imaginative power, or of the perpetual beauty of even its smallest
incidental designs. But this very richness of sculptural invention
prevented the French from cultivating their powers of painting, except
in illumination (of which art they were the acknowledged masters), and
in glass-painting. Their exquisite gift of fretting their stone-work
with inexhaustible wealth of sculpture, prevented their feeling the
need of figure-design on coloured surfaces.

The style of architecture prevalent in Italy at the same period,
presented, on the contrary, large blank surfaces, which could only be
rendered interesting by covering them with mosaic or painting.

The Italians were not at the time capable of doing this for
themselves, and mosaicists were brought from Constantinople, who
covered the churches of Italy with a sublime monotony of Byzantine
traditions. But the Gothic blood was burning in the Italian veins; and
the Florentines and Pisans could not rest content in the formalism of
the Eastern splendour. The first innovator was, I believe, Giunta of
Pisa, the second Cimabue, the third Giotto; the last only being a man
of power enough to effect a complete revolution in the artistic
principles of his time.

He, however, began, like his master Cimabue, with a perfect respect
for his Byzantine models; and his paintings for a long time consisted
only of repetitions of the Byzantine subjects, softened in treatment,
enriched in number of figures, and enlivened in gesture. Afterwards he
invented subjects of his own. The manner and degree of the changes
which he at first effected could only be properly understood by actual
comparison of his designs with the Byzantine originals;[6] but in
default of the means of such a comparison, it may be generally stated