GIOTTO'S GOSPEL OF LABOR. 



95 



on his hip ; with the ether he holds his club to the 

 ground, and about his shoulders he wears a lion's 

 hide. The club and lion's hide are attributes 

 proper to Hercules ; otherwise these looks are 

 the looks of Cain ; and, naturally, Cain and Abel 

 are the types of slayer and slain that we should 

 expect in a series like this. But here, again, we 

 shall understand the sculptor best if we think of 

 his work not as setting forth the history of any 

 single strife, but rather an abstract and central 

 type of human strife in general. 



We now return to peaceful industries, to till- 

 ing and transport. The first ploughman has in- 

 vented the first plough, and drives it, holding the 

 ox in very primitive fashion by the tail, through 

 a deep and broken soil. This is one of the no- 

 blest in expression and most spirited in move- 

 ment of the whole series. Tamer, but distin- 

 guished by the usual practical sense of the con- 

 ditions of primitive construction, is the subject 

 of the first wagoner or charioteer. The horse 

 • is yoked to a square car of roughly-bolted planks 

 set on wheels, in the fore part of which stands 

 the driver. 



At this point the series is interrupted by a 

 sable surmounting the entrance-door of the tow- 

 er ; so that on this, the third and east side, the 

 number of subjects is five only, instead of seven, 

 as on the west, south, and north. After the 

 break between the door and the corner comes 

 'one of the sciences of the quadrivium — the 

 science of geometry, represented by an aged 

 philosopher, seated at a desk with a pair of com- 

 passes. The work is somewhat rude and ugly, 

 and this philosopher of a less reverend counte- 

 nance than his companions. 



Turning the corner, we begin the series on 

 the north side of the Campanile, the side which 

 is next to the cathedral, with only a narrow space 

 between the two. The first sculpture in this place 

 shows us another bearded father, the father of 

 painting. The guide-books call him Apelles, but 

 he might at least as fairly be associated with 

 Christian instead of pagan tradition, and named 

 St. Luke. Like some of the earlier artificers of 

 the series, he, too, sits intently stooping at his 

 work, his stool tilted under him ; he is painting 

 away devoutly at an altar-piece, and some of his 

 finished work of the same kind — a large and a 

 smaller triptych, destined for the adornment of 

 church-altars — are indicated in low-relief as be- 

 ing fastened to the wall of his studio. Next to 

 him comes a companion workman, a father of 

 sculpture (called in the guide-books Phidias), 

 bending forward with mallet and chisel over his 



half-hewn images of marble. These two subjects 

 have a special interest, because in them, so far as 

 I know, we have the first historical recognition 

 of the place and dignity of painting and sculpt- 

 ure among the other arts. When we look back 

 -^-when posterity looks back — upon mediaeval 

 Italy and upon Florence, it is of painting and 

 sculpture that we think first; these are the arts 

 in which Italy is, for us, preeminent, and by 

 which, for us, her memory is chiefly ennobled. 

 But the people of those days did not think as we 

 do of their own painters and sculptors. Paint- 

 ing and sculpture grew but gradually into repute 

 and eminence ; in the origin they were but sub- 

 ordinate branches of industries themselves sub- 

 ordinate. They did not find a place among that 

 family of the liberal seven into which the intel- 

 lectual discipline of man was theoretically di- 

 vided. Neither did they find a place in that other 

 family of seven into which the practical industries 

 of men were, in the administration of this particu- 

 lar city, as a matter of fact organized. We' look 

 in vain among the seven great guilds of Florence 

 for a guild of painters or a guild of sculptors. 

 Lower down among the five lesser guilds only, we 

 find one of masons and carpenters, or masters in 

 stone and wood ; and it is under this modest title 

 that all painters and all sculptors were incorpo- 

 rated ; being content to follow, in the order of 

 trade precedence, after the tanners, after the re- 

 tail clothiers, after the butchers, after the boot- 

 makers. So slight being the practical inclination, 

 on the part of those who have made for pos- 

 terity the glory of Florence, to assert their own 

 dignity in their own day, it gratifies our sense 

 of justice to see these arts introduced here with 

 due distinction among the rest. 



With these figures of the fathers of painting and 

 sculpture ends the sequence of the works done by 

 the pupils of Giotto, and in days soon following 

 Giotto's own. The remainder of the series have 

 been carved by other hands a full century later. 

 We have no record why the work was thus inter- 

 rupted ; perhaps only because this north side of 

 the tower next the cathedral is a place of com- 

 parative concealment, where it would matter less 

 than on the other three sides whether the orna- 

 ments were finished or not. At any rate, the last 

 five subjects belong to the Florentine school of 

 the first half of the fifteenth, not of the four- 

 teenth, century. The difference is manifest in a 

 moment to an eye at all accustomed to these 

 things, not only in the character and conception 

 of the figures, but in the details of furniture and 

 ornament, which are no longer Tuscan-Gothic, 



