nd for my part I find it amusing to
trust him as much as possible) the master was insignificant in size.

Giotto has suffered, I think, in reputation, from Ruskin, who took
him peculiarly under his wing, persistently called him "the Shepherd,"
and made him appear as something between a Sunday-school superintendent
and the Creator. The "Mornings in Florence" and "Giotto and his Works
in Padua" so insist upon the artist's holiness and conscious purpose
in all he did that his genial worldliness, shrewdness, and humour, as
brought out by Dante, Vasari, Sacchetti, and Boccaccio, are utterly
excluded. What we see is an intense saint where really was a very
robust man. Sacchetti's story of Giotto one day stumbling over a
pig that ran between his legs and remarking, "And serve me right;
for I've made thousands with the help of pigs' bristles and never
once given them even a cup of broth," helps to adjust the balance;
while to his friend Dante he made a reply, so witty that the poet
could not forget his admiration, in answer to his question how was
it that Giotto's pictures were so beautiful and his six children so
ugly; but I must leave the reader to hunt it for himself, as these
are modest pages. Better still, for its dry humour, was his answer
to King Robert of Naples, who had commanded him to that city to paint
some Scriptural scenes, and, visiting the artist while he worked, on
a very hot day, remarked, "Giotto, if I were you I should leave off
painting for a while". "Yes," replied Giotto, "if I were you I should."

To Giotto happily we come again and again in this book. Enough at
present to say that upon his death in 1336 he was buried, like Arnolfo,
in the cathedral, where the tablet to his memory may be studied,
and was succeeded as architect, both of the church and the tower,
by his friend and assistant, Andrea Pisano, whose chief title to
fame is his Baptistery doors and the carving, which we are soon to
examine, of the scenes round the base of the campanile. He, too,
died--in 1348--before the tower was finished.

Francesco Talenti was next called in, again to superintend both
buildings, and not only to superintend but to extend the plans of the
cathedral. Arnolfo and Giotto had both worked upon a smaller scale;
Talenti determined the present floor dimensions. The revised facade
was the work of a committee of artists, among them Giotto's godson
and disciple, Taddeo Gaddi, then busy with the Ponte Vecchio, and
Andrea