compilations from his works by a loving pupil. Lord Lindsay has not done
justice to the upper division--the Satan before God: it is one of the
very finest thoughts ever realized by the Giotteschi. The serenity of
power in the principal figure is very noble; no expression of wrath, or
even of scorn, in the look which commands the evil spirit. The position
of the latter, and countenance, are less grotesque and more demoniacal
than is usual in paintings of the time; the triple wings expanded--the
arms crossed over the breast, and holding each other above the elbow,
the claws fixing in the flesh; a serpent buries its head in a cleft in
the bosom, and the right hoof is lifted, as if to stamp.

62. We should have been glad if Lord Lindsay had given us some clearer
idea of the internal evidence on which he founds his determination of
the order or date of the works of Giotto. When no trustworthy records
exist, we conceive this task to be of singular difficulty, owing to the
differences of execution universally existing between the large and
small works of the painter. The portrait of Dante in the chapel of the
Podesta is proved by Dante's exile, in 1302, to have been painted before
Giotto was six and twenty; yet we remember no head in any of his works
which can be compared with it for carefulness of finish and truth of
drawing; the crudeness of the material vanquished by dexterous hatching;
the color not only pure, but deep--a rare virtue with Giotto; the eye
soft and thoughtful, the brow nobly modeled. In the fresco of the Death
of the Baptist, in Santa Croce, which we agree with Lord Lindsay in
attributing to the same early period, the face of the musician is drawn
with great refinement, and considerable power of rounding
surfaces--(though in the drapery may be remarked a very singular piece
of archaic treatment: it is warm white, with yellow stripes; the dress
itself falls in deep folds, but the striped pattern does not follow the
foldings--it is drawn across, as if with a straight ruler).

63. But passing from these frescoes, which are nearly the size of life,
to those of the Arena chapel at Padua, erected in 1303, decorated in
1306, which are much smaller, we find the execution proportionably less
dexterous. Of this famous chapel Lord Lindsay says--

* * *

"nowhere (save in the Duomo of Orvieto) is the legendary history of the
Virgin told with such minuteness.

"The heart must indeed be cold to the