partly to the naïveté with which art was commonly regarded. Giotto,
like all the great painters of the period, was merely a travelling
decorator of walls, at so much a day; having at Florence a _bottega_,
or workshop, for the production and sale of small tempera pictures.
There were no such things as "studios" in those days. An artist's
"studies" were over by the time he was eighteen; after that he was a
_lavoratore_, "labourer," a man who knew his business, and produced
certain works of known value for a known price; being troubled with no
philosophical abstractions, shutting himself up in no wise for the
reception of inspirations; receiving, indeed, a good many, as a matter
of course,--just as he received the sunbeams which came in at his
window, the light which he worked by;--in either case, without
mouthing about it, or much concerning himself as to the nature of it.
Not troubled by critics either; satisfied that his work was well done,
and that people would find it out to be well done; but not vain of it,
nor more profoundly vexed at its being found fault with, than a good
saddler would be by some one's saying his last saddle was uneasy in
the seat. Not, on the whole, much molested by critics, but generally
understood by the men of sense, his neighbours and friends, and
permitted to have his own way with the walls he had to paint, as
being, on the whole, an authority about walls; receiving at the same
time a good deal of daily encouragement and comfort in the simple
admiration of the populace, and in the general sense of having done
good, and painted what no man could look upon without being the better
for it.

Thus he went, a serene labourer, throughout the length and breadth of
Italy. For the first ten years of his life, a shepherd; then a
student, perhaps for five or six; then already in Florence, setting
himself to his life's task; and called as a master to Rome when he was