A word or two, now, about the repainting by which _this_ pictura
extincta has been revived to meet existing taste. The sky is entirely
daubed over with fresh blue; yet it leaves with unusual care the
original outline of the descending angel, and of the white clouds about
his body. This idea of the angel laying his hands on the two heads--(as
a bishop at Confirmation does, in a hurry; and I've seen one sweep four
together, like Arnold de Winkelied),--partly in blessing, partly as a
symbol of their being brought together to the same place by God,--was
afterwards repeated again and again: there is one beautiful little echo
of it among the old pictures in the schools of Oxford. This is the
first occurrence of it that I know in pure Italian painting; but the
idea is Etruscan-Greek, and is used by the Etruscan sculptors of the
door of the Baptistery of Pisa, of the _evil_ angel, who "lays the
heads together" of two very different persons from these--Herodias and
her daughter.

Joachim, and the shepherd with the larkspur cap, are both quite safe;
the other shepherd a little reinforced; the black bunches of grass,
hanging about are retouches. They were once bunches of plants drawn
with perfect delicacy and care; you may see one left, faint, with
heart-shaped leaves, on the highest ridge of rock above the shepherds.
The whole landscape is, however, quite undecipherably changed and
spoiled.

You will be apt to think at first, that if anything has been restored,
surely the ugly shepherd's uglier feet have. No, not at all. Restored
feet are always drawn with entirely orthodox and academical toes, like
the Apollo Belvidere's. You would have admired them very much. These
are Giotto's own doing, every bit; and a precious business he has had