72 GIOTTO AND HIS WORKS IN PADUA

not knowing how to utter their gladness and passion of praise. There is noticeable here, as in all works of this early time, a certain confidence in the way in which the angels trust to their wings, very characteristic of a period of bold and simple conception. Modern science has taught us that a wing cannot be anatomically joined to a shoulder;¹ and in proportion as painters approach more and more to the scientific, as distinguished from the contemplative state of mind, they put the wings of their angels on more timidly, and dwell with greater emphasis upon the human form, and with less upon the wings, until these last become a species of decorative appendage,-a mere sign of an angel. But in Giotto’s time an angel was a complete creature, as much believed in as a bird; and the way in which it would or might cast itself into the air, and lean hither and thither upon its plumes, was as naturally apprehended as the manner of flight of a chough or a starling. hence Dante’s simple and most exquisite synonym for angel, “Bird of God”;² and hence also a variety and picturesqueness in the expression of the movements of the heavenly hierarchies by the earlier painters, ill replaced by the powers of foreshortening, and throwing naked limbs into fantastic positions, which appear in the cherubic groups of later times.

It is needless to point out the frank association of the two events,-the Nativity, and appearance of the Angel to the Shepherds. They are constantly thus joined; but I do not remember any other example in which they are joined so boldly. Usually the shepherds are seen in the distance, or are introduced in some ornamental border, or other inferior place. The view of painting as a mode of suggesting relative or consecutive thoughts, rather than a realization of any one scene, is seldom so fearlessly asserted, even by Giotto, as here, in placing the flocks of the shepherds at the foot of the Virgin’s bed.

¹ [Compare what Ruskin says of Michael Angelo in this connexion: Vol. XXIII. p. 213.]

² [Purgatorio, ii. 38: “L’uccel divino.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]