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Chap. VIII. RETURN TO FLORENCE. 259 ness with which the latter adapted his style to that of the Florentine, will not have been forgotten. Cardinal Stefaneschi, who had employed Giotto, also protected Cavallini; and the fresco of the apsis of S. Giorgio in Yelabro, with the mosaics of S. Paolo fuori le Mura, still prove the influence which he wielded. The career of Giotto now became more intimately connected with that of his native country. Leaving Rome, he returned to Florence at a critical period of her history. 1 After a long and frequently doubtful struggle, that republic had finally asserted her superiority in Italy. Feared by her enemies and therefore respected abroad, she might have enjoyed in peace the fruits of her success, and ex tended her influence by means of her great wealth and activity; but for the mischance common in such states, that no sooner is the outer enemy reduced, than the union which produced that result is broken by the jealousies of faction. The struggles of the Cerchi and Donati, or of the “whites” and “blacks”, have exhausted the pens of chroniclers, and are the property of history. Nor is it intended that they should be dwelt upon here at any greater length than is necessary to elucidate the career of Giotto. The feud divided the city of Florence into two distinct camps. Corso Donati led the party of the Neri, Yieri de Cerchi that of the Bianchi, which had, en rolled in its ranks, the immortal Dante. The poet had had occasion, when at Rome for the Jubilee, 2 to cultivate Giotto’s acquaintance, 3 and during the short period which intervened between his return to Florence and the em bassy to Pope Boniface the Eighth which preceded his perpetual exile, 4 this acquaintance might have matured 1 The earliest works of Giotto in Florence, according to Vasari (Vol. I. p.p. 311. 312), were in the Badia. But the Virgin annun ciate, which he describes there, is by Lorenzo Monaco, and the pic ture of the high altar is lost. 2 Dante says himself in the XVIII Canto of the Inferno, v. 28. Come i Roman, perl’esercitomolto, L’anno del Giubbileo su per lo ponte Hanno a passar la gente modo tolto. 3 “Dante Alighieri coetano ed amico suo grandissimo.” Vas. Vol. I. p. 311. 4 The exile of Dante was pro- 17*