28 GIOTTO AND HIS WORKS IN PADUA

In nine cases out of ten, the first expression of an idea is the most valuable: the idea may afterwards be polished and softened, and made more attractive to the general eye; but the first expression of it has a freshness and brightness, like the flash of a native crystal compared to the lustre of glass that has been melted and cut. And in the second place, we ought to measure the value of art less by its executive than by its moral power. Giotto was not indeed one of the most accomplished painters,¹ but he was one of the greatest men who ever lived. He was the first master of his time, in architecture as well as in painting; he was the friend of Dante, and the undisputed interpreter of religious truth, by means of painting, over the whole of Italy. The works of such a man may not be the best to set before children in order to teach them drawing; but they assuredly should be studied with the greatest care by all who are interested in the history of the human mind.

14. One point more remains to be noticed respecting him. As far as I am aware, he never painted profane subjects. All his important existing works are exclusively devoted to the illustration of Christianity. This was not a result of his own peculiar feeling or determination; it was a necessity of the period. Giotto appears to have considered himself simply as a workman, at the command of any employer, for any kind of work, however humble. “In the sixty-third novel of Franco Sacchetti we read that a stranger, suddenly entering Giotto’s study, threw down a shield, and departed, saying, ‘Paint me my arms on that shield.’ Giotto looking after him, exclaimed, ‘Who is he? what is he? He says, ‘Paint me my arms,’ as if he was one of the BARDI. What arms does he bear?’”* But at the time of Giotto’s eminence, art was never employed on a great scale except in the service of religion; nor has it ever been otherwise

* Notes to Rogers’s Italy.²

¹ [For some modification of this view at a later time, see Vol. XXIII. p. xlv.]

² [Compare Eagle’s Nest, § 209 (Vol. XXII. p. 267).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]