exert
the fascination of an ever-heightened reality; first we shall exhaust
its ideas, and then its power of appealing to our emotions, and its
"beauty" will not seem more significant at the thousandth look than at
the first.

My need of dwelling upon this subject at all, I must repeat, arises from
the fact that although this principle is important indeed in other
schools, it is all-important in the Florentine school. Without its due
appreciation it would be impossible to do justice to Florentine
painting. We should lose ourselves in admiration of its "teaching," or
perchance of its historical importance--as if historical importance were
synonymous with artistic significance!--but we should never realise what
artistic idea haunted the minds of its great men, and never understand
why at a date so early it became academic.

[Page heading: GIOTTO AND VALUES OF TOUCH]

Let us now turn back to Giotto and see in what way he fulfils the first
condition of painting as an art, which condition, as we agreed, is
somehow to stimulate our tactile imagination. We shall understand this
without difficulty if we cover with the same glance two pictures of
nearly the same subject that hang side by side in the Florence Academy,
one by "Cimabue," and the other by Giotto. The difference is striking,
but it does not consist so much in a difference of pattern and types, as
of realisation. In the "Cimabue" we patiently decipher the lines and
colours, and we conclude at last that they were intended to represent a
woman seated, men and angels standing by or kneeling. To recognise these
representations we have had to make many times the effort that the
actual objects would have required, and in consequence our feeling of
capacity has not only not been confirmed, but actually put in question.
With what sense of relief, of rapidly rising vitality, we turn to the
Giotto! Our eyes scarcely have had time to light on it before we realise
it completely--the throne occupying a real space, the Virgin
satisfactorily seated upon it, the angels grouped in rows about it. Our
tactile imagination is put to play immediately. Our palms and fingers
accompany our eyes much more quickly than in presence of real objects,
the sensations varying constantly with the various projections
represented, as of face, torso, knees; confirming in every way our
feeling of capacity for coping with things,--for life, in short. I care
little that the picture endowed with the gift