the editor succeeds in keeping the suggested ideal in view. A typical instance of his method occurs in connexion with the important problem of the chronology of Giotto's early works. The subject is so interesting that it deserves to be treated in some detail; and we can hardly approach it better than by briefly reminding the reader of Crowe and Cavalcaselle's own account. The greatest care has been expended by Sir Joseph upon his revision of Giotto's life, but he has not found occasion to modify the main outline as he originally determined it. One change only is introduced, the date of Giotto's birth being now given as 1267 instead of 1276; his works follow the same order as before. The first are those of the Upper Church of Assisi, executed while Giotto was still young; later, in his manhood, he was called again to Assisi by Fra Giovanni di Muro, to paint the ceilings of the Lower Church. Without asserting it as a fact, the authors leave us no option but to believe that this call took place in 1296, as the artist, after painting the Allegories, and possibly also the scenes from the life of Christ, proceeded to Rome before the end of that year. He stayed at Rome six years the inside of six years, clearly-executing the navicella, the ciborium, and other works that have perished; and he went to Florence not later than April 1302, where he painted the chapel of the Podestà. His next known work is the Arena Chapel, executed in 1306 at the age of thirty-nine. Considering the monumental character of the achievement, the authors feel that they put no impossible strain upon Benvenuto da Imola's testimony that Giotto, when he painted it, was still fairly young.' This chronology is acknowledged by the authors to be tentative, especially so far as the Assisi works are concerned; and it cannot be denied that they take refuge in a certain vagueness of statement.

Yet the complexity of the subject may be easily deduced from the fact that the editor has suggested a new chronology in his notes, involving so revolutionary a conception of the artist as to be totally subversive of all the authors' observations. The editor reserves judgment as to the date of Giotto's birth; but with regard to the order of the early works he is dogmatic and precise. The first were at Rome; they were followed by the frescoes of the Bargello and by the St Francis series

in the Upper Church of Assisi (1302–1306). Next came the Padua period, and after it the Allegories and the Life of Christ of the Lower Church. The inversion is so startling as to be all but incomprehensible, till connected with the new theory proposed by the editor as to Giotto's early training, touching which he again feels himself compelled in his commentary to disregard the statements in the text.

The authors hold that Giotto was, by training as by birth, a Florentine. To them Cimabue-the great Florentine Homer, of whom the modern critic only knows, and is forgetting to respect, the name, but whose reputation was considered by Dante comparable to that of Giotto himself—is an artist with a style they can recognise and trace, foreshadowing already the superlative qualities of the nascent Tuscan school; they can even detect certain peculiarities of style in Giotto's early work, which they regard as the immediate result of his master's influence. The editor believes, on the contrary, that Giotto's training took place in Rome, and that Rome, not Florence, was the centre of the revival of painting in the thirteenth century. He regards Cimabue either as a myth, or else, 'like Giotto, artistically a scion of Rome.' Giotto, as is well known, visited Rome, but he did not (we are told) find assistants there, as has been hitherto supposed; he found a master. There is no proof' (says the editor, vol. ii, p. 99)' that Cavallini ever assisted Giotto at Rome; the probability is that the younger master assisted and was influenced by the older.'

This theory provides us with a key to the new chronology. In the series of frescoes in the Upper Church of Assisi a certain parallelism is to be found with works still to be seen at Rome. It is an obvious explanation of this parallelism to say that the artist who painted at Assisi was a pupil of the Roman school. The problem, however, requires more careful handling. It is true, indeed, that no document can be adduced to prove that Cavallini helped Giotto; equally true, however, that Giotto cannot be proved to have helped Cavallini. Yet certain facts of an important kind are known in regard to the status which Giotto, when he was at Rome, enjoyed. It is known that he designed and executed a mosaic for St Peter's, for which he received the enormous sum of

2200 florins-a mosaic, moreover, which created so great a sensation in the Roman world that its echo survives even to-day, and to which a succession of popes testified their devotion by moving it, restoring it, and mutilating it, till at last it was distinguished by nothing but the great name of the original artist. In discussing the reliefs of the Florentine Campanile, the editor sets aside the tradition that connects them with Giotto as a 'manifestation of Florentinism,' and finds it difficult to believe that Giotto, considering his activity as a painter, could have found time to study sculpture; he seems to forget that the Campanile is Giotto's only known work in architecture, and that the mosaic of the navicella is no less unique. Giotto's one mosaic-in connexion with which, as the editor justly remarks, the name of Cavallini was never breathed even in Rome-acquired a reputation which is probably without parallel in the annals of early art.

6

But Giotto also executed a ciborium for use at the high altar of St Peter's, and for this he received eight hundred florins of gold. At a later date Orcagna, the chief artist of his time, and the last to combine, like Giotto, excellence in every branch, agreed to give his services to the Orvietans, as architect, sculptor, painter, and mosaicist, for three hundred florins, for the year. Giotto's work clearly commanded a price which no assistant could have hoped to receive; and the position which that work was to occupy reflected a certain distinction upon the painter. the painter. Moreover, the work itself has been preserved, and, though damaged, it has not been repainted. This triptych,' say our authors, alone proves that Giotto was not only the reformer of the art of painting, but the founder of a school of colour, and that he was as great in altarpieces as in fresco.' It was some time after the execution of this masterpiece, designed in the purest Gothic, that Giotto, according to the editor, strongly influenced by the Romans, particularly in his ideas of architecture, went to Assisi, and there commenced a series which, in composition, draughtsmanship, and technical method, was throughout experimental; in which the artist seemed ill at ease and continually changed his scale; and the general decorative impression of which remains unharmonious and bizarre.

That Giotto, while at Rome, was extensively engaged

upon fresco work for St Peter's is a point on which it is needless to insist. The developed powers of design which he displays in the ciborium are sufficient to prove that his experimental days were over. Moreover, the editor must have forgotten that, according to his own chronology, there is an interval between Giotto's work in Rome and in Assisi, and that in this interval the artist was occupied with the famous frescoes in the chapel of the Podestà. We have the right to expect a strong manifestation of Roman influence in this Bargello work, but nothing of the kind has as yet been detected there. Every reader will remember that the Bargello frescoes are a subject of keen controversy, and that many connoisseurs believe them to have been executed in 1337 by one of Giotto's pupils. This fact would seem in itself a conclusive evidence of their purely Florentine character; nor can this purity of origin be doubted for a moment by any one who has examined them or given but a cursory glance to the lovely relics of the great fresco of the Paradise. The simple rows of its standing figures, rank after rank, the natural severity of the falling lines of drapery—as near as nature to monotony, and as free from it-the intensity of calm devotion which pervades the whole, testify to an artist whose style is his own, who knows the effect he wishes to produce and the means by which he can produce it.

A further difficulty of a serious kind connects itself with the new date suggested by the editor for the famous allegorical series of the Lower Church at Assisi. It was recognised by the authors that, in the absence of external evidence, Giotto's works could only be classed reasonably by adhering to the general law of progress in style. It was this consideration-so, in the first edition, they openly state-which led them to place the Allegories immediately before the Roman altarpiece. The editor, it will be remembered, regards the Allegories as a later work than the Arena Chapel. Nevertheless, he considers that the allegorical series at Padua stand on a higher plane. Whereas, in the Allegories at Assisi, the symbolism is crudely, obviously, even vulgarly, expressed, the figure of Injustice at Padua is 'symbolically as well as artistically one of the most remarkable achievements of its kind that the world has seen.' 'As a master of alleVol. 200.-No. 399.

D

gorical composition,' the editor explains, "Giotto was very fitful' (ii, 115).

In finally estimating the editor's contribution to the history of the subject, we are compelled to admit that his taste is by no means faultless, and that he has failed to show a due sense of the dignity of his position. The inclusion of a theory in his notes is no guarantee that he has examined it critically; and he is not content merely to state what he believes. Far from feeling that divergence of opinion between himself and the authors is at best a misfortune which nothing but the claims of truth must lead him to disclose, he is careful to emphasise divergence wherever it occurs, and to question the value of the authors' observations where they lead to conclusions other than his own. If this method was dictated by the belief that his authority carries equal weight with that of Crowe and Cavalcaselle, it is our duty to state definitely that such a belief is groundless. Moreover, his writing is often lacking both in dignity and in reserve, and it is not always impartial. He thinks it necessary to remark that the authors never allowed their æsthetic judgment to be warped by personal or pecuniary considerations'; that neither of them belonged to that parasitic cosmopolitan class from which the writers of little art-books are frequently drawn'; that Cavalcaselle was 'neither a place-hunter nor a picture-dealer in masquerade.' Had the remotest suspicion existed that these things were true, it might be possible to understand the value of the editor's denials. Whether his own æsthetic judgment is in the same degree unwarped, it is only fair to question. Throughout these two first volumes we search in vain for mention of one of our most distinguished connoisseurs ; we find an attribution, of which the merit is his, referred to another writer, who was careful to preface the series of articles in which he made use of it by the statement that the theories he promulgated were not necessarily original. The error must be as disconcerting to Mr Fry as it is discourteous to Mr Berenson.

At this point it will be well to leave the work of the editor and devote an undivided attention to that of Sir Joseph Crowe himself. Here, as already suggested, the reader needs to exercise a certain leniency, for