washed over during the triumph of the enemies of Dante; and for ages, though known to exist, they were lost and buried from sight. The hope of recovering these most interesting portraits had long been entertained, and various attempts had been made at different times without success, till at length, as late as 1840, they were brought to light by the perseverance and enthusiasm of Mr. Bezzi and Mr. Kirkup, assisted by a subscription among the English and American residents and visitors then at Florence. On comparing the head of Dante, painted when he was about thirty, prosperous and distinguished in his native city, with the later portraits of him when an exile, worn, wasted, embittered by misfortune and disappointment and wounded pride, the difference of expression is as touching as the identity in feature is indubitable.

The attention which in his childhood Giotto seems to have given to all natural forms and appearances, showed itself in his earlier pictures; he was the first to whom it occurred to group his personages into something like a situation, and to give to their attitudes and features the expression adapted to it: thus, in a very early picture of the Annunciation he gave to the Virgin a look of fear; and in another, painted some time afterwards, of the Presentation in the Temple, he made the infant Christ shrink from the priest, and, turning, extend his little arms to his mother-the first attempt at that species of grace and naïveté of expression afterwards carried to perfection by Raphael. These and other works painted in his native city so astonished his fellowcitizens and all who beheld them, by their beauty and

novelty, that they seem to have wanted adequate words in which to express the excess of their delight and admiration, and insisted that the figures of Giotto so completely beguiled the sense that they were mistaken for realities; a commonplace eulogium, never merited but by the most commonplace and mechanical of painters.

In the church of Santa Croce, at Florence, Giotto painted a Coronation of the Virgin (still to be seen there in the Baroncelli Chapel), with choirs of angels and a multitude of saints on either side. In the refectory he painted the Last Supper, also still remaining; a grand, solemn, simple composition, which, as a first endeavour to give variety of expression and attitude to a number of persons-all seated, and all but two actuated by a similar feeling-must still be regarded as extraordinary.* In a chapel of the church of the Carmine at Florence he painted a series of pictures from the life of John the Baptist. These were destroyed by fire in 1771; but, happily, an English engraver, then studying at Florence, named Patch, had previously made accurate drawings from them, which he engraved and published. A fragment of the old fresco, containing the heads of two of the Apostles, who are bending in grief and devotion over the body of St. John, was in the collection of Mr. Rogers, the poet, and is now in the National Gallery (No. 276). It certainly justifies all that has been said.

* The large refectory of Santa Croce is now a carpet manufactory, and Giotto's Cenacolo fills up one side. It is in a most ruined condition, and I find that it has lately been attributed to Taddeo Gaddi, one of the best pupils of Giotto.

of Giotto's power of expression, and, when compared with the remains of earlier art, more than excuses the wonder and enthusiasm of his contemporaries.

The pope, Boniface VIII., hearing of his marvellous skill, invited him to Rome; and the story says that the messenger of his Holiness, wishing to have some proof that Giotto was indeed the man he was in search of, desired to see a specimen of his excellence in his art: hereupon, Giotto, taking up a sheet of paper, traced on it with a single flourish of his hand a circle so perfect that "it was a miracle to see;" and (though we know not how or why) seems to have at once converted the pope to a belief of his superiority over all other painters.* This story gave rise to the well-known Italian proverb, "Più tondo che l'O di Giotto" (rounder than the O of Giotto), and is something like a story told of one of the Grecian painters. But to return. Giotto went to Rome, and there executed many things which raised his fame higher and higher; and among them, for the ancient Basilica of St. Peter's, the famous colossal mosaic of the Navicella, or the Barca, as it is sometimes called. It represents a ship, with the Disciples, on a tempestuous sea; the winds, personified as demons, rage around it. Above are the Fathers of the Old Testament; on the right stands Christ, raising Peter from the waves. The subject has an allegorical significance, denoting the troubles and triumphs of the Church. This mosaic has often changed its situation, and has been restored again and again, till nothing of Giotto's work remains but the

"He was probably guided by the safer evidence of Giotto's fame," says a late critic.