ever saw--as well as the characters in older
Scripture histories, in the Florentine, Venetian, and Antwerp fashions
of the day. The defence of the practice is, that the Bible is for
universal time, that its Virgin Mother, its apostles and saints, were
types of other mothers and of other heroes running down the stream of
history; that even the one central and holy figure, if He may be
represented at all, as the Divine brother of all humanity, may be clad
not inaptly in the garments of all. It appears to me that there is
reason in this answer, and that viewed in its light the criticism which
constantly demands historic fidelity is both carping and narrow. I do
not mean, however, to underrate historic accuracy in itself, or to
depreciate that longing for completeness in every particular, which
drives our modern painters to the East to study patiently for months the
aspects of nature under its Oriental climate, with its peculiar people
and animals, its ancient costumes and architecture.

Giotto was buried with suitable honours by a city which, like the rest
of the nation, has magnified its painters amongst its great men, in the
church of Santa Maria del Fiore, where his master Cimabue had been
buried. Lorenzo de' Medici afterwards placed over Giotto's tomb his
effigy in marble.

In chronicling ancient art I must here diverge a little. I have already
mentioned how closely painting was in the beginning allied with working
in metals as well as with sculpture and architecture. It is thus
necessary to write of a magnificent work in metal, the study and
admiration of generations of painters, begun in the life of Giotto, and
completed in two divisions, extending over a period of nearly a hundred
years. We shall proceed to deal with the first division, and recur to
the second a little later.

The old Italian cities. They were then the great merchant cities of the
world, more or less republican in their constitution. They stood to the
citizens, who rarely left their walls, at once as peculiar possessions
and as native countries rather than as cities alone, while they excited
all the patriotism, pride, and love that were elsewhere expended on a
whole country--which after all was held as belonging largely to its king
and nobles. The old Italian merchant guilds, and wealthy merchants as
individuals, vied with each other in signalizing their good citizenship
by presenting--as gifts identified with their names--to their cities,
those