THE LAST SUPPER.

I have not examined the original fresco with care enough to be able to say whether the uninteresting quietness of its design is redeemed by more than ordinary attention to expression; it is one of the least attractive subjects in the Arena Chapel, and always sure to be passed over in any general observation of the series: nevertheless, however unfavourably it may at first contrast with the designs of later masters, and especially with Leonardo's, the reader should not fail to observe that Giotto's aim, had it been successful, was the higher of the two, as giving truer rendering of the probable fact. There is no distinct evidence, in the sacred text, of the annunciation of coming treachery having produced among the disciples the violent surprise and agitation represented by Leonardo. Naturally, they would not at first understand what was meant. They knew nothing distinctly of the machinations of the priests; and so little of the character or purposes of Judas, that even after he had received the sop which was to point him out to the others as false;—and after they had heard the injunction, "That thou doest, do quickly,"—the other disciples had still no conception of the significance, either of the saying, or the act: they thought that Christ meant he was to buy something for the feast. Nay, Judas himself, so far fromstarting, as a convicted traitor, and thereby betraying himself, as in Leonardo's picture, had not, when Christ's first words were uttered, any immediately active intention formed. The devil had not entered into him until he received the sop. The passage in St. John's account is a curious one, and little noticed; but it marks very distinctly the paralysed state of the man's mind. He had talked with the priests, covenanted with them, and even sought opportunity to bring Jesus into their hands; but while such opportunity was wanting, the act had never presented itself fully to him for adoption or rejection. He had toyed with it, dreamed over it, hesitated, and procrastinated over it, as a stupid and cowardly person would, such as traitors are apt to be. But the way of retreat was yet open; the conquest of the temper not complete. Only after receiving the sop the ideafinallypresented itself clearly, and was accepted, "To-night, while He is in the garden, I can do it; and I will." And Giotto has indicated this distinctly by giving Judas still the Apostle's nimbus, both in this subject and in that of the Washing of the Feet; while it is taken away in the previous subject of the Hiring, and the following one of the Seizure: thus it fluctuates, expires, and reillumines itself, until his fall is consummated. This being the general state of the Apostles' knowledge, the words, "One of you shall betray me," would excite no feeling in their minds correspondent to that with which we now read the prophetic sentence. What this "giving up" of their Master meant became a question of bitter and self-searching thought with them,—gradually of intense sorrow and questioning. But had they understood it in the sense we now understand it, they would never have each asked, "Lord, is it I?" Peter believed himself incapable even ofdenyingChrist; and of giving him up to death for money, every one of his true disciplesknewthemselves incapable; the thought never occurred to them. In slowly-increasing wonder and sorrow (ηρξαντο λυπεισθαι, Mark xiv. 19), not knowing what was meant, they asked one by one, with pauses between, "Is it I?" and another, "Is it I?" and this so quietly and timidly that the one who was lyingon Christ's breast never stirred from his place; and Peter, afraid to speak, signed to him to ask who it was. One further circumstance, showing that this was the real state of their minds, we shall find Giotto take cognisance of in the next fresco.

In this design, it will be observed, there are still the twelve disciples, and the nimbus is yet given to Judas (though, as it were, setting, his face not being seen).

Considering the deep interest and importance of every circumstance of the Last Supper, I cannot understand how preachers and commentators pass by the difficulty of clearly understanding the periods indicated in St. John's account of it. It seems that Christ must have risen while they were still eating, must have washed their feet as they sate or reclined at the table, just as the Magdalen had washed His own feet in the Pharisee's house; that, this done, He returned to the table, and the disciples continuing to eat, presently gave the sop to Judas. For St. John says, that he having received the sop, wentimmediatelyout; yet that Christ had washed his feet is certain, from the words, "Ye are clean, but not all." Whatever view the reader may, on deliberation, choose to accept, Giotto's is clear, namely, that though not cleansed by the baptism, Judas was yet capable of being cleansed. The devil had not entered into him at the time of the washing of the feet, and he retains the sign of an Apostle.

The composition is one of the most beautiful of the series, especially owing to the submissive grace of the two standing figures.

For the first time we have Giotto's idea of the face of the traitor clearly shown. It is not, I think, traceable through any of the previous series; and it has often surprised me to observe how impossible it was in the works of almost any of the sacred painters to determine by the mere cast of feature which was meant for the false Apostle. Here, however, Giotto's theory of physiognomy, and together with it his idea of the character of Judas, are perceivable enough. It is evident that he looks upon Judas mainly as a sensual dullard, and foul-brained fool; a man in no respect exalted in bad eminence of treachery above the mass of common traitors, but merely a distinct type of the eternal treachery to good, in vulgar men, which stoops beneath, and opposes in its appointed measure, the life and efforts of all noble persons, their natural enemies in this world; as the slime lies under a clear stream running through an earthy meadow. Our careless and thoughtless English use of the word into which the Greek "Diabolos" has been shortened, blinds us in general to the meaning of "Deviltry," which, in its essence, is nothing else than slander, or traitorhood;—the accusing and giving up of good. In particular it has blinded us to the meaning of Christ's words, "Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a traitor and accuser?" and led us to think that the "one of you is a devil" indicated some greater than human wickedness in Judas; whereas the practical meaning of the entire fact of Judas' ministry and fall is, that out of any twelve men chosen for the forwarding of any purpose,—or, much more, out of any twelve men we meet,—one, probably, is or will be a Judas.

The modern German renderings of all the scenes of Christ's life in which the traitor is conspicuous are very curious in their vulgar misunderstanding of the history, and their consequent endeavours to represent Judas as more diabolic thanselfish, treacherous, and stupid men are in all their generations. They paint him usually projected against strong effects of light, in lurid chiaroscuro;—enlarging the whites of his eyes, and making him frown, grin, and gnash his teeth on all occasions, so as to appear among the other Apostles invariably in the aspect of a Gorgon.

How much more deeply Giotto has fathomed the fact, I believe all men will admit who have sufficient purity and abhorrence of falsehood to recognise it in its daily presence, and who know how the devil's strongest work is done for him by men who are too bestial to understand what they betray.

Little is to be observed in this design of any distinctive merit; it is only a somewhat completer version of the ordinary representation given in illuminated missals and other conventual work, suggesting, as if they had happened at the same moment, the answer, "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil," and the accusation of blasphemy which causes the high-priest to rend his clothes.

Apparently distrustful of his power of obtaining interest of a higher kind, Giotto has treated the enrichments more carefully than usual, down even to the steps of the high-priest's seat. The torch and barred shutters conspicuously indicate its being now dead of night. That the torch is darker than the chamber, if not an error in the drawing, is probably the consequence of a darkening alteration in the yellow colours used for the flame.

It is characteristic of Giotto's rational and human view of all subjects admitting such aspect, that he has insisted here chiefly on the dejection and humiliation of Christ, making no attempt to suggest to the spectator any other divinity than that of patience made perfect through suffering. Angelico's conception of the same subject is higher and more mystical. He takes the moment when Christ is blindfolded, and exaggerates almost into monstrosity the vileness of feature and bitterness of sneer in the questioners, "Prophesy unto us, who is he that smote thee;" but the bearing of the person of Christ is entirely calm and unmoved; and his eyes, open, are seen through the binding veil, indicating the ceaseless omniscience.

This mystical rendering is, again, rejected by the later realistic painters; but while the earlier designers, with Giotto at their head, dwelt chiefly on the humiliation and the mockery, later painters dwelt on the physical pain. In Titian's great picture of this subject in the Louvre, one of the executioners is thrusting the thorn-crown down upon the brow with his rod, and the action of Christ is that of a person suffering extreme physical agony.

No representations of the scene exist, to my knowledge, in which the mockery is either sustained with indifference, or rebuked by any stern or appealing expression of feature; yet one of these two forms of endurance would appear, to a modern habit of thought, the most natural and probable.

This design is one of great nobleness and solemnity in the isolation of the principal figure, and removal of all motives of interest depending on accessories, or merely temporary incidents. Even the Virgin and her attendant women are kept in the background; all appeal for sympathy through physical suffering is disdained. Christ is not represented as borne down by the weight of the Cross, nor as urged forward by the impatience of the executioners. The thing to be shown,—the unspeakable mystery,—is the simple fact, the Bearing of the Cross by the Redeemer. It would be vain to compare the respective merits or value of a design thus treated, and of one like Veronese's of this same subject, in which every essential accessory and probable incident is completely conceived. The abstract and symbolical suggestion will always appeal to one order of minds, the dramatic completeness to another. Unquestionably, the last is the greater achievement of intellect, but the manner and habit of thought are perhaps loftier in Giotto. Veronese leads us to perceive the reality of the act, and Giotto to understand its intention.

The treatment of this subject was, in Giotto's time, so rigidly fixed by tradition that it was out of his power to display any of his own special modes of thought; and, as in the Bearing of the Cross, so here, but yet more distinctly, the temporary circumstances are little regarded, the significance of the event being alone cared for. But even long after this time, in all the pictures of the Crucifixion by the great masters, with the single exception perhaps of that by Tintoret in the Church of San Cassano at Venice, there is a tendency to treat the painting as a symmetrical image, or collective symbol of sacred mysteries, rather than as a dramatic representation. Even in Tintoret's great Crucifixion in the School of St. Roch, the group of fainting women forms a kind of pedestal for the Cross. The flying angels in the composition before us are thus also treated with a restraint hardly passing the limits of decorative symbolism. The fading away of theirfigures into flame-like cloud may perhaps be founded on the verse, "He maketh His angels spirits; His ministers a flame of fire" (though erroneously, the right reading of that verse being, "He maketh the winds His messengers, and the flaming fire His servant"); but it seems to me to give a greater sense of possible truth than the entire figures, treading the clouds with naked feet, of Perugino and his successors.

I do not consider that in fulfilling the task of interpreter intrusted to me, with respect to this series of engravings, I may in general permit myself to unite with it the duty of a critic. But in the execution of a laborious series of engravings, some must of course be better, some worse; and it would be unjust, no less to the reader than to Giotto, if I allowed this plate to pass without some admission of its inadequacy. It may possibly have been treated with a little less care than the rest, in the knowledge that the finished plate, already in the possession of the members of the Arundel Society, superseded any effort with inferior means; be that as it may, the tenderness of Giotto's composition is, in the engraving before us, lost to an unusual degree.

It may be generally observed that the passionateness of the sorrow both of the Virgin and disciples, is represented by Giotto and all great following designers as reaching its crisis at the Entombment, not at the Crucifixion. The expectation that, after experiencing every form of human suffering, Christ would yet come down from the cross, or in some other visible and immediate manner achieve for Himself the victory, might be conceived to have supported in a measure the minds of those among His disciples who watched by His cross. But when the agony was closed by actual death, and the full strain was put upon their faith, by their laying in the sepulchre, wrapped in His grave-clothes, Him in whom they trusted,"that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel," their sorrow became suddenly hopeless; a gulf of horror opened, almost at unawares, under their feet; and in the poignancy of her astonied despair, it was no marvel that the agony of the Madonna in the "Pietà" became subordinately associated in the mind of the early Church with that of their Lord Himself;—a type of consummate human suffering.

Quite one of the loveliest designs of the series. It was a favourite subject with Giotto; meeting, in all its conditions, his love of what was most mysterious, yet most comforting and full of hope, in the doctrines of his religion. His joy in the fact of the Resurrection, his sense of its function, as the key and primal truth of Christianity, was far too deep to allow him to dwell on any of its minor circumstances, as later designers did, representing the moment of bursting the tomb, and the supposed terror of its guards. With Giotto the leading thought is not of physical reanimation, nor of the momentarily exerted power of breaking the bars of the grave; but the consummation of Christ's work in the first manifesting to human eyes, and the eyes of one who had loved Him and believed in Him, His power to take again the life He had laid down. This first appearance to her out of whom He had cast seven devils is indeed the very central fact of the Resurrection. The keepers had not seen Christ; they had seen only the angel descending, whose countenance was like lightning: for fear of him they became as dead; yet this fear, though great enough to cause them to swoon, was so far conquered at the return of morning, that they were ready to take money-payment for giving a false report of the circumstances. The Magdalen, therefore, is the first witness of the Resurrection; to the love, for whose sake much had been forgiven, this gift is also first given; and as the first witness of the truth, so sheis the first messenger of the Gospel. To the Apostles it was granted to proclaim the Resurrection to all nations; but the Magdalen was bidden to proclaim it to the Apostles.

In the chapel of the Bargello, Giotto has rendered this scene with yet more passionate sympathy. Here, however, its significance is more thoughtfully indicated through all the accessories, down even to the withered trees above the sepulchre, while those of the garden burst into leaf. This could hardly escape notice when the barren boughs were compared by the spectator with the rich foliage of the neighbouring designs, though, in the detached plate, it might easily be lost sight of.

Giotto continues to exert all his strength on these closing subjects. None of the Byzantine or earlier Italian painters ventured to introduce the entire figure of Christ in this scene: they showed the feet only, concealing the body; according to the text, "a cloud received Him out of their sight." This composition, graceful as it is daring, conveys the idea of ascending motion more forcibly than any that I remember by other than Venetian painters. Much of its power depends on the continuity of line obtained by the half-floating figures of the two warning angels.

I cannot understand why this subject was so seldom treated by religious painters: for the harmony of Christian creed depends as much upon it as on the Resurrection itself; while the circumstances of the Ascension, in their brightness, promise, miraculousness, and direct appeal to all the assembled Apostles, seem more fitted to attract the joyful contemplation of all who received the faith. How morbid, and how deeply to be mourned, was the temper of the Church which could not be satisfied without perpetual representation of the tortures of Christ; but rarely dwelt on His triumph! How more than strange the concessions to this feebleness by its greatestteachers; such as that of Titian, who, though he paints the Assumption of the Madonna rather than a Pietà, paints the Scourging and the Entombment of Christ, with his best power,—but never the Ascension!

This last subject of the series, the quietest and least interesting in treatment, yet illustrates sadly, and forcibly, the vital difference between ancient and modern art.

The worst characters of modern work result from its constant appeal to our desire of change, and pathetic excitement; while the best features of the elder art appealed to love of contemplation. It would appear to be the object of the truest artists to give permanence to images such as we should always desire to behold, and might behold without agitation; while the inferior branches of design are concerned with the acuter passions which depend on the turn of a narrative, or the course of an emotion. Where it is possible to unite these two sources of pleasure, and, as in the Assumption of Titian, an action of absorbing interest is united with perfect and perpetual elements of beauty, the highest point of conception would appear to have been touched: but in the degree in which the interest of actionsupersedesbeauty of form and colour, the art is lowered; and where real deformity enters, in any other degree than as a momentary shadow or opposing force, the art is illegitimate. Such art can exist only by accident, when a nation has forgotten or betrayed the eternal purposes of its genius, and gives birth to painters whom it cannot teach, and to teachers whom it will not hear. The best talents of all our English painters have been spent either in endeavours to find room for the expression of feelings which no master guided to a worthy end, or to obtain the attention of a public whose mind was dead to natural beauty, by sharpness of satire, or variety of dramatic circumstance.

The work to which England is now devoting herself withdraws her eyes from beauty, as her heart from rest; nor do I conceive any revival of great art to be possible among us while the nation continues in its present temper. As long as it can bear to see misery and squalor in its streets, it can neither invent nor accept human beauty in its pictures; and so long as in passion of rivalry, or thirst of gain, it crushes the roots of happiness, and forsakes the ways of peace, the great souls whom it may chance to produce will all pass away from it helpless, in error, in wrath, or in silence. Amiable visionaries may retire into the delight of devotional abstraction, strong men of the world may yet hope to do service by their rebuke or their satire; but for the clear sight of Love there will be no horizon, for its quiet words no answer; nor any place for the art which alone is faithfully Religious, because it is Lovely and True.

The series of engravings thus completed, while they present no characters on which the members of the Arundel Society can justifiably pride themselves, have, nevertheless, a real and effective value, if considered as a series of maps of the Arena frescoes. Few artists of eminence pass through Padua without making studies of detached portions of the decoration of this Chapel, while no artist has time to complete drawings of the whole. Such fragmentary studies might now at any time be engraved with advantage, their place in the series being at once determinable by reference to the woodcuts; while qualities of expression could often be obtained in engravings of single figures, which are sure to be lost in an entire subject. The most refined character is occasionally dependent on a few happy and light touches, which, in a single head, are effective, but are too feeble to bear due part in an entire composition, while, in the endeavour to reinforce them, their vitality is lost. I believe the members of the Arundel Society will perceive, eventually, that no copies of works of great art are worthily representative of them but such as are made freely, and for their own purposes, by great painters: the best results obtainable by mechanical effort will only be charts or plans of pictures, not mirrors of them. Such charts it is well to command in as great number as possible, and with all attainable completeness; but the Society cannot be considered as having entered on its true functions until it has obtained the hearty co-operation of European artists, and by the increase of its members, the further power of representing the subtle studies of masterly painters by the aid of exquisite engraving.

FOOTNOTES[1]"Noting the visages of some who layBeneath the pelting of that dolorous fire,One of them all I knew not; but perceivedThat pendent from his neck each bore a pouch,With colours and with emblems various marked,On which it seemed as if their eye did feed.And when amongst them looking round I came,A yellow purse I saw, with azure wrought,That wore a lion's countenance and port.Then, still my sight pursuing its career,Another I beheld, than blood more red,A goose display of whiter wing than curd.And one who bore a fat and azure swinePictured on his white scrip, addressed me thus:What dost thou in this deep? Go now and know,Since yet thou livest, that my neighbour here,Vitaliano, on my left shall sit.A Paduan with these Florentines am I.Ofttimes they thunder in mine ears, exclaiming,Oh! haste that noble knight, he who the pouchWith the three goats will bring. This said, he writhedThe mouth, and lolled the tongue out, like an oxThat licks his nostrils."Cantoxvii.This passage of Cary's Dante is not quite so clear as that translator's work usually is. "One of them all I knew not" is an awkward periphrasis for "I knew none of them." Dante's indignant expression of the effect of avarice in withering away distinctions of character, and the prophecy of Scrovegno, that his neighbor Vitaliano, then living, should soon be with him, to sit on his left hand, is rendered a little obscure by the transposition of the word "here." Cary has also been afraid of the excessive homeliness of Dante's imagery; "whiter wing than curd" being in the original "whiter than butter." The attachment of the purse to the neck, as a badge of shame, in theInferno, is found before Dante's time; as, for instance, in the windows of Bourges cathedral (see Plate iii. of MM. Martin and Cahier's beautiful work). And the building of the Arena Chapel by the son, as a kind of atonement for the avarice of the father, is very characteristic of the period, in which the use of money for the building of churches was considered just as meritorious as its unjust accumulation was criminal. I have seen, in a MS. Church-service of the thirteenth century, an illumination representing Church-Consecration, illustrating the words, "Fundata est domus Domini supra verticem montium," surrounded for the purpose of contrast, by a grotesque, consisting of a picture of a miser's death-bed, a demon drawing his soul out of his mouth, while his attendants are searching in his chests for his treasures.[2]For these historical details I am chiefly indebted to the very careful treatise of Selvatico,Sulla Cappellina degli Scrovegni nell'Arena di Padova. Padua, 1836.[3]Lord Lindsay,Christian Art, vol. ii. p. 166.[4]At Pietra Mala. The flames rise two or three feet above the stony ground out of which they spring, white and fierce enough to be visible in the intense rays even of the morning sun.[5]At least Lord Lindsay seems to consider the evidence collected by Förster on this subject conclusive.Christian Art, vol. ii. p. 168.[6]It might not, I think, be a work unworthy of the Arundel Society, to collect and engrave in outline the complete series of these Byzantine originals of the subjects of the Arena Chapel, in order to facilitate this comparison. The Greek MSS. in the British Museum would, I think, be amply sufficient; the Harleian MS. numbered 1810 alone furnishing a considerable number of subjects, and especially a Death of the Virgin, with the St. John thrown into the peculiar and violent gesture of grief afterwards adopted by Giotto in the Entombment of the Arena Chapel.[7]Notes to Rogers'Italy.[8]These words are gravely added to some singular particulars respecting the life of Adam, related in a MS. of the sixteenth century preserved in the Herald's College.[9]Lord Lindsay's evidence on this point (Christian Art, vol. ii. p. 174) seems quite conclusive. It is impossible to overrate the value of the work of Giotto in the Bargello, both for its own intrinsic beauty, and as being executed in this year, which is not only that in which the Divina Commedia opens, but, as I think, the culminating period in the history of the art of the middle ages.[10]Christian Art, vol. ii. p. 242.[11]Christian Art, p. 260.[12]I use this heraldic word in an inaccurate sense, knowing no other that will express what I mean,—the division of the picture into quaint segments of alternating colour, more marked than any of the figure outlines.[13]It has always appeared strange to me, that ecclesiastical history should possess no more authentic records of the life of the Virgin, before the period at which the narrative of St. Luke commences, than these apocryphal gospels, which are as wretched in style as untrustworthy in matter; and are evidently nothing more than a collection, in rude imitation of the style of the Evangelists, of such floating traditions as became current among the weak Christians of the earlier ages, when their inquiries respecting the history of Mary were met by the obscurity under which the Divine will had veiled her humble person and character. There must always be something painful, to those who are familiar with the Scriptures, in reading these feeble and foolish mockeries of the manner of the inspired writers; but it will be proper, nevertheless, to give the exact words in which the scenes represented by Giotto were recorded tohim.[14]This passage in the old Italian of the MS. may interest some readers: "E complice queste parole lo zovene respoxe, dignando, Io son l'angelo de Dio, lo quale si te aparse l'altra fiada, in segno, e aparse a toa mulier Anna che sempre sta in oration plauzando di e note, e si lo consolada; unde io te comando che tu debie observare li comandimenti de Dio, ela soua volunta che io te dico veramente, che de la toa somenza insera una fiola, e questa offrila al templo de Dio, e lo Spirito santo reposera in ley, ela soa beatitudine sera sovera tute le altre verzene, ela soua santita sera si grande che natura humana non la pora comprendere."[15](Note by a friend):—"To me the most striking part of it is, that the skeleton isentire('a bone of him shall not be broken'), and that the head stands up still looking to the skies: is it too fanciful to see a meaning in this?"[16]The MS. makes the angel Raphael the only messenger. Giotto clearly adopts the figure of Gabriel from the Protevangelion.[17]In the next chapter, it is said that "Joseph drew back his rod when every one else presented his."[18]National, because Giotto's works are properly to be looked on as thefruitof their own age, and thefoodof that which followed.[19]As, for instance, on the two opposite angles of the façade of the Cathedral of Rheims.[20](Note by a friend:) "I suppose you will not admit as an explanation, that he had not yet turned his mind to architectural composition, the Campanile being some thirty years later?"[21]See account of his principles above,p. 13, head C.[22]The exact date, 1290, is given in the title-page of the volume.

[1]"Noting the visages of some who layBeneath the pelting of that dolorous fire,One of them all I knew not; but perceivedThat pendent from his neck each bore a pouch,With colours and with emblems various marked,On which it seemed as if their eye did feed.And when amongst them looking round I came,A yellow purse I saw, with azure wrought,That wore a lion's countenance and port.Then, still my sight pursuing its career,Another I beheld, than blood more red,A goose display of whiter wing than curd.And one who bore a fat and azure swinePictured on his white scrip, addressed me thus:What dost thou in this deep? Go now and know,Since yet thou livest, that my neighbour here,Vitaliano, on my left shall sit.A Paduan with these Florentines am I.Ofttimes they thunder in mine ears, exclaiming,Oh! haste that noble knight, he who the pouchWith the three goats will bring. This said, he writhedThe mouth, and lolled the tongue out, like an oxThat licks his nostrils."Cantoxvii.This passage of Cary's Dante is not quite so clear as that translator's work usually is. "One of them all I knew not" is an awkward periphrasis for "I knew none of them." Dante's indignant expression of the effect of avarice in withering away distinctions of character, and the prophecy of Scrovegno, that his neighbor Vitaliano, then living, should soon be with him, to sit on his left hand, is rendered a little obscure by the transposition of the word "here." Cary has also been afraid of the excessive homeliness of Dante's imagery; "whiter wing than curd" being in the original "whiter than butter." The attachment of the purse to the neck, as a badge of shame, in theInferno, is found before Dante's time; as, for instance, in the windows of Bourges cathedral (see Plate iii. of MM. Martin and Cahier's beautiful work). And the building of the Arena Chapel by the son, as a kind of atonement for the avarice of the father, is very characteristic of the period, in which the use of money for the building of churches was considered just as meritorious as its unjust accumulation was criminal. I have seen, in a MS. Church-service of the thirteenth century, an illumination representing Church-Consecration, illustrating the words, "Fundata est domus Domini supra verticem montium," surrounded for the purpose of contrast, by a grotesque, consisting of a picture of a miser's death-bed, a demon drawing his soul out of his mouth, while his attendants are searching in his chests for his treasures.

[1]

"Noting the visages of some who layBeneath the pelting of that dolorous fire,One of them all I knew not; but perceivedThat pendent from his neck each bore a pouch,With colours and with emblems various marked,On which it seemed as if their eye did feed.And when amongst them looking round I came,A yellow purse I saw, with azure wrought,That wore a lion's countenance and port.Then, still my sight pursuing its career,Another I beheld, than blood more red,A goose display of whiter wing than curd.And one who bore a fat and azure swinePictured on his white scrip, addressed me thus:What dost thou in this deep? Go now and know,Since yet thou livest, that my neighbour here,Vitaliano, on my left shall sit.A Paduan with these Florentines am I.Ofttimes they thunder in mine ears, exclaiming,Oh! haste that noble knight, he who the pouchWith the three goats will bring. This said, he writhedThe mouth, and lolled the tongue out, like an oxThat licks his nostrils."Cantoxvii.

This passage of Cary's Dante is not quite so clear as that translator's work usually is. "One of them all I knew not" is an awkward periphrasis for "I knew none of them." Dante's indignant expression of the effect of avarice in withering away distinctions of character, and the prophecy of Scrovegno, that his neighbor Vitaliano, then living, should soon be with him, to sit on his left hand, is rendered a little obscure by the transposition of the word "here." Cary has also been afraid of the excessive homeliness of Dante's imagery; "whiter wing than curd" being in the original "whiter than butter." The attachment of the purse to the neck, as a badge of shame, in theInferno, is found before Dante's time; as, for instance, in the windows of Bourges cathedral (see Plate iii. of MM. Martin and Cahier's beautiful work). And the building of the Arena Chapel by the son, as a kind of atonement for the avarice of the father, is very characteristic of the period, in which the use of money for the building of churches was considered just as meritorious as its unjust accumulation was criminal. I have seen, in a MS. Church-service of the thirteenth century, an illumination representing Church-Consecration, illustrating the words, "Fundata est domus Domini supra verticem montium," surrounded for the purpose of contrast, by a grotesque, consisting of a picture of a miser's death-bed, a demon drawing his soul out of his mouth, while his attendants are searching in his chests for his treasures.

[2]For these historical details I am chiefly indebted to the very careful treatise of Selvatico,Sulla Cappellina degli Scrovegni nell'Arena di Padova. Padua, 1836.

[3]Lord Lindsay,Christian Art, vol. ii. p. 166.

[4]At Pietra Mala. The flames rise two or three feet above the stony ground out of which they spring, white and fierce enough to be visible in the intense rays even of the morning sun.

[5]At least Lord Lindsay seems to consider the evidence collected by Förster on this subject conclusive.Christian Art, vol. ii. p. 168.

[6]It might not, I think, be a work unworthy of the Arundel Society, to collect and engrave in outline the complete series of these Byzantine originals of the subjects of the Arena Chapel, in order to facilitate this comparison. The Greek MSS. in the British Museum would, I think, be amply sufficient; the Harleian MS. numbered 1810 alone furnishing a considerable number of subjects, and especially a Death of the Virgin, with the St. John thrown into the peculiar and violent gesture of grief afterwards adopted by Giotto in the Entombment of the Arena Chapel.

[7]Notes to Rogers'Italy.

[8]These words are gravely added to some singular particulars respecting the life of Adam, related in a MS. of the sixteenth century preserved in the Herald's College.

[9]Lord Lindsay's evidence on this point (Christian Art, vol. ii. p. 174) seems quite conclusive. It is impossible to overrate the value of the work of Giotto in the Bargello, both for its own intrinsic beauty, and as being executed in this year, which is not only that in which the Divina Commedia opens, but, as I think, the culminating period in the history of the art of the middle ages.

[10]Christian Art, vol. ii. p. 242.

[11]Christian Art, p. 260.

[12]I use this heraldic word in an inaccurate sense, knowing no other that will express what I mean,—the division of the picture into quaint segments of alternating colour, more marked than any of the figure outlines.

[13]It has always appeared strange to me, that ecclesiastical history should possess no more authentic records of the life of the Virgin, before the period at which the narrative of St. Luke commences, than these apocryphal gospels, which are as wretched in style as untrustworthy in matter; and are evidently nothing more than a collection, in rude imitation of the style of the Evangelists, of such floating traditions as became current among the weak Christians of the earlier ages, when their inquiries respecting the history of Mary were met by the obscurity under which the Divine will had veiled her humble person and character. There must always be something painful, to those who are familiar with the Scriptures, in reading these feeble and foolish mockeries of the manner of the inspired writers; but it will be proper, nevertheless, to give the exact words in which the scenes represented by Giotto were recorded tohim.

[14]This passage in the old Italian of the MS. may interest some readers: "E complice queste parole lo zovene respoxe, dignando, Io son l'angelo de Dio, lo quale si te aparse l'altra fiada, in segno, e aparse a toa mulier Anna che sempre sta in oration plauzando di e note, e si lo consolada; unde io te comando che tu debie observare li comandimenti de Dio, ela soua volunta che io te dico veramente, che de la toa somenza insera una fiola, e questa offrila al templo de Dio, e lo Spirito santo reposera in ley, ela soa beatitudine sera sovera tute le altre verzene, ela soua santita sera si grande che natura humana non la pora comprendere."

[15](Note by a friend):—"To me the most striking part of it is, that the skeleton isentire('a bone of him shall not be broken'), and that the head stands up still looking to the skies: is it too fanciful to see a meaning in this?"

[16]The MS. makes the angel Raphael the only messenger. Giotto clearly adopts the figure of Gabriel from the Protevangelion.

[17]In the next chapter, it is said that "Joseph drew back his rod when every one else presented his."

[18]National, because Giotto's works are properly to be looked on as thefruitof their own age, and thefoodof that which followed.

[19]As, for instance, on the two opposite angles of the façade of the Cathedral of Rheims.

[20](Note by a friend:) "I suppose you will not admit as an explanation, that he had not yet turned his mind to architectural composition, the Campanile being some thirty years later?"

[21]See account of his principles above,p. 13, head C.

[22]The exact date, 1290, is given in the title-page of the volume.

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