good sense; and by comparing this general colour of the reputation of
Giotto with the actual character of his designs, there cannot remain
the smallest doubt that his mind was one of the most healthy, kind,
and active, that ever informed a human frame. His love of beauty was
entirely free from weakness; his love of truth untinged by severity;
his industry constant, without impatience; his workmanship accurate,
without formalism; his temper serene, and yet playful; his imagination
exhaustless, without extravagance; and his faith firm, without
superstition. I do not know, in the annals of art, such another
example of happy, practical, unerring, and benevolent power.

I am certain that this is the estimate of his character which must be
arrived at by an attentive study of his works, and of the few data
which remain respecting his life; but I shall not here endeavour to
give proof of its truth, because I believe the subject has been
exhaustively treated by Rumohr and Förster, whose essays on the works
and character of Giotto will doubtless be translated into English, as
the interest of the English public in mediæval art increases. I shall
therefore here only endeavour briefly to sketch the relation which
Giotto held to the artists who preceded and followed him, a relation
still imperfectly understood; and then, as briefly, to indicate the
general course of his labours in Italy, as far as may be necessary for
understanding the value of the series in the Arena Chapel.

The art of Europe, between the fifth and thirteenth centuries, divides
itself essentially into great branches, one springing from, the other
grafted on, the old Roman stock. The first is the Roman art itself,
prolonged in a languid and degraded condition, and becoming at last a
mere formal system, centered at the feet of Eastern empire, and thence
generally called Byzantine. The other is the barbarous and incipient