GIOTTO AND HIS WORKS IN PADUA 35

florins, and the privilege of citizenship.” He designed the Campanile, in a more perfect form than that which now exists; for his intended spire, 150 feet in height, never was erected. He, however, modelled the bas-reliefs for the base of the building, and sculptured two of them with his own hand.¹ It was afterwards completed, with the exception of the spire, according to his design; but he only saw its foundations laid, and its first marble story rise. He died at Florence, on the 8th of January, 1337,² full of honour; happy, perhaps, in departing at the zenith of his strength, when his eye had not become dim, nor his natural force abated.³ He was buried in the cathedral, at the angle nearest his campanile; and thus the tower, which is the chief grace of his native city, may be regarded as his own sepulchral monument.

19. I may refer the reader to the close of Lord Lindsay’s letter on Giotto,* from which I have drawn most of the particulars above stated, for a very beautiful sketch of his character and his art. Of the real rank of that art, in the abstract, I do not feel myself capable of judging accurately, not having seen his finest works (at Assisi and Naples),⁴ nor carefully studied even those at Florence. But I may be permitted to point out one or two peculiar characteristics in it which have always struck me forcibly.

In the first place, Giotto never finished highly. He was not, indeed, a loose or sketchy painter, but he was by no means a delicate one. His lines, as the story of the circle would lead us to expect, are always firm, but they are never fine. Even in his smallest tempera pictures the touch is bold and somewhat heavy: in his fresco work

* Christian Art, [vol. ii.] p. 260.

¹ [Or more, as Ruskin afterwards held: see Vol. XXIII. p. lxiv.]

² [i.e., in the old style; 1336 in our method of reckoning.]

³ [Deuteronomy xxxiv. 7.]

⁴ [Here, again, Ruskin follows Lord Lindsay (vol. ii. pp. 244, 245) into error. There are no works by Giotto remaining at Naples. The frescoes in the Church of L’Incoronata, once extolled as his, cannot be so, for it has been ascertained that the first stone of the building was not laid till some years after Giotto’s death.]

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