[54] As in the fresco in the Vatican.
[55] See the engraving under this title by Marc Antonio; it is properly St. Cecilia, and not St. Félicité.
[56] It is now in the Lanti chapel in the church of the Lateran.
[57] Mr. Ruskin remarks very truly, that in early Christian art there is a certain confidence, in the way in which angels trust to their wings, very characteristic of a period of bold and simple conception. Modern science has taught us that a wing cannot be anatomically joined to a shoulder; and in proportion as painters approach more and more to the scientific as distinguished from the contemplative state of mind, they put the wings of their angels on more timidly, and dwell with greater emphasis on the human form with less upon the wings, until these last become a species of decorative appendage, a mere sign of an angel. But in Giotto’s time an angel was a complete creature, as much believed in as a bird, and the way in which it would or might cast itself into the air and lean hither and thither on its plumes, was as naturally apprehended as the manner of flight of a chough or a starling. Hence Dante’s simple and most exquisite synonym for angel, “Bird of God;” and hence also a variety and picturesqueness in the expression of the movements of the heavenly hierarchies by the earlier painters, ill replaced by the powers of foreshortening and throwing naked limbs into fantastic positions, which appear in the cherubic groups of later times.’ The angels from the Campo Santo at Pisa, numbered 12, 21, and 32, are instances of this bird-like form. They are Uccelli di Dio. Those numbered 27, 28, and 37 are examples of the later treatment.
[58] A.D. 1352. Florence, S. Maria Novella.
[59] Greek mosaic, A.D. 1174.
[60] MS. of the Book of Revelation, fourteenth century. Trinity College, Dublin.
[61] Coll. of the Duke of Sutherland.
[62] Hôtel de Cluny, 399.
[63] v. Il perfetto Legendario. 1659.