at Assisi, and at the Madonna dell' Arena chapel at Padua when Dante
was staying there during his exile. In those days no man was painter
only or architect only; an all-round knowledge of both arts and crafts
was desired by every ambitious youth who was attracted by the wish to
make beautiful things, and Giotto was a universal master. It was not
then surprising that on his settling finally in Florence he should be
invited to design a campanile to stand for ever beside the cathedral,
or that he should be appointed superintendent of the cathedral works.

Giotto did not live to see even his tower completed--it is the unhappy
destiny of architects to die too soon--but he was able during the
four years left him to find time for certain accessory decorations,
of which more will be said later, and also to paint for S. Trinità
the picture which we shall see in the Accademia, together with a few
other works, since perished, for the Badia and S. Giorgio. He died in
1336 and was buried in the cathedral, as the tablet, with Benedetto
da Maiano's bust of him, tells. He is also to be seen full length,
in stone, in a niche at the Uffizi; but the figure is misleading,
for if Vasari is to be trusted (and for my part I find it amusing to
trust him as much as possible) the master was insignificant in size.

Giotto has suffered, I think, in reputation, from Ruskin, who took
him peculiarly under his wing, persistently called him "the Shepherd,"
and made him appear as something between a Sunday-school superintendent
and the Creator. The "Mornings in Florence" and "Giotto and his Works
in Padua" so insist upon the artist's holiness and conscious purpose
in all he did that his genial worldliness, shrewdness, and humour, as
brought out by Dante, Vasari, Sacchetti, and Boccaccio, are utterly
excluded. What we see is an intense saint where really was a very
robust man. Sacchetti's story of Giotto one day stumbling over a