ADDRESSES ON DECORATIVE COLOUR 477

and scarlet,¹ as being those calculated to form the basis of the richest, most harmonious, and glorious combination, should not have adopted them in all cases where such results were required. The thirteenth-century people, however, had not, it appeared, derived their knowledge from the Bible; they went on working and experimenting until they found it out. Here (exhibiting it) was a Bible of the year 1220; it was but a common example, but worth exhibiting, on account of the clerkly manner in which the letters were written and the intense delicacy of the writing generally.

5. He now came to the middle of the thirteenth century, when an immense development of the art took place. It was well known that the whole spirit of the Middle Ages was to be found in the writings of Dante: there it must be sought.² Dante was the prophet of the Middle Ages. In his Purgatory* he introduced a description of certain people suffering the penalty of pride. He represented them as being crushed under great stones, in the position of which we have so many examples in the architectural decorations of that period, as in figures bearing corbels, brackets, etc. That accounted for the painful attitudes and contortions of the figures bearing brackets to be found in and about ancient ecclesiastical edifices. It was curious to see what Dante appeared to think most calculated to create the feeling of pride in the human breast. It was not valour, nobility, or success in battles, but excellence in writing. These were his words:-

“Listening, I bent my visage down: and one

(Not he who speaks) twisted beneath the weight

That urged him, saw me, knew me straight, and call’d,

Holding his eyes with difficulty fix’d

Intent upon me, stooping as I went,

Companion of their way. ‘Oh!’ I exclaim’d,

’Art thou not Oderigi? Art not thou

Agobbio’s glory?-glory of that art

Which they of Paris call the limner’s skill?’

’Brother,’ said he, ‘with tints that gayer smile,

Bolognian Franco’s pencil lines the leaves.

His all the honour now-my light obscured.’”³

* Canto XI., II. 73 seqq.

¹ [Exodus xxvi.; referred to again in Seven Lamps (Vol. VIII. p. 34).]

² [So, above, in Lectures on Architecture and Painting, p. 108.]

³ [The lines about Oderigi, the illuminator, a friend of Giotto and Dante, are quoted again in the second lecture (§ 20, p. 494). “There lived in Rome,” says Vasari in his Life of Giotto, “a certain Oderigi of Agobbio, an excellent miniature-painter, with whom Giotto lived on terms of close friendship; and who was therefore invited by the Pope to illuminate many books for the library of the palace. ... In my book of ancient drawings I have some few remains from the hand of this artist, who was certainly a clever man, although much surpassed by Franco of Bologna, who executed many admirable works in the same manner, for the same pontiff (and which were also destined for the library of the palace), at the same time with Oderigi. From the hand of Franco, also, I have designs, both in painting and illuminating, which may be seen in my book above cited; among others, are an eagle, perfectly well done, and a lion tearing up a tree, which is most beautiful” (Bohn’s edition, 1855, i. 104).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]