122 GIOTTO AND HIS WORKS IN PADUA

castle or stronghold, into which he retreats from pillage. They are much like each other in external forms; but Injustice or Unrighteousness sits in the gate of the one, veiled with forest branches (see Giotto’s painting of him); and Justice or Righteousness enters by the gate of the other, over strewn forest branches.”-Val d’ Arno, § 32 (Vol. XXIII. p. 26).¹

____________________

ANGER

This representation of Anger-“a woman gazing upwards in fury and tearing open her breast”²-is the same as that sculptured on the Ducal Palace.

“Giotto represents this vice under the same symbol, but it is the weakest of all the frescoes in the Arena Chapel. The ‘wrath’ of Spenser rides upon a lion, brandishing a fire-brand, his garments stained with blood. ... It appears to me very strange that neither Giotto nor Spenser should have given any representation of the restrained Anger, which is infinitely the most terrible; both of them make him violent.”-Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. viii. § 89 (Vol. X. p. 403).

____________________

INCONSTANCY

“A woman in loose drapery, falling from a rolling globe.”-Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. viii. § 70 (Vol. X. p. 389).

Lord Lindsay says:-

“Whirling round and round upon the wheel of Fortune, the wind bellying her robe above her head.”-Christian Art (vol. ii. p. 197).

____________________

FOLLY

This fresco is also but briefly described by Ruskin, who mentions the “feather-cap and club,” and says that “in early manuscripts he is always eating with one hand, and striking with the other; in later ones he has a cap and bells, or cap crested with a cock’s head, whence the word ‘coxcomb.’”-Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. viii. § 97 (Vol. X. p. 408).

Lord Lindsay (vol. ii. p. 197) says of it:-

“A man in an Indian dress, looking upwards, with a club raised as if about to strike, reminding one of Horace’s lines:-

‘Cœlum ipsum petimus stultitiâ,’ etc.”

¹ [The frescoes of Justice and Injustice are the subject of a study by Giacomo Lumbroso in his Memorie Italiane del buon tempo antico (Turin, 1889), pp. 3 seq.]

² [Christian Art (vol. ii. p. 197).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]