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heaven in Francis, of surprise or compassion in the by standers, of triumph in the bishop and clergy. The in tention of action and expression is manifest, and its real ab sence the more noticeable. Two children with their clothes tucked up evidently contemplate throwing the stones, con cealed in the folds of their garments; and here may be traced that tendency to combine in a solemn subject one of those simple ideas which have been urged as one of the blemishes in the style of Giotto. 1 Baron von Rumolir dwells indeed upon this peculiarity in the great Floren tine with unnecessary harshness, applying to it the epithet of burlesque, and affirming that it was exclusively a Giottesque tendency; but the tendency was in the age, not in the man, nor is it possible to find in Giotto such bathos as that which disfigures the expulsion from paradise at Assisi, where the guardian angel seems literally to kick our first parent out of Eden. That a simple bit of nature enhances, rather than detracts from, the beauty of com positions, even of the most solemn order, may be con sidered a truism. Giotto did introduce such incidents, and in doing so displayed a deep observation of nature. He was not the first to do so, however; but as he carefully avoided the ridiculous, he is entitled to the credit of having, even in the humorous mood, preserved the majesty and grandeur of art. 2 — The human form was rendered by the painter of this scene with a certain amount of truth, but comparatively without feeling. One may rind, indeed, in the stiff square nude of the youthful Francis, in the large and coarse extremities, and defective arti- * The hand of the Eternal ap pears in the sky of this scene. 2 Surely “ the liveliness of movement and action” which Ru- mohr admits “as giving charm and interest” to Giotto’s works, does not deprive them of the “greater earnestness of previous efforts”, when we see on the contrary that the humour of Giotto is nobler and less childish than that of his predecessors. It is an ungrounded reproach which Rumohr makes, when he says, that Giotto in a great measure set aside the noble refinement of holy and godly cha racter, and led Italian painting to the representation of actions and passions, in which, according to the habit of monkery, the bur lesque found play by the side of the pathetic”. SeeForsclningen, Vol. II. p. 56. 57.