s much valuable historic art in this
church which you will understand better when you have learned more.
Yonder in the Strozzi Chapel is some of the very best work of an old
painter called Orcagna, while here in the choir are notable frescoes by
Ghirlandajo; but now I shall take you down these steps between the two
into the cloister and there we will talk of Giotto. I know how busy you
have been reading about this wonderful old master, for I could not help
hearing snatches of your talk about him all through the past week. His
figure looms up most important of all among the early painters of
Florence. You know how Cimabue, clad in his scarlet robe and hood,
insignia of nobility, riding out one day to a little town lying on one
of yonder blue hills, found a little, dark-faced shepherd-boy watching
his father's sheep, and amusing himself by drawing a picture of one,
with only a sharp stone for a pencil. Interested in the boy, he took
pains to visit his father and gain his permission to take him as a pupil
to Florence. So Giotto came to begin his art-life. What are you thinking
of, little Margery?"

"Only a bit of Dante's writing which I read with mother the other day,"
said she, blushing. "I was thinking how little Cimabue then thought that
this poor, ignorant shepherd-boy would ever cause these lines to be
written:--

"Cimabue thought to lord it over painting's field:
But now the cry is _Giotto_, and his name's eclipsed."

"Yes, indeed! Giotto did eclipse his master's fame, for he went so much
farther,--but only in the same path, however; so we must not take from
Cimabue any of the honor that is due him. But for Giotto the old
Byzantine method of painting on all gold backgrounds was abolished. This
boy, though born of peasants, was not only gifted with keen powers of
observation of nature and mankind and a devotion to the representation
of things truly as they are, but, beyond and above all this, with one
other quality that made his work of incalculable worth to the people
among whom he painted. This was a delicate appreciation of the true
relations between earthly and spiritual things.

"Before him, as we have seen, all art was most unnatural and
monastic,--utterly destitute of sympathy with the feelings of the common
people. Giotto changed all this. He made the Christ-child a loving baby;
the Madonna a loving mother into whose joy and suffering all mothers'
hearts could enter; angels were servants of men; mi