heading: GIOTTO]

Still another exemplification of his sense for the significant is
furnished by his treatment of action and movement. The grouping, the
gestures never fail to be just such as will most rapidly convey the
meaning. So with the significant line, the significant light and shade,
the significant look up or down, and the significant gesture, with means
technically of the simplest, and, be it remembered, with no knowledge of
anatomy, Giotto conveys a complete sense of motion such as we get in his
Paduan frescoes of the "Resurrection of the Blessed," of the "Ascension
of our Lord," of the God the Father in the "Baptism," or the angel in
"Zacharias' Dream."

This, then, is Giotto's claim to everlasting appreciation as an artist:
that his thorough-going sense for the significant in the visible world
enabled him so to represent things that we realise his representations
more quickly and more completely than we should realise the things
themselves, thus giving us that confirmation of our sense of capacity
which is so great a source of pleasure.

III.

[Page heading: FOLLOWERS OF GIOTTO]

For a hundred years after Giotto there appeared in Florence no painter
equally endowed with dominion over the significant. His immediate
followers so little understood the essence of his power that some
thought it resided in his massive types, others in the swiftness of his
line, and still others in his light colour, and it never occurred to any
of them that the massive form without its material significance, its
tactile values, is a shapeless sack, that the line which is not
functional is mere calligraphy, and that light colour by itself can at
the best spot a surface prettily. The better of them felt their
inferiority, but knew no remedy, and all worked busily, copying and
distorting Giotto, until they and the public were heartily tired. A
change at all costs became necessary, and it was very simple when it
came. "Why grope about for the significant, when the obvious is at hand?
Let me paint the obvious; the obvious always pleases," said some clever
innovator. So he painted the obvious,--pretty clothes, pretty faces, and
trivial action, with the results foreseen: he pleased then, and he
pleases still. Crowds still flock to the Spanish chapel in S. Maria
Novella to celebrate the triumph of the obvious, and non-significant.
Pretty faces, pretty colour, pretty clothes, and trivial action! Is
there a single figure in the fre