98 GIOTTO AND HIS WORKS IN PADUA

is a traitor and accuser?” and led us to think that the “one of you is a devil”¹ indicated some greater than human wickedness in Judas; whereas the practical meaning of the entire fact of Judas’ ministry and fall is, that out of any twelve men chosen for the forwarding of any purpose,-or, much more, out of any twelve men we meet,-one, probably, is or will be a Judas.

The modern German renderings of all the scenes of Christ’s life in which the traitor is conspicuous are very curious in their vulgar misunderstanding of the history, and their consequent endeavours to represent Judas as more diabolic than selfish, treacherous, and stupid men are in all their generations. They paint him usually projected against strong effects of light, in lurid chiaroscuro;-enlarging the whites of his eyes, and making him frown, grin, and gnash his teeth on all occasions, so as to appear among the other Apostles invariably in the aspect of a Gorgon.

How much more deeply Giotto has fathomed the fact, I believe all men will admit who have sufficient purity and abhorrence of falsehood to recognize it in its daily presence, and who know how the devil’s strongest work is done for him by men who are too bestial to understand what they betray.

¹ [John vi. 70.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]