s little good work seen that could be imitated. Wherefore those
masters who lived at that time, and were put by me in the First Part of
the book, deserve to be thus praised and to be held in that credit which
the works made by them merit, if only one considers--as is also true of
the works of the architects and painters of those times--that they had
no help from the times before them, and had to find the way by
themselves; and a beginning, however small, is ever worthy of no small
praise.

Nor did painting encounter much better fortune in those times, save
that, being then more in vogue by reason of the devotion of the people,
it had more craftsmen and therefore made more evident progress than the
other two. Thus it is seen that the Greek manner, first through the
beginning made by Cimabue, and then with the aid of Giotto, was wholly
extinguished; and there arose a new one, which I would fain call the
manner of Giotto, seeing that it was discovered by him and by his
disciples, and then universally revered and imitated by all. By this
manner, as we see, there were swept away the outlines that wholly
enclosed the figures, and those staring eyes, and the feet stretched on
tip-toe, and the pointed hands, with the absence of shadow and the other
monstrous qualities of those Greeks; and good grace was given to the
heads, and softness to the colouring. And Giotto, in particular, gave
better attitudes to his figures, and revealed the first effort to give a
certain liveliness to the heads and folds to his draperies, which drew
more towards nature than those of the men before him; and he discovered,
in part, something of the gradation and foreshortening of figures.
Besides this, he made a beginning with the expression of emotions, so
that fear, hope, rage, and love could in some sort be recognized; and he
reduced his manner, which at first was harsh and rough, to a certain
degree of softness; and although he did not make the eyes with that
beautiful roundness that makes them lifelike, and with the tear-channels
that complete them, and the hair soft, and the beards feathery, and the
hands with their due joints and muscles, and the nudes true to life, let
him find excuse in the difficulty of the art and in the fact that he saw
no better painters than himself; and let all remember, amid the poverty
of art in those times, the excellence of judgment in his stories, the
observation of feeling, and the subordination of a very ready natur