inter of
Florence, for the reason that, after the methods of good paintings and
their outlines had lain buried for so many years under the ruins of the
wars, he alone, although born among inept craftsmen, by the gift of God
revived that art, which had come to a grievous pass, and brought it to
such a form as could be called good. And truly it was a very great
miracle that that age, gross and inept, should have had strength to work
in Giotto in a fashion so masterly, that design, whereof the men of
those times had little or no knowledge, was restored completely to life
by means of him. And yet this great man was born at the village of
Vespignano, in the district of Florence, fourteen miles distant from
that city, in the year 1276, from a father named Bondone, a tiller of
the soil and a simple fellow. He, having had this son, to whom he gave
the name Giotto, reared him conformably to his condition; and when he
had come to the age of ten, he showed in all his actions, although
childish still, a vivacity and readiness of intelligence much out of the
ordinary, which rendered him dear not only to his father but to all
those also who knew him, both in the village and beyond. Now Bondone
gave some sheep into his charge, and he, going about the holding, now in
one part and now in another, to graze them, and impelled by a natural
inclination to the art of design, was for ever drawing, on stones, on
the ground, or on sand, something from nature, or in truth anything
that came into his fancy. Wherefore Cimabue, going one day on some
business of his own from Florence to Vespignano, found Giotto, while his
sheep were browsing, portraying a sheep from nature on a flat and
polished slab, with a stone slightly pointed, without having learnt any
method of doing this from others, but only from nature; whence Cimabue,
standing fast all in a marvel, asked him if he wished to go to live with
him. The child answered that, his father consenting, he would go
willingly. Cimabue then asking this from Bondone, the latter lovingly
granted it to him, and was content that he should take the boy with him
to Florence; whither having come, in a short time, assisted by nature
and taught by Cimabue, the child not only equalled the manner of his
master, but became so good an imitator of nature that he banished
completely that rude Greek manner and revived the modern and good art of
painting, introducing the portraying well from nature of living people,
whic