PREFACE

Summary

The importance of these bas-reliefs to an intelligent reader of Italian history cannot be overrated, seeing that they are the only authentic records left of the sculptural design of the man who, as builder, sculptor, painter, and theologian, absolutely rebuilt and recoloured the entire mind and faith of Italy in the days of Dante. How much the visions of Dante himself were painted on the walls of his heart and in the inner light of his soul by Giotto, he himself must have been scarcely conscious: for all inferior men, the engraved and coloured Bible of Giotto and his school became their inevitable master, and a continual monitor of all that was dutiful in the work and lovely in the hope of Christian persons.

The Master's own estimate of the power of these bas-reliefs must have been very high; for instead of making them a part of such encrusted and continuous decoration as the most powerful sculptor of the Pisan school had accustomed the populace to expect, he sets them as gems in a kind of Etruscan chain round the base of his tower, minute in the extreme compared to the extent of its surface; so far above the eye as to secure them absolutely from all chance of injury or wear, but by time and its mud and rain; and entirely unrecommended and unassisted by the slightest external minor imageries of organic form.