which would seem far less extraordinary if it were not for the high
plane of reality on which Giotto keeps us. Now what is back of this
power of raising us to a higher plane of reality but a genius for
grasping and communicating real significance? What is it to render the
tactile values of an object but to communicate its material
significance? A painter who, after generations of mere manufacturers of
symbols, illustrations, and allegories had the power to render the
material significance of the objects he painted, must, as a man, have
had a profound sense of the significant. No matter, then, what his
theme, Giotto feels its real significance and communicates as much of it
as the general limitations of his art, and of his own skill permit. When
the theme is sacred story, it is scarcely necessary to point out with
what processional gravity, with what hieratic dignity, with what
sacramental intentness he endows it; the eloquence of the greatest
critics has here found a darling subject. But let us look a moment at
certain of his symbols in the Arena at Padua, at the "Inconstancy," the
"Injustice," the "Avarice," for instance. "What are the significant
traits," he seems to have asked himself, "in the appearance and action
of a person under the exclusive domination of one of these vices? Let me
paint the person with these traits, and I shall have a figure that
perforce must call up the vice in question." So he paints "Inconstancy"
as a woman with a blank face, her arms held out aimlessly, her torso
falling backwards, her feet on the side of a wheel. It makes one giddy
to look at her. "Injustice," is a powerfully built man in the vigour of
his years dressed in the costume of a judge, with his left hand
clenching the hilt of his sword, and his clawed right hand grasping a
double hooked lance. His cruel eye is sternly on the watch, and his
attitude is one of alert readiness to spring in all his giant force upon
his prey. He sits enthroned on a rock, overtowering the tall waving
trees, and below him his underlings are stripping and murdering a
wayfarer. "Avarice" is a horned hag with ears like trumpets. A snake
issuing from her mouth curls back and bites her forehead. Her left hand
clutches her money-bag, as she moves forward stealthily, her right hand
ready to shut down on whatever it can grasp. No need to label them: as
long as these vices exist, for so long has Giotto extracted and
presented their visible significance.

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