“THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN ART” 215

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 Dante¹ in the chapel of the Podestà 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 colour not only pure, but deep-a rare virtue with Giotto; the eye soft and thoughtful, the brow nobly modelled. In the fresco of the Death of the Baptist, in Santa Croce,² which we agree with Lord Lindsay in

¹ [See, again, Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. p. 188 and n.).]

² [In the chapel of the Peruzzi family, probably painted about 1307; one of a series of scenes from the story of the Baptist. The fresco here noticed had been lately uncovered from a coating of whitewash when Ruskin was at Florence in 1845. The following is the note in his diary:-

“Herod and two other persons are sitting at table under a canopy, of which note that the form is the same with Giotto, whether it be the roof of a manger, or the palace of Herod the King. It is painted blue underneath; and behind the figures, a curtain is let down, striped of various colours, exceedingly rich. A musician on the left, playing on the violin, is a most beautiful figure, very like Perugino’s treatment of similar subjects, and full of the same subdued feeling. The Herod is also very grand, though perhaps not a good ideal of Herod, for he is calm, kindly, and free from appearance of evil passion. The Herodias sits on the extreme right, the face is nearly gone, but seems to have been made most wicked and sensual. Her daughter, kneeling, presents her with the head. In the centre of the picture the daughter is dancing, or at least moving softly while she plays the lyre, while a soldier brings in the head of St. John. The two actions are thus curiously involved; the soldier comes in between the musician and the dancing maiden, who is immediately repeated on the right in giving the head to her mother. This second figure of her is exceedingly ugly, and the likeness to her mother wonderfully kept; but the figure with the lyre is fine, and would have been beautiful but that the shaded side of it is in colour so nearly the same as the background that it is lost in it, and hence the half of the face looks a badly drawn profile.

“Take it all in all, it is peculiarly interesting to come to this work after Giottino [whose frescoes are in a preceding chapel, that of S. Silvestro]. The former, unless much repainted, shows all the usual signs of inferior power, greater finish, greater care, darker outline, darker and more forcible shading, fewer errors and less life. Giotto’s after it comes fresh, inventive, genuine; he makes you think of the scene and not of the painter, his shades are light, his outlines easy, his eyes softly drawn, not made out by hard lines, his countenances full of motion and sentiment. The last time

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