Painting

Let us now turn back to Giotto and see in what way he fulfils the first condition of painting as an art, which condition, as we agreed, is somehow to stimulate our tactile imagination. We shall understand this without difficulty if we cover with the same glance two pictures of nearly the same subject that hang side by side in the Florence Academy, one by “Cimabue,” and the other by Giotto. The difference is striking, but it does not consist so much in a difference of pattern and types, as of realisation.

No such difficulties as we have encountered in the study of Uccello, Castagno, and Veneziano meet us as we turn to Fra Filippo. His works are still copious, and many of them are admirably preserved; we therefore have every facility for judging him as an artist, yet nothing is harder than to appreciate him at his due. If attractiveness, and attractiveness of the best kind, sufficed to make a great artist, then Filippo would be one of the greatest, greater perhaps than any other Florentine before Leonardo.

(FRA ANGELICO)

THÉOPHILE GAUTIER

(TINTORET)

JOHN RUSKIN

ANONYMOUS

Titian's magnificent pictures in the Ducal Palace were, all but one, destroyed by fire the year after his death; but his impetuous rival, Tintoretto, is abundantly represented there.

(SANDRO BOTTICELLI)

MAURICE HEWLETT

(DE LA TOUR)

CHARLES-AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE

(GREUZE)

THÉOPHILE GAUTIER

(HOBBEMA)

PAUL LAFOND