I am obliged to interrupt my account of the Spanish chapel by the
following notes on the sculptures of Giotto's Campanile: first because
I find that inaccurate accounts of those sculptures are in course of
publication; and chiefly because I cannot finish my work in the Spanish
chapel until one of my good Oxford helpers, Mr. Caird, has completed
some investigations he has undertaken for me upon the history connected
with it. I had written my own analysis of the fourth side, believing
that in every scene of it the figure of St. Dominic was repeated. Mr.
Caird first suggested, and has shown me already good grounds for his
belief,[Footnote: He wrote thus to me on 11th November last: "The three
preachers are certainly different. The first is Dominic; the second,
Peter Martyr, whom I have identified from his martyrdom on the other
wall; and the third, Aquinas."] that the preaching monks represented
are in each scene intended for a different person. I am informed also
of several careless mistakes which have got into my description of the
fresco of the Sciences; and finally, another of my young helpers, Mr.
Charles F. Murray,--one, however, whose help is given much in the form
of antagonism,--informs me of various critical discoveries lately made,
both by himself, and by industrious Germans, of points respecting the
authenticity of this and that, which will require notice from me: more
especially he tells me of certification that the picture in the
Uffizii, of which I accepted the ordinary attribution to Giotto, is by
Lorenzo Monaco,--which indeed may well be, without in the least
diminishing the use to you of what I have written of its predella, and
without in the least, if you think rightly of the matter, diminishing
your confidence in what I tell you of Giotto generally. There is one
kind of knowledge of pictures which is the artist's, and another which
is the antiquary's and the picture-dealer's; the latter especially
acute, and founded on very secure and wide knowledge of canvas,