of his frescoes at Santa Croce); and this predilection was mingled
with the truly mediæval love of _quartering_.[12] The figure of the
Madonna in the small tempera pictures in the Academy at Florence is
always completely divided into two narrow segments by her dark-blue
robe.

[Footnote 12: I use this heraldic word in an inaccurate sense, knowing
no other that will express what I mean,--the division of the picture
into quaint segments of alternating colour, more marked than any of
the figure outlines.]

And this is always to be remembered in looking at any engravings from
the works of Giotto; for the injury they sustain in being deprived of
their colour is far greater than in the case of later designers. All
works produced in the fourteenth century agree in being more or less
decorative; they were intended in most instances to be subservient to
architectural effect, and were executed in the manner best calculated
to produce a striking impression when they were seen in a mass. The
painted wall and the painted window were part and parcel of one
magnificent whole; and it is as unjust to the work of Giotto, or of
any contemporary artist, to take out a single feature from the series,
and represent it in black and white on a separate page, as it would be
to take out a compartment of a noble coloured window, and engrave it
in the same manner. What is at once refined and effective, if seen at
the intended distance in unison with the rest of the work, becomes
coarse and insipid when seen isolated and near; and the more skilfully
the design is arranged, so as to give full value to the colours which
are introduced in it, the more blank and cold will it become when it
is deprived of them.