beauty. What this 'perfection' of Apelles was, we cannot now tell; but
the probability is, that it existed only in design, and that the union
of this with artistic colouring was reserved for the modern masters.

Before these masters appeared, and before the influence we are about
to refer to was felt in Europe, some efforts were made by unassisted
genius to rise beyond the conventionalities of the time; in the latter
half of the thirteenth century, Cimabue already surpassed his modern
Greek preceptors; and his disciple Giotto was considered so natural
and original, that his style could not be referred to any existing
school, but was called the _maniera di Giotto_. 'Instead of the harsh
outline,' says Vasari, 'circumscribing the whole figure, the glaring
eyes, the pointed hands and feet, and all the defects arising from a
total want of shadow, the figures of Giotto exhibit a better attitude;
the heads have an air of life and freedom, the drapery is more
natural, and there are even some attempts at fore-shortening the
limbs.' All this, however, although a decided improvement on mediæval
art, was rude and imperfect--it was only the first faint dawn of a
better light. 'As yet,' to use the words of Roscoe, 'the characters
rarely excelled the daily prototypes of common life; and their forms,
although at times sufficiently accurate, were often vulgar and
heavy.... To everything great and elevated, the art was yet a
stranger: even the celebrated picture of Pollajuolo exhibits only a
group of half-naked and vulgar wretches, discharging their arrows at a
miserable fellow-creature, who, by changing places with one of his
murderers, might with equal propriety become a murderer himself.'

But the time at length came when that stimulus was to be communicated
to taste which sent a thrill throughout the general heart of Europe.
The pictures of the old Greeks were lost for ever, dead and gone; but