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They are contemporary for twenty years; but these are the prime of Giotto's life, and the last of John's life: virtually, Giotto is the later workman by full twenty years. But Giotto always uses severe geometrical mouldings, and disdains all luxuriance of leafage to set off interior sculpture.
So the pictures, or frescoes, as they were called, were of course all about sacred subjects, either stories out of the Bible or of the lives of the saints. And as there were few books, and the poor people did not know how to read, these frescoed walls were the only story-books they had. What a joy those pictures of Giotto's must have been, then, to those poor folk!
The third instance I have chosen to quote is Giotto's portrait of Dante which was so strangely lost for many years. The portrait occurs in a painting, the first recorded performance of Giotto's, in which he was said to have introduced the likeness of many of his contemporaries, on the wall of the Palazzo dell' Podest
Faithful, not in these days of fear only, but hitherto in all her life, and afterwards forever. After you have seen it enough, look also for a little while at Angelico's Marriage and Death of the Virgin, in the same room; you may afterwards associate the three pictures always together in your mind. And, looking at nothing else to-day in the Uffizi, let us go back to Giotto's chapel.
Giotto's work did not end with himself; he was the founder of the earliest worthy school of Italian art, so worthy in this very glorious idealism, that, as I have already said, the men whose praise is most to be coveted, have learned to turn back to Giotto and his immediate successors, and, forgetting and forgiving all their ignorance, crudeness, quaintness, to dwell never wearied, and extol without measure these oldest masters' dignity of spirit, the earnestness of their originality, the solemnity and heedfulness of their labour.
She prattles about Giotto's second manner and Vittoria Colonna's liaison with 'Michael' one would think that Michael lived across the way and was expected in to take a hand at whist but she knows as little about art, and about the conditions of production, as I know about Buddhism. She profanes sacred words," he added more vehemently, after a pause.
She was looking at the clustering towers of the city, at Brunelleschi's magnificent dome, and the slender grace of Giotto's Campanile, and thence, from those storied trophies of transcendant art, her gaze wandered to the rich valley of the Arno, with its slopes of green and grey, and its distant line of purple peaks against an opalescent sky. "It is more beautiful in spring.
Such a column either never existed here, or had been removed before the memory of the present generation. We are in the lower church of S. Francesco. High mass is being sung, with orchestra and organ and a choir of many voices. Candles are lighted on the altar, over-canopied with Giotto's allegories.
The Peruzzi chapel has scenes from the lives of the two S. Johns, the Baptist, and the Evangelist: all rather too thoroughly re-painted, although following Giotto's groundwork closely enough to retain much of their interest and value. And here once again one should consult the "Mornings in Florence," where the wilful discerning enthusiast is, like his revered subject, also at his best.
To-day, if you walk through Florence, the City of Flowers, you will still see its fairest flower of all, the tall white campanile or bell-tower, 'Giotto's tower' as it is called. There it stands in all its grace and loveliness like a tall white lily against the blue sky, pointing ever upward, in the grand old faith of the shepherd-boy.
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