rs were not nearly so limited as those of 'artists'
in the narrow sense. One chief part of their art lay in drawing and
modelling, another in casting metals, another in chiselling, and they
were certainly the draughtsmen of an age in which the art of drawing was
practically lost among painters; and it was because they learned how to
draw that so many of them became great painters when the originality of
two or three men of genius had opened the way.

One says 'two or three,' vaguely, but the art had grown out of infancy
when they appeared, and there was an enormous distance between Cimabue,
whom people call the father of painting, and the Cosmas family, of whom
the last died about the time that Cimabue was born. But though Cimabue
was a noble, the Cosmas family who preceded him were artisans first and
artists afterwards, and men of the people; and Giotto, whom Cimabue
discovered sketching sheep on a piece of slate with a pointed stone, was
a shepherd lad. So was Andrea Mantegna, who dominated Italian art a
hundred and fifty years later--so was David, one of the greatest poets
that ever lived, and so was Sixtus the Fifth, one of the strongest popes
that ever reigned--all shepherds.

It is rather remarkable that although so many famous painters were
goldsmiths, none of the very greatest were. Among the goldsmiths were
Orcagna, Ghiberti, Ghirlandajo, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Francia,
Verrocchio, Andrea del Sarto. But Benvenuto Cellini, the greatest of
goldsmiths, was never a painter, and the very greatest painters were
never goldsmiths, for Cimabue, Giotto, Mantegna, Lionardo da Vinci,
Perugino, Raphael, Michelangelo, all began in the profession that made
them the greatest artists of their age. It is very hard to get at an
idea of what men thought about art in those times. Perhaps it would be
near the truth to say that it was looked upon as a universal means of
expression. What strikes one most in the great pictures of that time is
their earnestness, not in the sense of religious faith, but in the
determination to do nothing without a perfectly clear and definite
meaning, which any cultivated person could understand, and at which even
a child might guess. Nothing was done for effect, nothing was done
merely for beauty's sake. It was as if the idea of usefulness, risen
with art from the hand-crafts, underlay the intentions of beauty, or of
devotion, or of history, which produced the picture. In those times,
when the artist