er proposes to himself to rise _above_ the work he is copying, must
most assuredly often fall beneath it. Such fall is the inherent and
inevitable penalty on all absolute copyism; and wherever the copy is
made with sincerity, the fall must be endured with patience. It will
never be an utter or a degrading fall; that is reserved for those who,
like vulgar translators, wilfully quit the hand of their master, and
have no strength of their own.

Lastly. It is especially to be noticed that these works of Giotto, in
common with all others of the period, are independent of all the
inferior sources of pictorial interest. They never show the slightest
attempt at imitative realisation: they are simple suggestions of
ideas, claiming no regard except for the inherent value of the
thoughts. There is no filling of the landscape with variety of
scenery, architecture, or incident, as in the works of Benozzo Gozzoli
or Perugino; no wealth of jewellery and gold spent on the dresses of
the figures, as in the delicate labours of Angelico or Gentile da
Fabriano. The background is never more than a few gloomy masses of
rock, with a tree or two, and perhaps a fountain; the architecture is
merely what is necessary to explain the scene; the dresses are painted
sternly on the "heroic" principle of Sir Joshua Reynolds--that drapery
is to be "drapery, and nothing more,"--there is no silk, nor velvet,
nor distinguishable material of any kind: the whole power of the
picture is rested on the three simple essentials of painting--pure
Colour, noble Form, noble Thought.

We moderns, educated in reality far more under the influence of the
Dutch masters than the Italian, and taught to look for realisation in
all things, have been in the habit of casting scorn on these early
Italian works, as if their simplicity were the result of ignorance
merely. When we know a little more of art in general, we shall begin
to suspect that a man of Giotto's power of mind did not altogether
suppose his clusters of formal trees, or diminutive masses of
architecture, to be perfect representations of the woods of Judea, or
of the streets of Jerusalem: we shall begin to understand that there
is a symbolical art which addresses the imagination, as well as a
realist art which supersedes it; and that the powers of contemplation
and conception which could be satisfied or excited by these simple
types of natural things, were infinitely more majestic than those
which are so depend