84 GIOTTO AND HIS WORKS IN PADUA

is a very fair average example of the manner of design in the illuminated work of the period. The introduction of the scroll, with the legend, “This is My beloved Son,” is both more true to the scriptural words, “Lo, a voice from heaven,” and more reverent, than Giotto’s introduction of the visible figure, as a type of the First Person of the Trinity.¹ The boldness with which this type is introduced increases precisely as the religious sentiment of art decreases; in the fifteenth century it becomes utterly revolting.

I have given this woodcut for another reason also: to explain more clearly the mode in which Giotto deduced the strange from which he has given to the stream of the Jordan. In the earlier Northern works it is merely a green wave, rising to the Saviour’s waist, as seen in the woodcut. Giotto, for the sake of getting standing-ground for his figures, gives shores to this wave, retaining its swelling form in the centre,-a very painful and unsuccessful attempt at reconciling typical drawing with laws of perspective. Or perhaps it is less to be regarded as an effort at progress, than as an awkward combination of the Eastern and Western types of the Jordan. In the difference between these types there is matter of some interest. Lord Lindsay, who merely characterises this work of Giotto’s as “the Byzantine composition,”² thus describes the usual Byzantine manner of representing the Baptism:

“The Saviour stands immersed to the middle in Jordan, flowing between two deep and rocky banks, on one of which stands St. John, pouring the water on His head, and on the other two angels hold His robes. The Holy Spirit descends

in that of Mr. Henry Yates Thompson. The size is slightly reduced, the initial H being five inches high. Christ stands in a mound of green water. The same green is used for the angel’s wings. John has a mantle of camel’s hair over a blue tunic. The angel wears a chocolate robe, and holds a grey garment lined with red. Gold background. Details from two borders and a miniature (vol. iii. folio 175b, vol. i. folio 220, and vol. iii. folio 28) are engraved in Modern Painters, vol. iv., Figs. 98, 99, 116 (Vol. VI. pp. 334, 335, 408). For other references to this book, see Vol. XII. p. 494, Vol. XX. p. 138 n., Vol. XXI. p. 16, and Pleasures of England, § 99.]

¹ [Matthew iii. 17.]

² [Vol. ii. p. 189.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]