Another epoch-maker, Giotto, now appears. He seems to have been a remarkable man in himself, which however hardly concerns us. The historian of his works says,

"The bodies still show a want of independent study of nature; the proportions of the several members (as we know by the handbook of Cemieno hereafter to be mentioned) were regulated by a fixed system of measurement," again, "The drawing is still on the whole conventional, and the modelling not carried far." His trees and animals are like toys. Yet we read that "their naturalism is the very point which the contemporaries of Giotto extol in his creations," but, as Woltmann and Woermann say, this must be accepted according to the notion entertained of what nature was, and we are by this means able to see how crude the notions of nature can become in educated men when they neglect the study of it. But from all this evidence we gather that Giotto's intellect was great, and that his strides towards the truthful suggesting of nature were enormous. His attempts too at expression are wonderful for his age, see his "Presentations,"the figures are almost natural notwithstanding their crude drawing; he got some of the charm and life of the children around him. We read that in some of his pictures, he took his models direct from nature, as also did Dante in his poetry, but like Dante he attempted at times the doctrinal in his pictures, as in the "Marriage of St. Francis and Poverty," he tried in fact what many moderns are still trying to do, and daily fail to do, namely, to teach by means of their pictures - a fatal error. Doctrinal subjects are unsuitable for pictorial art, and will never live. Who cares now for Giotto's " Marriage of St. Francis and Poverty"? but who would not care for a landscape or figure subject taken by Giotto from the life and landscape of his own times? - it would be priceless. Owing to circumstances, we hear that he had to put "much of his art at the service of the Franciscans," and though not a slave to them, yet we read this disgusted him with the monkish temper. In 1337 Giotto died, but he had done much. Without Kepler there might have been no Newton, so without Giotto there might have been-no Velasquez.