[26] Encyclopédie Méthodique. Paris, 1788.
[27] I have, throughout this essay, followed the mass of authority which describes Giotto's father as a poor tenant farmer, or lower still in the social scale; but the most recent researches go to prove that he was in well-to-do circumstances, was, in fact, of the rank of "Cavaliere," and it is certain that Giotto inherited some property from him.
[28] Vasari, Lives of the most Eminent Painters, &c., vol. i. p. 42.
[29] Lord Lindsay gives the date of his death as 1302, on the authority of Ciampi.
[30] See notes to Mrs. Foster's translation of Vasari.
[31] There are excellent engravings of both these pictures in Kugler's Handbook of Painting, pages 105 and 109 of the fifth edition.
[32] History of Painting in Italy, vol. i. p. 205.
[33] Look, for instance, at the natural manner in which the border of the Virgin's drapery falls into its folds. The woodcut of this picture here given does little more than show the arrangement of the picture; but even here the advance is perceptible.
[34] Vol. i. p. 206. Vasari attributes the loss of colour in Buffulmacco's pictures to the use of a peculiar purple mixed with salt, which corroded the other colours; possibly this may be the case with Cimabue's.
[35] Since writing the above sentence I have been to the Rucellai Chapel for the purpose of studying the great Cimabue referred to above, the description of which is accordingly given in a later chapter.