crowning his brother, Robert of Anjou, as King of Naples, while he is himself crowned by two angels. There is a beautiful little miniature, undoubtedly by him, in the Liverpool Museum, but we have no specimen in our National Gallery. Simone was certainly one of the most remarkable and interesting painters of his time, and quite independent of the influence of Giotto. He died about 1345.

PIETRO LORENZETTI painted in the Campo Santo the Hermits in the Wilderness: they are represented as dwelling in caves and chapels, upon rocks and mountains; some studying, others meditating, others tempted by demons in various horrible or alluring forms, for such were the diseased fancies which haunted a solitary and unnatural existence. As the laws of perspective were then unknown, the various groups of hermits and their dwellings are represented one above another, and all of the same size, much like the figures on a china plate. It is, however, very interesting, and Lorenzetti repeated these scenes on a smaller scale in a picture now in the Gallery at Florence.

ANTONIO VENEZIANO also painted in the Campo Santo, about 1387; and showed himself superior to all who had preceded him in feeling and grace, though inferior to Andrea Orcagna in sublimity. SPINELLO of Arezzo was next employed, about 1390. He painted the story of St. Ephesus. Spinello seems to have been a man of genius, but of most unregulated mind. Vasari tells a story of him which shows at once the vehemence of his fancy and his morbid brain. He painted a picture of the Fallen Angels, in which he had laboured to

render the figure of Satan as terrible, as deformed, as revolting as possible. The image, as he worked upon it, became fixed in his fancy, and haunted him in sleep. He dreamed that the Prince of Hell appeared before him under the horrible form in which he had arrayed him, and demanded why he should be thus treated, and by what authority the painter had represented him so abominably hideous. Spinello awoke in terror; soon afterwards he became distracted, and so died, about the year 1400.

But leaving the Campo Santo, we must return to the pupils of Giotto. The third alluded to was TADDEO GADDI, the favourite scholar of Giotto, and his godson. His pictures are considered the most important works of the 14th century: they resemble the manner of Giotto in the feeling for truth, nature, and simplicity; but we find in them improved execution, with even more beauty and largeness and grandeur of style. His pictures are numerous several are in the Academy at Florence and the Museum at Berlin; and in our National Gallery are two large panels, which probably formed the two wings of a central piece (an "Enthroned Madonna," or a " Coronation of the Virgin"), filled with figures of saints who appear as if in attendance on some grand ceremony or some superior personage, all the heads being finely discriminated in character. Also (lately acquired) an altarpiece dedicated to John the Baptist, representing the Baptism of our Saviour, and subjects from the history of St. John below, which are worthy of study as examples of the style of Taddeo. There are four small

pictures by him in the Louvre, and four more important in the Berlin Gallery. Between Taddeo Gaddi and Simone Memmi there existed an ardent friendship and a mutual admiration which did honour to both. He was, like many of the old painters, a skilful architect, and built the Ponte Vecchio at Florence, which is still standing, and still famous for the goldsmiths' shops which line it on each side. After Giotto's there was no name more celebrated in his time than that of Taddeo Gaddi. He died in 1366, leaving two sons, Agnolo and Giovanni, who were both painters. Another of Giotto's most famous followers was TOMMASO DI STEFANO, called Giottino, or "the little Giotto," from the success with which he emulated his master. He was of a thoughtful, rather melancholy temperament, and seems to have thrown all the tenderness of his nature into a small picture of the dead Saviour lamented by his Mother, the other Maries, and Nicodemus, which exists in the Florence Gallery.

I have mentioned here but a few of the most prominent names among the multitude of painters who flourished from 1300 to 1400 before we enter on a new century we will take a general view of the progress of the art itself, and the purposes to which it was applied.

The progress made in painting was chiefly by carrying out the principles of Giotto in expression and in imitation. Taddeo Gaddi and Simone excelled in the first; the imitation of form and of natural objects was so improved by Stefano Fiorentino, that he was styled by his contemporaries Il Scimia della Natura, “the Ape of Nature." Giottino, the son of this Stefano, and

others, improved in colour, in softness of execution, and in the means and mechanism of the art; but oil-painting was not yet invented, and linear perspective was unknown. Engraving on copper, cutting in wood, and printing were the inventions of the next century. Portraits were seldom painted, and then only of very distinguished persons, introduced into large compositions. The imitation of natural scenery, that is, landscape painting, as a branch of art, now such a familiar source of pleasure, was as yet unthought of. When landscape was introduced into pictures as a background or accessory, it was merely to indicate the scene of the story: a rock represented a desert; some formal trees, very like brooms set on end, indicated a wood; a bluish space, sometimes with fishes in it, signified, rather than represented, a river or a sea; yet in the midst of this ignorance, this imperfect execution, and limited range of power, how exquisitely beautiful are some of the remains of this early time! affording in their simple, genuine grace, and lofty, earnest, and devout feeling, examples of excellence which our modern painters are beginning to feel and to understand, and which the great Raphael himself did not disdain to study, and even to copy.

As yet the purposes to which painting was applied were almost wholly of a religious character. No sooner was a church erected than the walls were covered with representations of sacred subjects, either from Scriptural history or the legends of saints. Devout individuals or families built and consecrated chapels; and then, at great cost, employed painters either to decorate the

walls or to paint pictures for the altars; the Madonna and Child, or the Crucifixion, were the favourite subjects; the donor of the picture or founder of the chapel being often represented on his knees in a corner of the picture, and sometimes (as more expressive of humility) of most diminutive size, out of all proportion to the other figures. Where the object was to commemorate the dead, or to express at once the grief and the devotion of the survivors, the subject was generally a "Deposition from the Cross"-that is, our Saviour taken down from the cross, and lying in the arms of his afflicted mother. The doors of the sacristies, and of the presses in which the priests' vestments were kept, were often covered with small pictures of Scriptural subjects; as were also the chests in which were deposited the utensils for the Holy Sacrament. Almost all the small moveable pictures of the 14th and 15th centuries which have come down to us are either the borders or small compartments cut out from the broken-up altarpieces of chapels and oratories, or they are from the panels of doors, from the covers of chests, or other pieces of ecclesiastical furniture. In those days the idea of having pictures of any kind, far less pictures representing the most awful scenes and mysteries of our religion, hung as mere ornaments upon the walls of a room, had never occurred to any one.