nd
work before Giotto.

Consider all these things, and then think of the sensations of the first
man upon whom it flashed all at once that he might be free and might
paint everything he saw, not as monks dictated to him, but as he saw
it, to the best of his strength and talent. He must have felt like a
creature that had been starved, suddenly turned out free to roam through
a world full of the most tempting things and with a capacity to enjoy
them all. He did not realize his freedom completely at first; it was
impossible for him to throw off at once all the traditions in which he
had been brought up and taught; but he realized enough to change the
whole direction of all the art that came after him.

Two things are remarkable about the early Italian artists. With the
solitary exception of Cimabue--the first of the Renascence--none of them
was born rich, but, on the other hand, a great many of them were not
born poor either. Giotto and Mantegna were shepherd boys, it is true;
but Michelangelo was the son of a small official of ancient family in
the provinces, the mayor of the little city of Chiusi e Caprese;
Lionardo da Vinci's father was a moderately well-to-do land-holder;
Raphael's was a successful painter, and certainly not in want. Secondly,
a very great number of them made what must have been thought good
fortunes in those days, while they were still young men. Some, like
Andrea del Sarto, squandered their money and died in misery; one or two,
like Fra Angelico, refused to receive money themselves for their work
and handed over their earnings to a religious community. None, so far as
I can find out, toiled through half a lifetime with neither recognition
nor pay, as many a great artist has done in our times--like the
Frenchman Millet, for instance, whose Angelus fetched such a fabulous
price after his death. The truth is that what we mean by art had just
been discovered, and it met with immediate and universal appreciation,
and the result was a demand for it which even a greater number of
painters could not have oversatisfied. Consequently, there was plenty to
do for every man of genius, and there were people not only willing to
pay great sums for each work, but who disputed with each other for the
possession of good paintings, and quarrelled for what was equivalent to
the possession of great artists.

Another element in the lives of these men, as in the lives of all who
rose to any eminence in those days, was th