He knows its form perfectly--but its
perspective, not quite yet.
The trees stiff and stunted--they also needing culture. Their fruit
dropping at present only into beasts' mouths.
4. _Jabal._
If you have looked long enough, and carefully enough, at the three
previous sculptures, you cannot but feel that the hand here is utterly
changed. The drapery sweeps in broader, softer, but less true folds;
the handling is far more delicate; exquisitely sensitive to gradation
over broad surfaces--scarcely using an incision of any depth but in
outline; studiously reserved in appliance of shadow, as a thing
precious and local--look at it above the puppy's head, and under the
tent.
This is assuredly painter's work, not mere sculptor's. I have no doubt
whatever it is by the own hand of the shepherd-boy of Fesole. Cimabue
had found him drawing, (more probably _scratching_ with Etrurian
point,) one of his sheep upon a stone. These, on the central
foundation-stone of his tower he engraves, looking back on the fields
of life: the time soon near for him to draw the curtains of his tent.
I know no dog like this in method of drawing, and in skill of giving
the living form without one touch of chisel for hair, or incision for
eye, except the dog barking at Poverty in the great fresco of Assisi.
Take the lens and look at every piece of the work from corner to
corner--note especially as a thing which would only have been enjoyed
by a painter, and which all great painters do intensely enjoy--the
_fringe_ of the tent, [Footnote: "I think Jabal's tent is made of
leather; the relaxed intervals between the tent-pegs show a curved
ragged edge like leather near the ground" (Mr.
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