Mr. Symonds beautifully expresses the tendency of that time: "The eyes
of the worshipper should no longer have a mere stock or stone to
contemplate; his imagination should be helped by the dogmatic
presentation of the scenes of sacred history, and his devotion
quickened by lively images of the passion of our Lord.... The body and
soul moreover should be reconciled, and God's likeness should be once
more acknowledged in the features and limbs of men." [Footnote:
Symonds' _Renaissance of the Fine Arts_, chap. i. p. 11.]
The school of Giotto was the first to feel this need of the soul. He,
taking his ideas from nature, clothed the soul in a thin veil; the
Italians call his school that of poetic art; it reached sentiment and
poetry, but did not pass them. Yet the thirteenth century was sublime
for the expression of the idea; one only has to study the intense
meaning in the works of Giotto, and Orcagna, Duccio, and the Lorenzetti
of Siena to perceive this. The fourteenth century, on the contrary,
rendered itself glorious for manifestation of form. "Artists thought
the veil of ideality a poor thing, and wished to give the solidity of
the body to the soul; they stole every secret from nature; the senses
were content, but not sentiment.
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