nor distinguishable material of any kind: the whole power of the
picture is rested on the three simple essentials of painting--pure
Colour, noble Form, noble Thought.

We moderns, educated in reality far more under the influence of the
Dutch masters than the Italian, and taught to look for realisation in
all things, have been in the habit of casting scorn on these early
Italian works, as if their simplicity were the result of ignorance
merely. When we know a little more of art in general, we shall begin
to suspect that a man of Giotto's power of mind did not altogether
suppose his clusters of formal trees, or diminutive masses of
architecture, to be perfect representations of the woods of Judea, or
of the streets of Jerusalem: we shall begin to understand that there
is a symbolical art which addresses the imagination, as well as a
realist art which supersedes it; and that the powers of contemplation
and conception which could be satisfied or excited by these simple
types of natural things, were infinitely more majestic than those
which are so dependent on the completeness of what is presented to
them as to be paralysed by an error in perspective, or stifled by the
absence of atmosphere.

Nor is the healthy simplicity of the period less marked in the
selection than in the treatment of subjects. It has in these days
become necessary for the painter who desires popularity to accumulate
on his canvas whatever is startling in aspect or emotion, and to
drain, even to exhaustion, the vulgar sources of the pathetic. Modern
sentiment, at once feverish and feeble, remains unawakened except by
the violences of gaiety or gloom; and the eye refuses to pause, except
when it is tempted by the luxury of beauty, or fascinated by the
excitement of terror. It ought not, therefore, to be without a