Giotto

and most striking personalities in the artistic annals of the Christian world, we are left to found our ideas of his private life and of his career as an artist, almost entirely upon tradition, and such of his works as have been spared us through the centuries that have elapsed since he laid aside his brush. As to authentic notices concerning his life and work, we have been bequeathed the unsatisfactory legacy of a few scattered documents, which afford no further enlightenment than to establish one or two relatively unimportant dates connected with certain periods of his artistic activity?records mostly of an official or legal nature, and which cast no light whatever upon the personality of the man himself. In attempting, therefore, to construct anything ap- preaching an ordered or probable account of his life, we are forced to fall back almost entirely upon such internal evidence as we may gather from his works, the narratives of his earlier biographers being too mixed with the qualities of error and imagination to be of any real service to us. Under such circumstances, it is easily apparent that the most conscientious and well-meaning attempt in this direction can lay claim to nothing beyond a certain appearance of probability, so far must the elements of conjecture and uncertainty enter into every endeavour to put together a connected story of his life. As to a review of his career as an artist, however, we are less devoid of substantial ma...