y. Giotto was
the first realist, but he was a poet too. His insight into life is
tempered by a deep sincerity and piety; his work is genuinely and
powerfully felt. As a man Giotto was reverent and earnest, joyous
and beautifully sane. As a painter, by force of the freshness of his
impulse and the clarity of his vision, he created a new manner of
expression. As an artist he reveals a true power of imaginative
interpretation. The casual spectator of to-day finds him naive and
quaint. In the eyes of his contemporaries he was anything but that;
they regarded him as a marvel of reality, surpassing nature itself.
When judged with reference to the conditions of life in which he
worked and to the technical resources at his command, Giotto is
seen to be of a very high order of creative mind.

The year 1300 divides the life of Giotto into two nearly equal parts;
the year 1500 similarly divides the life of Raphael. In the two
centuries that intervene, the great age of Italian painting, initiated by
Giotto, reaches its flower and perfection in Michelangelo, Leonardo,
and Raphael. The years which followed the passing of these
greatnesses were the years of decadence and eclipse. If we are to
understand and justly appreciate the work of each man in its own
kind, the painting of Giotto must be tried by other standards than
those we apply to the judgment of Raphael. Giotto was a pioneer;
Raphael is a consummation. The two centuries between were a
period of development and change, a development in all that regards
technique, a change in national ideals and in the artist's attitude
toward life and toward his art. A quick survey of the period, if so
hasty a generalization permits correctness of statement, will help us
in the understanding of the craft and art of Raphael.

Giotto was succeeded by a host of lesser men, regarded as his
followers, men who sought to apply the principles and methods of
painting worked out by the master, but who lacked his inspiration
and his power. Thus it was for nearly a hundred years. The turn of
the fourteenth century into the fifteenth saw the emergence of new
forces in the science and the mechanics of painting. The laws of
perspective and foreshortening were made the object of special
research and practice by men like Uccello (1397-1475), Piero dei
Franceschi (1416-1492), and Mantegna (1431-1506). "Oh, what a
beautiful thing this perspective is!" Uccello exclaimed, as he stood
at his desk between midnig