I feel my inability to convey to my readers any adequate idea of the general style of Giotto's painting, and this not so much because it is a complicated one or difficult to understand, as because of its very simplicity. A few points may be mentioned in which it differed from that of his predecessors in Italy, from the pictures of the Renaissance period, and lastly from those of our own time; but when all is said, the peculiar beauty of the colouring, the simplicity and purity of the feeling, the strength and directness of the painter's aim, and the unstudied grace of his compositions will remain to baffle any description that can be given.

First let me note that previous to the time of Giotto (since the decay at least of Greek art) colour in painting meant almost exclusively the arrangement of gorgeous hues on a golden background. The tints used being little, if at all, gradated, but laid on more in the manner of a mosaic than a modern picture. Derived, as were the traditions of painting, from manuscripts of Mount Athos and mosaics of Byzantium, they were almost wholly confined to the composition of pure colours in pleasing juxtaposition, and these colours were almost invariably full and deep. It may, perhaps, make my meaning clearer if I take an antithetical example from the art of the present day. Everybody knows the characteristics of French landscape painting, a beautiful tone of grey and black, and perhaps a few other tertiary tints, and no form or colour whatever, depending entirely on the gradation for its beauty. Well, before Giotto there was no such thing as tone, save in pure colours; and gradation of colour was practically unknown. The colours used were dark and rich, purples and crimsons and deep blues, and here and there orange and green and heavy blue-blacks. These, laid upon a gold ground, more or less ornamented with chased designs, formed the chief portion of the pictorial art of the centuries preceding Giotto. Looking into one of these pictures was like looking into a decaying fire, where amidst masses of dark shade there still burnt gloomily here and there, patches of glowing cinders and bright flame. Hung in the dim recess of a chapel or an oratory, lighted by the faint glimmer of the silver lamps, these works of Christian art may well have harmonised with the dark ages of superstition which gave them life, but they were essentially unsuitable for having any real effect upon men's minds, apart from their religious uses. They had no connection with the real life of the world, full of varying emotions and conflicting passions; they had no affinity with the times when the hardbound earth cracked at the close of winter, and the sun shone once more in a blue sky, and all men's "pulses throbbed together with the fulness of the spring."

This was the first change that Giotto made in artistic method. "Away with the gold background," he said; "let us have the blue sky," and, as in the days of creation, "it was so." This we may fancy was the first step, but with it came many others. With the introduction of the sky came a corresponding lightening of the tones used throughout the picture, a corresponding increase in the amount of light depicted in the composition.

And, as over the whole of Byzantine art, there had brooded a gorgeous gloom, through which the tints only revealed themselves dimly and slowly, as we may see at the present day, the hues of tropic sea-weed glow faint beneath the waves of the China Sea, so over Giotto's frescoes there shone a calm, full light, not bathed in sunshine or enhanced by contrasted shade, but a plain clear breadth of day, sufficient to reveal clearly each object in the picture.

Just think what a change this one alteration in tone must have brought about! what an instrument it was for the correcting of the absurd traditions which then governed the practice of painting. It must have been like that produced by a Times leader upon the iniquities of local boards of guardians; namely, delight and amazement to the world at large, horror and consternation to the idiots who had done ill by stealth (though strictly in accordance with rule), and blushed to find it fame.

So keep this fact well in view, that the great change effected by Giotto was the change from rush-light to daylight, and it was only after this that further advance became possible. Do not run away with the idea that he gained thereby the whole truth; far from it. There were two centuries and a half of painters to come after him before the whole truth of light and shade was mastered, for Giotto may be said to have practically ignored shade altogether.

Nor did he advance much further in the gradation of colour than his predecessors had done; his paint is generally put on in broad flat washes, with little attempt at gradation; its beauty depends chiefly upon the exquisite manner in which these washes are combined with one another. Thus he never reaches to the utmost beauty of colour, which is only obtainable with the utmost gradation of light and shade; but his work presents itself like a landscape, ere the sun rises, on a fine summer's morning, when each object lies clearly and a little coldly defined, in the shadowless air.

It must be remembered that with the attempt to master the intricacies and gradation of light and shade, came also the use of secondary and tertiary tints, to an extent unknown in the time of Giotto, who may almost be described as the last of the pure colourists, taking pure in the sense of primary. Chiaroscuro went on gradually advancing in importance, relatively to colour and subject, till in the times of Rembrandt we find it absolutely thrusting colour and subject out of the field altogether, and making the flash upon a tin pannikin, or the obscurity of a cottage kitchen, of equal importance with the grandest traditions of our race.

What is perhaps best known as the special quality of Giotto's art is his study of nature; and it is right that I should say a few words upon this somewhat indefinite phrase, and try to show in what Giotto's study of nature consisted, and wherein it differed from that of preceding painters.

If we were able to return in reality to the old times when our painter lived, I do not fancy we should find—as many good people suppose—that the folk of that day were ignorant that there were such things as domesticated animals and birds, trees and flowers, clouds and sunsets. You may be very sure that mediÆval Florentines on the ridge of Fiesole, have often paused to watch the sun gilding the spires of Florence, much as the English traveller does; and young lovers wandering idly amongst the almond-trees by the Arno, plucked the blossoms, and admired their loveliness, as we do to-day. It was only that somehow the idea had never occurred to any one that these things were suitable for pictures; there was a notion that it would be a sort of irreverence to put such vulgar details into religious scenes—arising perhaps from a similar feeling to that which makes many well-trained Christians dislike to pray for any specially desired object. Perhaps it was owing to Giotto's early training, or rather no training, in the midst of a wild mountain country, perhaps only to his rough humorous, anti-reverential character, but probably to the combination of circumstance and individuality, that made him introduce into his compositions all sorts of extraneous matter. That to the last he entertained a strong sympathy with his early shepherd life, it is impossible to doubt, and in the designs for the decoration of the base of the Campanile, only two of which he lived to execute with his own hand, there is a singularly beautiful bas-relief, illustrating the pastoral life, in which the sheep, and the puppy watching them, are as fine as anything we have from his hand.

The great difficulty of accounting for Giotto's introduction of hitherto unused matter into his pictures, lies in the fact that it does not seem to have been due especially to any partiality on his part for this or that branch of nature, as to a principle of getting to the bottom of his subject, whatever it was. He appears to have had a power of grasping the spirit of whatever scene he was engaged upon, and illustrating that appropriately, which is, as far as I know, unequalled in the records of painting. And it is noteworthy that this spirit is with him always the reverse of eclectic: no painter can be more entirely free from all principles of aristocracy; his sympathies are always with the people; the view he takes of any subject is the plain, common-sense view, such as plain, common-sense people can understand.

Connected with this is the third great characteristic of Giotto, perhaps the strongest in his whole nature, and certainly the one which was least in accordance with the spirit of his time. This is his strong dramatic power.

This power shows itself in almost every work of the master's we have left us, and even survives his death, and lives in the work of his pupils. His pictures are not alone scenes, they are SITUATIONS, on each the curtain might fall without any sense of incongruity. Besides their appropriateness of gesture and oneness of feeling, they possess the great characteristic of dramatic art, in making the scene live before you, subduing its various incidents into one strain of meaning, yet keeping each incident complete and individual, as well as making it help the main purpose. In most of Giotto's pictures there will be found a diversity of action and expression, all of which lead up to the main action, and help to enforce and illustrate it. A minor point in which the same quality shows, is in the amount of emotion which this painter is capable of expressing by a single gesture, an amount so great that it occasionally runs some danger of lapsing into caricature. This is especially plain in such pictures as the Betrayal and the Entombment, in the Arena Chapel. But where this dramatic quality is most strongly marked is in the bas-reliefs on the base of the Campanile; in all these Giotto has succeeded, not only in choosing the most appropriate figures for illustrating his meaning, but in seizing the very moment which is most significant.

To sum up these three main characteristics of Giotto's style, they are—First, a lighter, purer tone of colour than had been in use before the time of Cimabue, and a greater variety and purity of tint than had been attained by that master, especially in the more distant portions of the picture. Second, the introduction into his compositions of a certain amount of natural detail which had been before totally neglected, and the substitution of the portraits of actual men and women for the imaginary beings that had formerly filled up the backgrounds of the Byzantine pictures. Third, comes the power of illustrating the real meaning of his subject, and not merely suggesting it, as had formerly been the case, allied to which is the dramatic quality of which I have just spoken.

I feel how barren is all this description to explain the progress in art made by this artist—the progress from stagnation to movement, from death to life, from symbolical types, to the things themselves. It would appear unnecessary to dwell upon the few points in which his work was technically deficient, or those in which he but repeated the errors of his predecessors, but the following may just be mentioned.

The comparative dulness of the reds in use at that time, the lack of depth of hue, and variation of colour in differing aspects of light and shade; the comparative poorness of the drapery, as compared with that of the later Venetian and Florentine masters; the deficiency in the rendering of form, and the elementary amount of knowledge of perspective and anatomy—on all these points might exception be taken to his work with perfect justice, and yet when each had been given its due amount of criticism, the wonder would still be that he accomplished so much, and not so little. For two hundred years after the death of Giotto the advance in the drawing of landscape was so slight as to be almost imperceptible, and yet, compared with his landscape, that of those that preceded him was as "moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine."

I have omitted in this description the main characteristic of Giotto's style, and I have done so because it is so intangible that it can only be felt, not described. This characteristic, hinted at by Lord Lindsay in the quotation which is placed at the head of this chapter, is the simple faith in which each of these compositions abounds; the feeling conveyed to the spectator that thus, and no otherwise, did the occurrence take place, and that the painter has not altered it a jot or tittle for his own purposes. This must be felt to be believed, and I only call attention to it here lest it should be supposed that it has failed to impress me.