The chapel itself may not unwarrantably be considered as one of the first efforts of Popery in resistance to the Reformation; for the Reformation, though not victorious till the sixteenth, began in reality in the thirteenth century; and the remonstrances of such bishops as our own Grossteste, the martyrdom of the Albigenses in the Dominican crusades, and the murmurs of those 'heretics,' against whose aspersions of the majesty of the Virgin this chivalrous order of the Cavalieri Godenti was instituted, were as truly the signs of the new era in religion, as the opponent work of Giotto on the walls of the Arena was a sign of the approach of a new era in art."-From The Arena Chapel at Padua, by JOHN RUSKIN.

"There is in truth a holy purity, an innocent naïveté, a child-like grace and simplicity, a freshness, a fearlessness, a yearning after all things truthful, lovely, and of good report, in the productions of this early time which invest them with a charm peculiar in its kind, and which few even of the most perfect works of the maturer era can boast of; and hence the risk and danger (which I warn you of at the outset) of becoming too passionately attached to them, of losing the power of discrimination, of admiring and imitating their defects as well as their beauties, of running into affectation in seeking after simplicity, and into exaggeration in our efforts to be in earnest ; in a word of forgetting that in art, as in human nature, it is the balance, harmony and co-equal development, of sense, intellect, and spirit, which constitutes perfection."-LORD LINDSAY'S Christian Art.

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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 а 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 medieval Florentines on the ridge of Fiesole, have often

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