Giotto, then, is sent for, to paint this high chapel: I am not sure if
he chose his own subjects from the life of St. Francis: I think so,--but
of course can't reason on the guess securely. At all events, he would have
much of his own way in the matter.

Now you must observe that painting a Gothic chapel rightly is just the
same thing as painting a Greek vase rightly. The chapel is merely the
vase turned upside-down, and outside-in. The principles of decoration
are exactly the same. Your decoration is to be proportioned to the size
of your vase; to be together delightful when you look at the cup, or
chapel, as a whole; to be various and entertaining when you turn the
cup round; (you turn _yourself_ round in the chapel;) and to bend
its heads and necks of figures about, as it best can, over the hollows,
and ins and outs, so that anyhow, whether too long or too short-possible
or impossible--they may be living, and full of grace. You will also please
take it on my word today--in another morning walk you shall have proof of
it--that Giotto was a pure Etruscan-Greek of the thirteenth century:
converted indeed to worship St. Francis instead of Heracles; but as far
as vase-painting goes, precisely the Etruscan he was before. This is
nothing else than a large, beautiful, coloured Etruscan vase you have
got, inverted over your heads like a diving-bell.' [Footnote: I observe
that recent criticism is engaged in proving all Etruscan vases to be of
late manufacture, in imitation of archaic Greek. And I therefore must
briefly anticipate a statement which I shall have to enforce in following
letters. Etruscan art remains in its own Italian valleys, of the Arno and
upper Tiber, in one unbroken series of work, from the seventh century
before Christ, to this hour, when the country whitewasher still scratches
his plaster in Etruscan patterns. All Florentine work of the finest
kind--Luca della Robbia's, Ghiberti's, Donatello's, Filippo Lippi's,