218 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

Indian dress nor club, as with Giotto, but is to the Venetians sufficiently distinguished by riding a horse.¹

49. The notice of the frescoes at Assisi consists of little more than an enumeration of the subjects, accompanied by agreeable translations of the traditions respecting St. Francis, embodied by St. Buonaventura. Nor have we space to follow the author through his examination of Giotto’s works at Naples and Avignon.² The following account of the erection of the Campanile of Florence is too interesting to be omitted:-

“...3 Giotto made a model of his proposed structure, on which every stone was marked, and the successive courses painted red and white, according to his design, so as to match with the Cathedral and Baptistery; this model was of course adhered to strictly during the short remnant of his life, and the work was completed in strict conformity to it after his death, with the exception of the spire, which, the taste having changed, was never added. He had intended it to be one hundred braccia, or one hundred and fifty feet high.”-Vol. ii. pp. 247-249.

The deficiency of the spire Lord Lindsay does not regret:-

“Let the reader stand before the Campanile, and ask himself whether, with Michael Scott at his elbow, or Aladdin’s lamp in his hand, he would supply the deficiency? I think not.”-p. 38.

We have more faith in Giotto than our author-and we will reply to his question by two others-whether, looking down

¹ [On Capital No. 12: see Stones of Venice, vol. ii. (Vol. X. p. 408); on the comparison generally, see ibid., p. 385.]

² [By the advice of Boccaccio, King Robert the Wise summoned Giotto from Florence to cover his church of Santa Chiara at Naples with frescoes; they were destroyed by whitewash in the eighteenth century, but some other fragments of his work remain in the city. For the frescoes at Avignon, formerly attributed to Giotto, see Vol. IX. p. 273 n.]

³ [The first part of the quotation has already been printed, in the Preface to Lectures on Architecture and Painting, above, p. 8. The date “In 1332 Giotto was chosen” was not given here; the word universality, there italicised, was not so here. On the other hand, a passage lower down-a criticism which the Signoria resented by confining him for two months in prison-was italicised here, but not there; and in citing the passage there, Ruskin omitted the Italian “della loro più florida potenza,” after “their utmost power and greatness,” which was here given.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]