crowned the attendant Seraphs. And so in all its celestial purity and sunny loveliness-bright as inspired by dreams of heaven-the picture flashed upon the gathered crowds who bent low with the tribute of unconscious "Aves."

"A king stood bare before its sovran grace; A reverent people shouted to behold, The picture, not the King."

And that quarter of the "modern Athens" which witnessed this demonstration of enthusiasm was thenceforth called by the name it still retains, of the "Borgo Allegro."

"A noble picture! worthy of the shout, Wherewith along the streets the people bore Its cherub faces, which the sun threw out, Until they stooped and entered the church door!"

For when completed, the painting was conveyed in festal procession to its destination in the church of Santa Maria Novella, amid an excited multitude, with music and with gladness. "Credette Cimabue nella pintura Tener lo campo ed ora ha Giotto il grido Si che la fama di colui oscura." Giotto was the real resuscitator of Art in Italy. He was the first to lay for ever aside the Byzantine models, to introduce expression and sentiment, and thus to emancipate Art from the trammels of false conventionalities, and to assert its true dignity as the worthy exponent of a great and a glorious nature. Giotto, in fine, was the first of the Italian painters who dared to be thoroughly original. Every one knows the story of the shepherd boy, who, while keeping his flocks in the open fields by the mountain side, amused himself by sketching from the life on a piece of rude slate, with a pointed stone for a pencil; and how it happened that Cimabue came by, and with one glance at the boy's performance, he recognized the genius of a brother, and bore him far away from his native woods and fields to teach him all that relates to the theory and practice of painting.

The modern Greekists were remarkable for their utterly expressionless heads, and groups disposed after one prescribed order, from which no deviation was ever attempted. Giotto arranged his figures with grace and freedom, and invested their countenances with varied character and spirit, so that the "persons in grief look

melancholy, and those who are joyous look gay"-wonderful in those days of wretched uniformity, when the exhibition of passion or sentiment in a picture was a thing almost unheard of. This artist was the friend of the imfurnished subjects for some of his mortal Dante, and the "Paradiso" has decorations of the church of St. Francis of Assisi. How is it, by the by, that a regular and worthy series of designs has never yet been executed in illustration of the "Divina Commedia ?" Single subjects are plentiful enough, but why not a complete consecutive series! Here is a wide and magnificent field for the exercise of the most varied and transcendent powers. For, as far as our own limited artistic insight is able to penetrate, we believe no poet has ever furnished more noble subjects for the pencil of a great artist than Dante Alighieri. His visions are all so distinct and palpable, that we think none can read his grand poem, and especially the "Inferno," without having a very clear and vivid conception of its awful scenery and of the woe-worn shades, who wander in hopeless despair, amid its deep and "starless gloom." The opening canto would form a capital subject. The apparition of Virgil to Dante in that mysterious "selva oscura," beneath the mountain shadow; and the story of Francesca di Rimini, might supply two striking tableaux. And studies of the beautiful are scattered plentifully throughout the "Paradiso," albeit less boldly defined than those of terror in the earlier portion of the poem.

The

Mais revenons à nos peintres. same tale is related of Giotto as of Apelles. That on one occasion he asserted his artistic excellence by tracing a perfect circle with one stroke of his pencil. According to Boccaccio, "He had a genius of that power that there was nothing which nature (who is the mother of all things) could bring forth but he would so wondrously imitate it, that it seemed not only similar, but the same; thus deluding the visual sense of men, so that they deemed that which was only pictured before them did in reality exist." It is this ability of life-like delineation, by no means uncommon now, nor difficult of attainment, which generally attracts most of wonder and admiration in the vulgar. A higher degree of culture is requisite before they can recognize and appre

ciate the soul of painting, its intellectuality, its deeper and diviner sense. For what is the noble art of painting chiefly to be valued Not, we think, as the mere fac-simile of nature, though that, as far as it goes, is well; but it is of superlatively more worth as a vehicle of expression, even as in the case of music,-another kind of soullanguage, through which to interpret, if possible, some phases of the universal and infinite poetry of nature and of life.

Giotto's career throughout is one very pleasing to contemplate. He not only stands high among the most illustrious of Florence as an artist and a genius, but he is described, moreover, by his contemporaries as an amiable man, and a right merry companion. With regard to his personal character, he was possessed of immense energy, and untiring industry; otherwise, indeed, he would never have been able to produce such complete changes in the whole system of art, and thus to form an ever memorable epoch in the history of painting. He searched after truth with manly independence; not receiving it without examination, as a time-honoured legacy from his predecessors. No sympathy had he with the prescribed model consecrated by the usage of ages, considered as such. He instantly discarded it as a falsity and a sin, whenever he discovered that it was in non-accordance with the regal dictates of the spirit of the true and the beautiful. This, indeed, is the way in which all great revolutions have been effected. Not by standing in idleness, and waiting for the "good time coming," but by courage, and by daring; not by listless dreaming, but by earnest thought and vigorous action; by trial and by strength.

We shall not linger over the scholars of Giotto, so numerous that they filled all Italy. We will only mention Taddeo Gaddi, perhaps the greatest, and the Dantesque Orcagna, and Spinello, who painted a picture of Satan so infernally ugly, that it haunted his dreams; and his excited imagination conjured up a vision of the arch-fiend demanding why the artist had represented him under such a form of horror. Nor shall we speak further of the Campo Santo, or Pisan Cemetery, which occupied the genius of nearly all the painters of the time. We must, how

ever, passingly allude to the bronze gates of San Giovanni. It may be objected, that such notice belongs properly to a review of sculpture; still, as these gates had so powerful an influence on every department of art, and were so fruitful as studies for subsequent painters, a reference to them here is not out of place.

Fair Florence was at the acmé of her grandeur in 1401, when it was proposed to erect another gate to the Baptistery of San Giovanni, to correspond with the one previously executed from Giotto's designs by Andrea Pisano. The government, therefore, issued a proclamation inviting all Italy to the competition. Seven artists were elected as competitors. At the end of a year each was to send in a design in bronze, from which of course the best would be then selected. All the competing artists worked during this time in the greatest secresy, except one. While the others allowed no visitors to enter their ateliers under any consideration, that of Lorenzo Ghiberti was open to all. This artist was a young man of twenty-three, a Florentine, who had already secured some distinction in design and the practical part of sculpture. On the exhibition of the seven pieces at the end of the year, three were at once adjudged superior to the rest. These were the works of Donatello, Brunelleschi, and Ghiberti. Regarding these there was a division in the public opinion. The point was decided by Brunelleschi and Donatello, who, with noble generosity, withdrew from the competition, declaring that to Lorenzo Ghiberti belonged the merit of having excelled them all.

In two and twenty years the gate was completed. It represented a series of subjects, in illustration of the New Testament, in twenty compartments; and on other eight pannels full-length figures of the Evangelists and Doctors of the Church: the whole surrounded by a richly elaborate border. When this magnificent work was finished, another and central gate was confided to the genius of Ghiberti. Speaking of these gates, in the warmth of his enthusiasm, Michael Angelo proclaimed them "right worthy to become the gates of paradise." Lorenzo tells us that he undertook this commission,

con grandissima diligenza e grand

issimo amore." In these words he unfolds to us the grand secret of his triumph. The primary elements of success in all great achievements consist of ardent enthusiasm, stern application, deep devotion, and an infinite love. Firstly, enthusiasm, the vivid dream, and the earnest faith, inspiring | application, which is sustained and strengthened by love, the conservator. What is it but this "grandissimo amore," which has given us the fairest dreams of beauty, and the noblest poet-songs? It is this, too, which has preserved the lamp of genius burning bright amid scorn and discouragement, through sorrow and through suffering, in darkness and in chains. It is this influence which makes men immortal; which gives them power; the mighty spell of a deep affection, and a strong believing trust, without which a true and enduring effect has never yet been produced by genius. It is this which shines through the world-renowned creations of Angelo and of Raffaelle; through the dramas of Shakspeare and the songs of Burns; gleaming fitfully amid the awful visions of Dante, and sparkling in the glad lays of the wandering troubadours.

The most distinguished artist, through whose productions the influence of Ghiberti's genius may be traced, was unquestionably Masaccio di San Giovanni. Little is known respecting his life, and the dates of his birth and death are subjects of dispute. His works, few in number, but extraordinary in merit, formed worthy studies for the noblest artists of after times.

About this period flourished the painter monks, who carried religious art to perhaps the highest degree of refinement it has ever attained. These were the idealists, who sought not merely the loveliest harmonies of form and colouring, but whose far nobler ambition consisted in the impersonation in their works of all that purity and holiness, and seraphic love, which filled their saintly dreams. We will refer to two only. Il Beato Angelico da Fiesole was accustomed to preface each effort of his pencil with solemn prayer and fasting; and so, glowing with deep faith and truest inspiration, he painted, not for fame or honour among men, but alone for the glory of religion, pictures in which the figures of saints, and angels, and madonnas,

have seldom been equalled and never surpassed. Redolent less of earth than of heaven, they exhibit in a striking degree the sublimest and most lovely expression of the triumph, and the rest, the ecstatic joy, and the eternal repose of the paradise of God. Mr. Ruskin, in that noble, earnest book of his, "Modern Painters," speaks enthu siastically of the "angel choirs of Angelico, with the flames on their white foreheads waving brighter as they move, and the sparkles streaming from their purple wings like the glitter of many suns upon a sounding sea, listening in the pauses of alternate song, for the prolonging of the trumpet blast, and the answering of psaltery and cymbal throughout the endless deep, and from all the star-shores of heaven." Il Fráte Bartolomeo was the attached friend of Savonarola, and an inmate of the same convent. The fervent eloquence and intense religious spirit of this high-souled enthusiast produced a deep and lasting effect on the mind of Bartolomeo. Elevation of thought, nobleness of expression, and a pure, holy feeling, are stamped upon his works. It is said he narrowly escaped sharing the tragical fate of his friend, after whose death he was so overwhelmed with grief and fear, that he lived in the sternest seclusion without touching a pencil during four years. His artistic genius was excited by a visit from the youthful Raffaelle, and the friendship thus commenced between the two painters lasted until death. These were of those, and there were many others, simple, earnest-minded men, who, in the gloom and the silence of the cloister, worked daily amid vigils, and prayers, and fasting, not for human praises, but for divine smiles; not for earthly honours, but for celestial bene dictions; not for a wreath among men, but for a crown in the midst of the angels of God. And still while here they reached the blessing; and toiling ever on in faith and in love, they found that art, even as all high things nobly pursued, is its own exceeding great reward;" and now, having received the victor's palm, earth's immortalities lie at their feet.

once more

Contemporary with Bartolomeo lived Perugino and Francia. Perugino was the master of Raffaelle, and Francia, although more than thirty years older,