that of fire only. Again and again, his ghosts wonder that there is no
shadow cast by Dante's body; and is the poet's friend, _because_ a
painter, likely, therefore, not to have known that mortal substance
casts shadow, and terrestrial flame, light? Nay, the passage in the
'Purgatorio' where the shadows from the morning sunshine make the
flames redder, reaches the accuracy of Newtonian science; and does
Giotto, think you, all the while, see nothing of the sort?

The fact was, he saw light so intensely that he never for an instant
thought of painting it. He knew that to paint the sun was as impossible
as to stop it; and he was no trickster, trying to find out ways of
seeming to do what he did not. I can paint a rose,--yes; and I will. I
can't paint a red-hot coal; and I won't try to, nor seem to. This was
just as natural and certain a process of thinking with _him_, as
the honesty of it, and true science, were impossible to the false
painters of the sixteenth century.

Nevertheless, what his art can honestly do to make you feel as much as
he wants you to feel, about this fire, he will do; and that studiously.
That the fire be _luminous_ or not, is no matter just now. But
that the fire is _hot_, he would have you to know. Now, will you
notice what colours he has used in the whole picture. First, the blue
background, necessary to unite it with the other three subjects, is
reduced to the smallest possible space. St. Francis must be in grey,
for that is his dress; also the attendant of one of the Magi is in
grey; but so warm, that, if you saw it by itself, you would call it
brown. The shadow behind the throne, which Giotto knows he _can_
paint, and therefore does, is grey also. The rest of the picture
[Footnote: The floor has been repainted; but though its grey is now
heavy and cold, it cannot kill the splendour of the rest.] in at least