ackground of gold leaf, which was at
first laid on solidly, but which at a later period was adorned with tiny
cherub figures. The folds of the drapery were stiff and heavy, and the
whole effect was dull and lifeless. But no matter how inadequate such a
picture may seem to us to-day, and no matter how much it seems to lack
the depth and sincerity of reality, it possessed for the people of the
Middle Ages a mystic charm which had its influence. These pictures were
often supposed to have miraculous power, and there are many legends and
wonderful tales concerning them.

The first really great master among Italian painters, however, was
Giovanni Cimabue, who lived in Florence during the last part of the
thirteenth century; he infused into his work a certain vigor and
animation which were even more than a portent of the revival which was
to come. Other Italian painters there had been before him, it is true,
and particularly Guido of Siena and Giunta of Pisa, but they fail to
show in their work that spirit of originality and that breadth of
conception which were so characteristic of their successors. Throughout
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there is an evident effort after
an artistic expression of the deeper things of life which shall in some
way correspond to the spiritual realities. The yearning human heart
which was being solaced by the beautiful story of Christ and the mother
Mary, and which was filled with religious enthusiasm at the thought of
this Virgin enthroned in the heavens, was growing weary of the set
features and stolid look of the Madonna of Byzantine art, and dreaming
mystic dreams of the beauty of the Christ mother as she must have been
in real life. She became the centre of thought and speculation, prayers
and supplications were addressed to her, and more than once did she
appear in beatific vision to some illumined worshipper. It was in the
midst of this glow of feeling that Cimabue painted his colossal and
wondrous _Madonna and Child with the Angels_, the largest altar piece
which had been produced up to that time. Cimabue was then living in the
Borgo Allegri, one of the suburbs of Florence, and there in his studio
this great painting slowly came into existence. As soon as it assumed
some definite shape its fame was noised abroad, and many were the
curious ones who came to watch the master at his task. The mere fact
that this painting was upon a larger scale than any other picture of the
kind wh