e birth, in
his own person, of modern painting. But none of these masters had the
power to stimulate the tactile imagination, and, consequently, they
never painted a figure which has artistic existence. Their works have
value, if at all, as highly elaborate, very intelligible symbols,
capable, indeed, of communicating something, but losing all higher value
the moment the message is delivered.

Giotto's paintings, on the contrary, have not only as much power of
appealing to the tactile imagination as is possessed by the objects
represented--human figures in particular--but actually more, with the
necessary result that to his contemporaries they conveyed a _keener_
sense of reality, of life-likeness than the objects themselves! We whose
current knowledge of anatomy is greater, who expect more articulation
and suppleness in the human figure, who, in short, see much less naively
now than Giotto's contemporaries, no longer find his paintings more than
life-like; but we still feel them to be intensely real in the sense
that they still powerfully appeal to our tactile imagination, thereby
compelling us, as do all things that stimulate our sense of touch while
they present themselves to our eyes, to take their existence for
granted. And it is only when we can take for granted the existence of
the object painted that it can begin to give us pleasure that is
genuinely artistic, as separated from the interest we feel in symbols.

[Page heading: ANALYSIS OF ENJOYMENT OF PAINTING]

At the risk of seeming to wander off into the boundless domain of
aesthetics, we must stop at this point for a moment to make sure that we
are of one mind regarding the meaning of the phrase "artistic pleasure,"
in so far at least as it is used in connection with painting.

What is the point at which ordinary pleasures pass over into the
specific pleasures derived from each one of the arts? Our judgment about
the merits of any given work of art depends to a large extent upon our
answer to this question. Those who have not yet differentiated the
specific pleasures of the art of painting from the pleasures they derive
from the art of literature, will be likely to fall into the error of
judging the picture by its dramatic presentation of a situation or its
rendering of character; will, in short, demand of the painting that it
shall be in the first place a good _illustration_. Those others who seek
in painting what is usually sought in music, the communica