safely ignored. Henceforth, nothing is of itself profane,
for the profane is only that wherein the higher and truer sense has not
yet been recognized. What is demanded is not an exceptional
transmutation, but a translation,--that all Nature should be interpreted
of the spirit.

The result is, on the one hand, a greater license in dealing with actual
forms, since Art sees all things on one level of dignity,--respects one
no more than another, but only its own purpose,--is careless of material
qualities, and of moral qualities, too, as far as they are bound to
particular shapes. Why dwell tediously upon one particle, when the value
of it consists not in its particularity, but in its harmony with the
rest of the universe? Giotto seems to make short work with the human
form divine by wrapping all his figures from head to foot in flowing
draperies. But these figures have more humanity in them, stand closer to
us, because the meaning is no longer petrified in the shape, but speaks
to us freely and directly, in a look, a gesture, a sweep of the garment.
The Greek said,--"With these superhuman lineaments you are to conceive
the presence of Jove; these are the appropriate forms of the immortals."
Giotto said,--"See what divine meanings in every-day faces and actions;
with these eyes you are to look upon the people in the street." The one
is a remote and incredible perfection,--the other, the intimate reality
of the actual and present. It is, in truth, therefore, a closer approach
to Nature than was before possible. The artist no longer shuns full
actuality for his conception, for he fears no confusion with the actual.
For instance, from the earliest times the celestial nature of angels had
been naively intimated by appending wings to them. There was no attempt
to carry out the suggestion, or to show the mechanical possibility of
it, for that would be only to make winged men. The painters of the
sixteenth century, on the other hand, from a nervous dread lest wings
should prove insufficient, establish a sure basis of clouds for their
angels, with more and more emphasis of buoyancy and extent, until at
last, no longer trusting their own statement, they settle the question
by showing them from below, already risen, and so choke off the doubt
whether they can rise. But Orcagna's angels float without assistance or
effort, by their own inherent lightness, as naturally as we walk. They
are not out of their element, but bring their eleme