dels were preserved to the time of Lorenzo Ghiberti.

Nor was he destitute of approved models to copy from. Florence could boast of various specimens of ancient sculpture, which may still be seen near the cathedral; to say nothing of those which he afterwards saw at Rome; and their merit, then already established by the example of Niccola and Giovanni of Pisa, could not have escaped Giotto, whom nature had endowed with so exquisite a sense of the chaste and the beautiful. On contemplating certain of his male heads, as well as certain of his figures, displaying a fulness of contour far removed from the meagre forms exhibited by his contemporaries-on beholding his taste in light, natural, and stately drapery, as well as certain of his attitudes, which, after the manner of the ancients, breathe grace and repose one can scarcely doubt that he derived no small advantage from ancient sculpture.

His very first pieces from the life of the patriarch St. Francis, executed at Assisi, near the paintings of his master, shew how greatly he had already outstripped him. As the work advances, we find him becoming gradually more and more correct; while, towards its conclusion, he displays greater variety of design in. the countenances, and greater accuracy in the extremities; the features too, are more animated, the attitudes more ingenious, and the landscape more natural. To one who carefully examines these works, their composition appears, perhaps, the most surprising of all; a branch of the art in which he not only went on continually outdoing his previous efforts, but sometimes reached a degree of excellence that seems scarcely to be surpassed. Sometimes he sought to impart an air of grandeur to his historical pieces, by the occasional introduction of architectural ornaments, which he usually represented of a red, blue, or yellow colour, such as was then used in staining houses, and not unfrequently of a dazzling white, like that of Parian marble. Among his happiest efforts in the above-mentioned work, is the picture of a man parched with thirst, to the expression of which

scarcely could any thing have been added by the animating pencil of Raphael himself. The like tastefulness, too, distinguishes whatever he executed in the lower church; and these are, perhaps, the best works of this master that have come down to our times, though specimens of them may still be seen at Ravenna, Padua, Rome, Florence, and Pisa. They are assuredly the most spirited of them all; for he has there, with images the most poetical, shadowed forth the saint eschewing Vice, and following after Virtue; and there, I suspect, it was, that he set the first example of allegorical painting, so familiar to his more distinguished followers.

His other works, executed in different cities, which treat for the most part of subjects drawn from the New Testament, are repeated by him in nearly the same manner in several different places, and are usually most pleasing where the proportions of the figures are the smallest. His small pictures, representing different actions of St. Peter and St. Paul, together with some figures of the Virgin and various saints, in the sacristy of the Vatican, look like most beautiful and highly finished illuminations; as also do those others in the church of S. Croce, at Florence, all of them taken from Scripture History, or from the life of St. Francis. The art of portrait painting may be said to date its origin from him, by whom we have had transmitted to us correct likenesses of Dante, Brunetto Latini, and Corso Donati. Others had attempted it before him, but, according to Vasari, no one had succeeded in it. The art of working in mosaic too, was improved by Giotto. A mosaic of his workmanship, called the Navicella di S. Pietro, may still be seen over the portico of St. Peter's; but so pieced a thing is it now, that it no longer retains any vestiges of the original design, and would no longer be taken for one of this artist's works. Some will have it that the art of painting in miniature, in those days so much in vogue for the illuminating of missals, was also indebted to him for some improvement. That architecture was so, there

can be no doubt; the admirable belfry of the Florentine cathedral is the work of Giotto.

Giotto may as truly be called the father of modern painting, as Boccaccio was of modern prose. A Simon da Siena, a Stefano da Firenze, a Pietro Laurati, imparted charms to the art; but they, as well as other distinguished individuals, owed to Giotto the transition from the old to a newer method. This new style he essayed in Tuscany: and, while yet a young man, made such progress in it as to excite universal admiration. No sooner did he return from Assisi, than Boniface VIII. invited him to Rome; no sooner was the papal seat transferred to Avignon, than he was invited by Clement V. to pass over into France. Before he went thither he was constrained to make some stay at Padua; and on his return, a few years afterwards, he was again induced to spend some time at the same place. Italy was at that time, in many of its divisions, under a republican form of government, but it abounded also with powerful families, which domineered over this or that quarter, and which, even while seeking to embellish their country, were aiming at its subjugation. Giotto, in preference to all other artists, was every where in request. The Polentani of Ravenna, the Malatesti of Rimini, the Estensi of Ferrari, the Visconti of Milan, the Scala of Verona, Castruccio of Lucca, and even Robert King of Naples, eagerly sought to engage him, and for some period retained him in their service. Milan, Urbino, Arezzo, and Bologna, were also ambitious of possessing his works; while Pisa, whose Campo Santo,-like Corinth and Delphi of old, (Plin. xxxv. 9.)

This spot, which will ever form an honourable monument of Pisan magnificence, would have constituted an inestimable museum, if the paintings executed there by Giotto, Memmi, Stefano of Florence, Buffalmacco, Antonio Veneziano, the two Orcagni, Spinello of Arezzo, and Laurati or Laurenti, had been preserved in their pristine state; but the greater number of them, having suffered much from damp, were retouched, though not without considerable judgment, during this present eighteenth century.

-afforded the most distinguished artists of Tuscany an arena where they might fairly vie with each other, was indebted to him for those historical pieces from the life of Job, which, though among his earliest performances, are yet deservedly admired. When Giotto was no more, the like applause was lavished on his disciples: the cities of Italy eagerly contended for the honour of employing them, preferring them even to the native artists themselves. Thus did Giotto serve as a model for students during the whole of the fourteenth, as did subsequently Raphael in the sixteenth, and the Carracci in the following century; nor do I know where to look in Italy for a fourth manner that has had such general vogue as that of these three schools. There were, indeed, even in other states, some who by dint of innate talent had been led to adopt a new style; they were, however, but little prized, and indeed but little known, beyond the confines of their own country. Of the Florentines alone can it be asserted, that they disseminated the modern style from one extremity of Italy to the other. In the revival of painting, therefore, though not the whole, yet the chief praise is due to them.

Associations and Methods of the Old Painters.

SUBSEQUENT to the death of Giotto, which took place in 1336, I find that painters had multiplied at Florence to an astonishing degree. Not long afterwards—that is, in the year 1349, they formed themselves into a religious fraternity, denominated the society of St. Luke. This was not the first association of the kind that had sprung up in Italy, as Baldinucci affirms: even previous to the year 1290 there was a society of painters established at Venice, of which Luke was the patron saint. Yet neither could this, nor the Florentine, nor the Bolognese, nor any other similar association, be called academies of design;

but simply schools of Christian devotion, such as formerly ex

isted, and still exist, in many of the arts. Nor did they consist of painters only: these, indeed, always occupied the post of honour; but in the same society were incorporated artisans "who wrought in metal and wood, whose works afforded more or less scope for design," as Baldinucci observes of the Florentines. In like manner, in the Venetian association were comprised trunk-makers, gilders, and the lowest daubers; in that of Bologna, even saddlers and scabbard-makers.

He who should trace these associations to their source would find them to have originated in the intermixture of different sorts of work in the handicrafts then in vogue. At that time, all sorts of furniture, such as cupboards, benches, and chests, that were wrought by mechanics, were subsequently painted, and that too, not unfrequently in the same shop, by those whose business it was to supply ornaments and figures-especially when intended as depositories for the outfit of brides. Many old cabinet pictures have been cut out from such pieces of furniture, and thus been transmitted to posterity. As to pictures intended for altar-pieces, these, throughout the whole of the fourteenth century, were never prepared, as is the practice now-a-days, on a part detached from the surrounding ornaments. In the first place, dittici—that is to say, little altars, in many parts of Italy called ancone-were formed out of wood, and elaborately ornamented with carving*. The design of these ancone was made to accord

Among Christians, it was a practice of very ancient date, to place upon the altars, during the sacrifice of the mass, silver or ivory dittici, which, when the sacred rite was over, were folded up like a book, and taken away. The same make was retained, even after the introduction of the larger altar-pieces, which, in like manner, consisted of two wings, and were easily removed. This custom, of which I have met with but few vestiges in Italy, was for a long time retained in the Greek Church. At length, by degrees, artists betook themselves to painting on a single panel. (See Bonarruoti, Vetri Antichi, p. 258, &c.)