.
In the domain of painting, the Royal Academy has such a firm and ancient
hold on the popular imagination of the English that its influence is
difficult to dispel; but there are many signs that its baneful
ascendency is at length on the decline; and it is well known that the
National Gallery is attracting more and more visitors and Burlington
House less and less as the years go on.

In the following attempt at a general survey of the history of
painting--imperfect or ill-proportioned as it may appear to this or that
specialist or lover of any particular school--I have thought it best to
assume a fair amount of ignorance of the subject on the part of the
reader, though without, I hope, taking any advantage of it, even if it
exists; and I have therefore drawn freely upon several old histories and
handbooks for both facts and opinions concerning the old masters and
their works. In some cases, I think, a dead lion is decidedly better
than a live dog.

R. D.

CHELSEA, 1914.

_TUSCAN SCHOOLS_

I

GIOVANNI CIMABUE

By the will of God, in the year 1240, we are told by Vasari, GIOVANNI
CIMABUE, of the noble family of that name, was born in the city of
Florence, to give the first light to the art of painting. Vasari's
"Lives of the Painters" was first published in Florence in 1550, and
with all its defects and all its inaccuracies, which have afforded so
much food for contention among modern critics, it is still the principal
source of our knowledge of the earlier history of painting as it was
revived in Italy in the thirteenth century.

Making proper allowance for Vasari's desire to glorify his own city, and
to make a dignified commencement to his work by attributing to Cimabue
more than was possibly his due, we need not be deterred by the very
latest dicta of the learned from accepting the outlines of his life of
Cimabue as an embodiment of the tradition of the time in which he
lived--two centuries and a quarter after Cimabue--and, until
contradicted by positive evidence, as worthy of general credence. In the
popular mind Cimabue still remains "The Father of modern painting," and
though his renown may have attracted more pictures and more legends to
his name than properly belong to him, it is certain that Dante, his
contemporary, wrote of him thus:--

Credette Cimabue nella pintura
Tener lo campo, ed ora ha Giotto il grido
Si che la fama di colui s'oscura.

This is at least as importan