and if from it you could turn to others of like date, you would find
the same to be true. The meaning was the main thing thought of. When
Giotto painted his scenes from the life of St. Francis, his first aim
was that the stories should be well told and easily grasped by all
who looked at them. Their beauty was of less importance. This
difference between the aim of art in the Middle Ages and in our own
day is fundamental. If you begin by picking to pieces the pictures
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries because the drawing is bad,
the colouring crude, and the grouping unnatural, you might as well
never look at them at all. Putting faults and old fashions aside to
think of the meaning of the picture, we shall often be rewarded by
finding a soul within, and the work may affect us powerfully,
notwithstanding its simple forms and few strong colours.

Nevertheless, after the painter had planned his picture so as to convey
its message and meaning, he did try to make it beautiful to look upon,
and he often succeeded. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
it was beauty of outline and a pleasant patching together of bright
colours for which the painters strove, both in pictures and in
manuscripts. If you think of this picture for a moment as a coloured
pattern, you will see how pretty it is. The blue wings against the
gold background make a hedge for the angel faces and look extremely
well. If the figure of Richard II. seems flat, if you feel as though
he were cut out of cardboard and had no thickness, then turn your mind
to consider only the outline of the figure. It is very graceful. Artists
in the thirteenth century sometimes made their figures over-long if
they thought that a sweep of graceful line would look well in a certain
position in their picture; the drapery was bent into impossible curves
if so they fell into a pretty pattern.