584 HISTORY OF ART 



needs confirmation, but is not the less in itself a positive aid to con- 

 viction. It cannot be tossed aside as worthless, nor yet again used 

 as a skeleton key to unlock any door. That Pliny records the making 

 of a Venus by Skopas is no proof whatever that a Venus found in 

 the ruins of Rome is a copy or a variant of the Skopas marble. At 

 that rate you could make documents prove anything you pleased. 

 If, on the contrary, Vasari says that Giorgione was a pupil of Bellini 

 it is to be believed, even though Giorgione does not show traces of 

 the Bellini shop in his work. Bastien-Lepage did not show Cabanel 

 nor did Whistler in his late work show Gleyre, but each was a pupil 

 of each as stated. 



There is, to be sure, plenty of old woman's gossip retailed by 

 the old chroniclers that may not be believed at all. The thread- 

 bare stories about Daedalus, the first sculptor of Greece, who carved 

 the gods so true to life that they had to be bound with ropes to keep 

 them from walking away, about Zeuxis deceiving the birds with 

 painted grapes, and Parrhasios deceiving Zeuxis with a painted 

 curtain, are merely pleasant nonsense. Quite useless as well as 

 improbable are many tales of Vasari that story, for instance, 

 retold from Ghiberti. of Giotto the sheep-boy being discovered by 

 Cimabue drawing sheep on a stone and the old painter standing 

 aghast at the excellence of the drawing. The story is of small 

 importance, whether fact or fiction; but we have a strong induce- 

 ment to doubt it because we have Giotto's sheep preserved to us 

 on the wall of the Arena Chapel in Padua. They are miserable little 

 wooden sheep out of a toy Noah's-Ark and not even a Byzantine- 

 trained painter like Cimabue could have been staggered by them. 

 On the contrary, had the story read that Giotto was a donkey-boy, 

 and was discovered by Cimabue drawing his donkey, it would be 

 equally unimportant perhaps, but certainly more believable, for we 

 have Giotto's donkey in the " Flight into Egypt " in that same Arena 

 Chapel, and a very excellent donkey it is, too. It might easily 

 enough have astonished Cimabue, for it is astonishing to artists of 

 greater learning even to this day. 



Tradition tradition handed down from mouth to mouth is not 

 a thing to be lightly set aside. It is often the very basis of history. 

 Traditional accounts of Goethe, Shakespeare, Reynolds, or Frans Hals, 

 their methods of work, their conversation or personal appearance 

 may all be acceptable. Just so with traditions about art works. If all 

 the history of the Sistine Chapel were lost, the tradition that Michael 

 Angelo painted the ceiling would still be believable more believ- 

 able perhaps than the tale of Benvenuto's escape from the neighbor- 

 ing castle of St. Angelo. The frescoes themselves would corroborate 

 it. Again, the ' Madonna of the Rocks" in the Louvre is said not 

 to be by Leonardo da Vinci. But it came to the Louvre from the 



