222 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

and ornaments of dress are never particularized, no imitations of texture or jewellery, yet shot stuffs of two colours frequent. The drawing often powerful, though of course uninformed; the mastery of mental expression by bodily motion, and of bodily motion, past and future, by a single gesture, altogether unrivalled even by Raffaelle;-it is obtained chiefly by throwing the emphasis always on the right line, admitting straight lines of great severity, and never dividing the main drift of the drapery by inferior folds; neither are accidents allowed to interfere-the garments fall heavily and in marked angles-nor are they affected by the wind, except under circumstances of very rapid motion. The ideal of the face is often solemn-seldom beautiful; occasionally ludicrous failures occur: in the smallest designs the face is very often a dead letter, or worse: and in all, Giotto’s handling is generally to be distinguished from that of any of his followers by its bluntness. In the school work we find sweeter types of feature, greater finish, stricter care, more delicate outline, fewer errors, but on the whole less life.

52. Finally, and on this we would especially insist, Giotto’s genius is not to be considered as struggling with difficulty and repressed by ignorance, but as appointed, for the good of men, to come into the world exactly at the time when its rapidity of invention was not likely to be hampered by demands for imitative dexterity or neatness of finish; and when, owing to the very ignorance which has been unwisely regretted, the simplicity of his thoughts might be uttered with a childlike and innocent sweetness, never to be recovered in times of prouder knowledge.¹ The dramatic power of his works, rightly understood, could receive no addition from artificial arrangement of shade, or scientific exhibition of anatomy, and we have reason to be deeply grateful when afterwards “inland far” with Buonaroti and

¹ [Compare with this passage that upon Giotto in Stones of Venice, vol. iii. (Vol. XI. p. 205).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]