EARLY CHRISTIAN ART. CHAPTER I. DECLINING SCHOOL OF GIOTTESQUES. There are many second rate Giottesques deserving attention and study, whose lives and works do not stand in immediate relation to the direct line of progress in Florentine art. A narrative professing to trace that pro gress may venture to forget them for a while; hut can not omit them altogether. It may therefore be necessary to revert to a time much earlier than that to which the study of Masolino, Masaccio and Angelico had brought the reader, and recal to memory the days when Taddeo Gaddi, departing content from a world in which he had earned fame and riches, entrusted his son Agnolo to Giovanni da Milano and Jacopo di Casentino. Jacopo heads a class of inferior painters who succeeded each other with great regularity of mediocrity, yet amongst whom perchance one or two of merit superior to the rest may be found. Such an one is Spinello Aretino, who deserves a higher place than others already noticed as pupils or followers of great masters in the main line of art descent. But he takes rank in this class, because of his intimate connection with the second rate Giottesques, and because he did nothing to save his successors from declining to the low standard of Neri di Bicci. Giovanni 1 VOL. II.
