Farther: as every fresco of this early date has been retouched again
and again, and often painted half over,--and as, if there has been the
least care or respect for the old work in the restorer, he will now and
then follow the old lines and match the old colours carefully in some
places, while he puts in clearly recognizable work of his own in
others,--two critics, of whom one knows the first man's work well, and
the other the last's, will contradict each other to almost any extent
on the securest grounds. And there is then no safe refuge for an
uninitiated person but in the old tradition, which, if not literally
true, is founded assuredly on some root of fact which you are likely to
get at, if ever, through it only. So that my general directions to all
young people going to Florence or Rome would be very short: "Know your
first volume of Vasari, and your two first books of Livy; look about
you, and don't talk, nor listen to talking."
On those terms, you may know, entering this chapel, that in Michael
Angelo's time, all Florence attributed these frescos to Taddeo Gaddi
and Simon Memmi.
I have studied neither of these artists myself with any speciality of
care, and cannot tell you positively, anything about them or their
works. But I know good work from bad, as a cobbler knows leather, and I
can tell you positively the quality of these frescos, and their
relation to contemporary panel pictures; whether authentically ascribed
to Gaddi, Memmi, or any one else, it is for the Florentine Academy to
decide.
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