If I remember rightly, we know one hundred and thirty canvases of Murillo, to any one of which our admiration hesitates to award the pre-eminence,—­and if the crown of laurels which a Pope laid upon the funeral couch of Raphael is the consecration of the sovereignty of the painter of Urbino for History, the universally popular name of Murillo has also sanctified the incontestable genius of the painter of Seville.

    Jouin, Chefs-d’oeuvre:  Peinture, Sculpture Architecture
    (Paris, 1895-97).

ST. FRANCIS BEFORE THE SOLDAN

(GIOTTO)

JOHN RUSKIN

It is a characteristic—­(as far as I know, quite a universal one)—­of the great masters, that they never expect you to look at them;—­seem always rather surprised if you want to; and not overpleased.  Tell them you are going to hang their picture at the upper end of the table at the next great City dinner, and that Mr. So-and-So will make a speech about it;—­you produce no impression upon them whatever, or an unfavourable one.  The chances are ten to one they send you the most rubbishy thing they can find in their lumber-room.  But send for one of them in a hurry, and tell him the rats have gnawed a nasty hole behind the parlour door, and you want it plastered and painted over;—­and he does you a masterpiece which the world will peep behind your door to look at for ever.

I have no time to tell you why this is so; nor do I know why, altogether, but so it is.

Giotto, then, is sent for, to paint this high chapel:  I am not sure if he chose his own subjects from the life of St. Francis:  I think so,—­but of course can’t reason on the guess securely.  At all events, he would have much of his own way in the matter.

[Illustration:  ST. FRANCIS BEFORE THE SOLDAN.
        Giotto.]

Now you must observe that painting a Gothic chapel rightly is just the same thing as painting a Greek vase rightly.  The chapel is merely the vase turned upside-down, and outside-in.  The principles of decoration are exactly the same.  Your decoration is to be proportioned to the size of your vase; to be together delightful when you look at the cup, or chapel, as a whole; to be various and entertaining when you turn the cup round; (you turn yourself round in the chapel;) and to bend its heads and necks of figures about, as best it can, over the hollows, and ins and outs, so that anyhow, whether too long or too short—­possible or impossible—­they may be living, and full of grace.  You will also please take it on my word to-day—­in another morning walk you shall have proof of it—­that Giotto was a pure Etruscan-Greek of the Thirteenth Century:  converted indeed to worship St. Francis instead of Heracles; but as far as vase-painting goes, precisely the Etruscan he was before.  This is nothing else than a large, beautiful, coloured Etruscan vase you have got, inverted over your heads like a diving-bell.  The roof has the symbols of the three virtues of labour—­Poverty, Chastity, Obedience.