and Duccio, of Giotto and of Guido da Siena,
freed itself from the tradition of the mosaicists as sculpture had freed
itself from the practice of the stone-masons, and stood forth an
independent and organic art.

Thus painting was born of a new civilization, and grew by its own vital
force; a thing of the Middle Ages, original and spontaneous. But
contemporaneous with the mediaeval revival was the resuscitation of
antiquity; in proportion as the new civilization developed, the old
civilization was exhumed; real Latin began to be studied only when real
Italian began to be written; Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio were at once
the founders of modern literature and the exponents of the literature of
antiquity; the strong young present was to profit by the experience of
the past.

As it was with literature, so likewise was it with art. The most purely
mediaeval sculpture, the sculpture which has, as it were, just detached
itself from the capitals and porches of the cathedral, is the direct
pupil of the antique; and the three great Gothic sculptors, Niccoto,
Giovanni, and Andrea of Pisa, learn from fragments of Greek and Roman
sculpture how to model the figure of the Redeemer and how to chisel the
robe of the Virgin. This spontaneous mediaeval sculpture, aided by the
antique, preceded by a full half-century the appearance of mediaeval
painting; and it was from the study of the works of the Pisan sculptors,
that Cimabue and Giotto learned to depart from the mummified
monstrosities of the Miratic, Byzantine, and Roman style of Giunta and
Berlinghieri. Thus, through the sculpture of the Pisans the painting of
the school of Giotto received at second-hand the teachings of antiquity.
Sculpture had created painting, painting now belonged to the painters.
In the hands of Giotto it developed within a few years into an art which
seemed almost mature, an art dealing victoriously with its materials,
triumphantly solving its problems, executing as if by miracle all that
was demanded of it. But Giottesque art appeared perfect merely because
it was limited; it did all that was required of it, because that which
was required was little; it was not asked to reproduce the real, nor to
represent the beautiful, it was asked merely to suggest a character, a
situation, a story.

The artistic development of a nation has its exact parallel in the
artistic development of an individual. The child uses his pencil to tell
a story, satisfied with ball