DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51584#0054
50 EARLY ITALIAN PAINTERS.
he practised his art, the more free and flowing be-
came his lines. But, beyond grace and beyond
beauty, he aimed at the expression of natural cha-
racter and emotion, in order to render intelligible
his newly invented scenes of action and his religious
alleg’ories. A writer near his time speaks of it as
something new and wonderful, that in Giotto’s pic-
tures “ the personages who are in grief look melan-
choly, and those who are joyous look gay.” For
his heads he introduced a new type, exactly reversing
the Greek pattern : long-shaped, half-shut eyes; a
long, straight nose ; and a very short chin. The
hands are rather delicately drawn, but he could not
design the feet well, for which reason we generally
find those of his men clothed in shoes or sandals
wherever it is possible, and those of his women
covered with flowing drapery. The management
of his draperies is, indeed, particularly character-
istic ; distinguished by a certain lengthiness and
narrowness in the folds, in which, however, there
is much taste and simplicity, though, in point of
style, as far from the antique as from the compli-
cated meanness of the Byzantine models ; and it is
curious that this peculiar treatment of the drapery,
these long perpendicular folds, correspond in cha-
racter with the principles of Gothic architecture,
and with it rose and declined. For the stiff, wooden
limbs, and motionless figures, of the Byzantine
school, he substituted life, movement, and the look,
he practised his art, the more free and flowing be-
came his lines. But, beyond grace and beyond
beauty, he aimed at the expression of natural cha-
racter and emotion, in order to render intelligible
his newly invented scenes of action and his religious
alleg’ories. A writer near his time speaks of it as
something new and wonderful, that in Giotto’s pic-
tures “ the personages who are in grief look melan-
choly, and those who are joyous look gay.” For
his heads he introduced a new type, exactly reversing
the Greek pattern : long-shaped, half-shut eyes; a
long, straight nose ; and a very short chin. The
hands are rather delicately drawn, but he could not
design the feet well, for which reason we generally
find those of his men clothed in shoes or sandals
wherever it is possible, and those of his women
covered with flowing drapery. The management
of his draperies is, indeed, particularly character-
istic ; distinguished by a certain lengthiness and
narrowness in the folds, in which, however, there
is much taste and simplicity, though, in point of
style, as far from the antique as from the compli-
cated meanness of the Byzantine models ; and it is
curious that this peculiar treatment of the drapery,
these long perpendicular folds, correspond in cha-
racter with the principles of Gothic architecture,
and with it rose and declined. For the stiff, wooden
limbs, and motionless figures, of the Byzantine
school, he substituted life, movement, and the look,