accurately still, hierographics. St. Francis, in what he wrote and said, taught much that was false; but Giotto, his true disciple, nothing but what was true. And where he uses an arabesque of foliage, depend upon it, it will be to purpose—not redundant. I return for the time to our soft and luxuriant John of Pisa.
179. Soft, but with no unmanly softness; luxuriant, but with no unmannered luxury. To him you owe, as to their first sire in art, the grace of Ghiberti, the tenderness of Raphael, the awe of Michael Angelo. Second-rate qualities in all the three, but precious in their kind, and learned, as you shall see, essentially from this man. Second-rate he also, but with most notable gifts of this inferior kind. He is the Canova of the thirteenth century; but the Canova of the thirteenth, remember, was necessarily a very different person from the Canova of the eighteenth.
The Canova of the eighteenth century mimicked the Greek grace for the delight of modern revolutionary sensualists. The Canova of the thirteenth century brought living Gothic truth into the living faith of his own time.
Greek truth, and Gothic 'liberty,'—in that
