[2] For these historical details I am chiefly indebted to the very careful treatise of Selvatico, Sulla Cappellina degli Scrovegni nell'Arena di Padova. Padua, 1836.
[3] Lord Lindsay, Christian Art, vol. ii. p. 166.
[4] At Pietra Mala. The flames rise two or three feet above the stony ground out of which they spring, white and fierce enough to be visible in the intense rays even of the morning sun.
[5] At least Lord Lindsay seems to consider the evidence collected by Förster on this subject conclusive. Christian Art, vol. ii. p. 168.
[6] It might not, I think, be a work unworthy of the Arundel Society, to collect and engrave in outline the complete series of these Byzantine originals of the subjects of the Arena Chapel, in order to facilitate this comparison. The Greek MSS. in the British Museum would, I think, be amply sufficient; the Harleian MS. numbered 1810 alone furnishing a considerable number of subjects, and especially a Death of the Virgin, with the St. John thrown into the peculiar and violent gesture of grief afterwards adopted by Giotto in the Entombment of the Arena Chapel.
[7] Notes to Rogers' Italy.
[8] These words are gravely added to some singular particulars respecting the life of Adam, related in a MS. of the sixteenth century preserved in the Herald's College.
[9] Lord Lindsay's evidence on this point (Christian Art, vol. ii. p. 174) seems quite conclusive. It is impossible to overrate the value of the work of Giotto in the Bargello, both for its own intrinsic beauty, and as being executed in this year, which is not only that in which the Divina Commedia opens, but, as I think, the culminating period in the history of the art of the middle ages.
[10] Christian Art, vol. ii. p. 242.
[11] Christian Art, p. 260.