GIOTTO AND HIS WORKS IN PADUA 29

employed, except in declining periods. I do not mean to draw any severe conclusion from this fact; but it is a fact nevertheless, which ought to be very distinctly stated, and very carefully considered. All progressive art hitherto has been religious art; and commencements of the periods of decline are accurately marked, in illumination, by its employment on romances instead of psalters; and in painting, by its employment on mythology or profane history instead of sacred history.¹ Yet perhaps I should rather have said, on heathen mythology instead of Christian mythology; for this latter term-first used, I believe, by Lord Lindsay²-is more applicable to the subjects of the early painters than that of “sacred history.” Of all the virtues commonly found in the higher orders of human mind, that of a stern and just respect for truth seems to be the rarest; so that while self-denial, and courage, and charity, and religious zeal, are displayed in their utmost degrees by myriads of saints and heroes, it is only once in a century that a man appears whose word may be implicitly trusted, and who, in the relation of a plain fact, will not allow his prejudices or his pleasure to tempt him to some colouring or distortion of it. Hence the portions of sacred history which have been the constant subjects of fond popular contemplation have, in the lapse of ages, been encumbered with fictitious detail; and their various historians seem to have considered the exercise of their imagination innocent, and even meritorious, if they could increase either the vividness of conception or the sincerity of belief in their readers. A due consideration of that well-known weakness of the popular mind, which renders a statement credible in proportion to the multitude of local and circumstantial details which accompany it, may lead us to look with some indulgence on the errors, however fatal in their issue to the cause they were intended to

¹ [Compare what Ruskin says of Raphael’s paintings in the Vatican (Vol. XII. pp. 148, 149).]

² [See the first volume of his Sketches of the History of Christian Art, 1847 (pp. xxix. seq., being on “The Mythology of Christianity”).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]