark sky is of
peculiar value in the compositions No. X. and No. XII.

The _drawing_ of Giotto is, of course, exceedingly faulty. His
knowledge of the human figure is deficient; and this, the necessary
drawback in all works of the period, occasions an extreme difficulty
in rendering them faithfully in an engraving. For wherever there is
good and legitimate drawing, the ordinary education of a modern
draughtsman enables him to copy it with tolerable accuracy; but when
once the true forms of nature are departed from, it is by no means
easy to express _exactly_ the error, and _no more than_ the error, of
his original. In most cases modern copyists try to modify or hide the
weaknesses of the old art,--by which procedure they very often wholly
lose its spirit, and only half redeem its defects; the results being,
of course, at once false as representations, and intrinsically
valueless. And just as it requires great courage and skill in an
interpreter to speak out honestly all the rough and rude words of the
first speaker, and to translate deliberately and resolutely, in the
face of attentive men, the expressions of his weakness or impatience;
so it requires at once the utmost courage and skill in a copyist to
trace faithfully the failures of an imperfect master, in the front of
modern criticism, and against the inborn instincts of his own hand and
eye. And let him do the best he can, he will still find that the grace
and life of his original are continually flying off like a vapour,
while all the faults he has so diligently copied sit rigidly staring
him in the face,--a terrible _caput mortuum_. It is very necessary
that this should be well understood by the members of the Arundel
Society, when they hear their engravings severely criticised. It is
easy to produce an agreeable engraving by graceful infidelities; but
the entire endeavour of the draughtsmen employed by this society has
been to obtain accurately the character of the original: and he who
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