But again, in the one
of Painting, the hair is struck with more vulgar indenting and
drilling, and the Gothic of the picture frame is less precise in touch
and later in style. Observe, however,--and this may perhaps give us
some definite hint for clearing the question,--a picture-frame _would
be_ less precise in making, and later in style, properly, than
cusped arches to be put under the feet of the inventor of all musical
sound by breath of man. And if you will now compare finally the eager
tilting of the workman's seat in 22 and 6, and the working of the wood
in the painter's low table for his pots of colour, and his three-legged
stool, with that of Tubal Cain's anvil block; and the way in which the
lines of the forge and upper triptych are in each composition used to
set off the rounding of the head, I believe you will have little
hesitation in accepting my own view of the matter--namely, that the
three pieces of the Fathers of the Arts were wrought with Giotto's
extremest care for the most precious stones of his tower; that also,
being a sculptor and painter, he did the other two, but with quite
definite and wilful resolve that they _should be_, as mere symbols
of his own two trades, wholly inferior to the other subjects of the
patriarchs; that he made the Sculpture picturesque and bold as you see
it is, and showed all a sculptor's tricks in the work of it; and a
sculptor's Greek subject, Bacchus, for the model of it; that he wrought
the Painting, as the higher art, with more care, still keeping it
subordinate to the primal subjects, but showed, for a lesson to all the
generations of painters for evermore,--this one lesson, like his circle
of pure line containing all others,--'Your soul and body must be all in
every touch.
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