According to Baldinucci, Giotto received very sub stantial encouragement from the princes of the age, with whom his talent was in great request. The Cardinal Gaetano paid to him SOO gold crowns for the picture he painted for the altar of St. Peter's ; and for his picture of St. Peter in the boat he is said to have received 2200 gold crowns. If this be accurate, it appears that both the an cient Greeks and the sub-ancient Goths, valued painting at a higher rate than it is held in our day. Giotto painted a portrait of himself by means of a mirror, which he exhi bited at Florence, and likewise a picture of his friend and contemporary Dante ; for Giotto was likewise a poet and a man of learning, though originally but a shepherd boy Giotto had various followers, who painted much in the same manner ; and, as often happens, his very excellence was a means of retarding the progress of the art, as his successors were diffident of ever being able to do any thing better, and therefore aspired no higher than to the power of imitating his works with facility. They were numerous,zuld many or them possessed considerable merit ; but as our subject is the progress of the art, which re mained stationary, notwithstanding the efforts of these painters, it were needless to posh our inquiries farther, than to mention the names of those who principally ob tained a reputation as artists, Boccaccio mentions the greater part of them in the eighth day of his Decamerone ; and perhaps to this circumstance, fully as much as to their talent, we owe the preservation of the names of Buffal macco, the facetious painter ; of Orcagna, and several others. Giotto's own pupils were, Stefano, who was called the ape of nature ; his son Tomasso, one of the closest imitators of Giotto, so as to obtain the surname of Giot tino ; Taddeo Gaddi, of whom some pictures remain at Florence, and who excelled in colouring. There were several others, whose works still remain at Florence and Pisa, but they are only curious in an historical point of view, being all inferior in merit to their leader Giotto.
The art, indeed, which had dropped into a sort of se cond infancy, began to flag, and threaten a premature death, had it not been for the protection of one enlight ened family, to whom it owed its preservation in the first place, and its subsequent rapid strides towards the attain ment of perfection. The house of Medici had begun, from the class of merchants, to work its way, through the medium of riches, to hold an important and distinguished rank in Europe. The wisdom of this ambitious family, aspiring to the sovereignty of Florence, was in nothing more conspicuous than in their munificence and encou ragement of artists; by which, in their capacity of wealthy and enlightened citizens, they were fulfilling the duties of sovereigns. They were habituating all ranks of the peo ple to look up to them alone for countenance and pro tection, and engaging that adulation in their favour, which was the natural and only return that could be made by those who had benefited by their liberality. And in their turn the artists had it in their power to contribute emi nently to the elevation of their patrons, by representing the different branches of the family in distinguished cha racters, as benefactors to their country ; placing their vir tures in the best point of view. The people got accus tomed to sec them represented in that capacity, and were the more readily induced to assent to their assuming the reality of that, of which the representation had long been so familiar to them. They experienced a feeling of pride,
in perceiving that such an elevation was within the reach of one of their own class, and that they had had the dis cernment to bestow it so judiciously. There was nothing startling to their rights and liberties in seeing the munifi cent benefactor to their native country, the head of the house of Medici, occupying the reality of that station which they had been accustomed to applaud in the sym bolical representations of the painters The portraits of Cosmo de i\ledicis, the father of his country, are ge nerally invested with the royal robes while he was yet a merchant citizen. Nothing could be more natural, than that he should finish the juggle by sitting down on the throne. Indeed, there are so few pictures of that period in which some one of the family is not represented in a distinguished character, as in the paintings of the adora tion of the infant Jesus, where the three kings are so in vafiably the different members of that family, that we are led to suppose that it was one of the many political artifices by which the Medici ascended the throne.
Be that as it may, it was attended with effects highly beneficial to the arts ; and while the Medici still moved in the humble sphere of merchants, a taste for painting and sculpture became, through their means, generally diffused among the enlightened citizens of Florence. The plan was laid by Cosmo, to make Florence the great emporium of taste and literature in Europe, which was ardently pursued by his brother Lorenzo the Magnificent, and his•equally distinguished grandson, Pope Leo the Tenth.
In the midst of all the turbulence of faction, all ranks of citizens seemed to unite in this great national object of embellishing Florence, and drawing to it men of emi nence in every branch of literature and the liberal arts.
They prosecuted the decoration of the churches with con stant solicitude, and vied with each other in the elegance of their private dwellings ; creating such a demand for works of art, as became the certain presage of its future improvement.
The first important step that was gained in the im provement of the art at this period, was in the study of perspective, introduced by Brunelleschi, the architect, and taken up with ardour by Paolo Uccello. He carried his admiration of perspective to so great a pitch of enthusiasm, as to make him be considered' a madman. He astonished the public, however, by the illusion of his performances, in which he succeeded in introducing within a narrow space long lines of pillars and architecture, with a truth that surprised every one. This circumstance led him particularly to the study of landscape, which had been very little practised before his time. There was another desideratum in the art as yet, chiaro scuro, the particular study of which was taken up by Massolino, which led him to soften down the dry hard style of his predecessors, and to omit the troublesome crowd of minute accompaniments with which it was usual to encumber the pictures of that period ; as attention to these was incompatible with har mony and repose in the effect of light and shade. These steps gained, prepared the way for the advance made by Maso, who, as usual with the Italians, obtained a by-name, by which he is more generally known.