they were, was his finding out that a red thing was red, and a brown
thing brown, and a white thing white--all over.

The Greeks had painted anything anyhow,--gods black, horses red, lips
and cheeks white; and when the Etruscan vase expanded into a Cimabue
picture, or a Tafi mosaic, still,--except that the Madonna was to have
a blue dress, and everything else as much gold on it as could be
managed,--there was very little advance in notions of colour. Suddenly,
Giotto threw aside all the glitter, and all the conventionalism; and
declared that he saw the sky blue, the tablecloth white, and angels,
when he dreamed of them, rosy. And he simply founded the schools of
colour in Italy--Venetian and all, as I will show you to-morrow
morning, if it is fine. And what is more, nobody discovered much about
colour after him.

But a deeper result of his resolve to look at things as they were, was
his getting so heartily interested in them that he couldn't miss their
decisive _moment_. There is a decisive instant in all matters; and
if you look languidly, you are sure to miss it. Nature seems always,
somehow, trying to make you miss it. "I will see that through," you
must say, "with out turning my head"; or you won't see the trick of it
at all. And the most significant thing in all his work, you will find
hereafter, is his choice of moments. I will give you at once two
instances in a picture which, for other reasons, you should quickly
compare with these frescos. Return by the Via delle Belle Donne; keep
the Casa Strozzi on your right; and go straight on, through the market.
The Florentines think themselves so civilized, forsooth, for building a
nuovo Lung-Arno, and three manufactory chimneys opposite it: and yet
sell butchers' meat, dripping red, peaches, and anchovies, side by
side: it is a sight to be seen. Much more, Luca della Robbia's Madonna