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XXI.

THE YOUNG CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE.

This composition has suffered so grievously by time, that even the portions of it which remain are seen to the greatest disadvantage.  Little more than various conditions of scar and stain can be now traced, where were once the draperies of the figures in the shade, and the suspended garland and arches on the right hand of the spectator; and in endeavouring not to represent more than there is authority for, the draughtsman and engraver have necessarily produced a less satisfactory plate than most others of the series.  But Giotto has also himself fallen considerably below his usual standard.  The faces appear to be cold and hard; and the attitudes are as little graceful as expressive either of attention or surprise.  The Madonna’s action, stretching her arms to embrace her Son, is pretty; but, on the whole, the picture has no value; and this is the more remarkable, as there were fewer precedents of treatment in this case than in any of the others; and it might have been anticipated that Giotto would have put himself to some pains when the field of thought was comparatively new.  The subject of Christ teaching in the Temple rarely occurs in manuscripts; but all the others were perpetually repeated in the service-books of the period.

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[Illustration]

XXII.

THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST.

This is a more interesting work than the last; but it is also gravely and strangely deficient in power of entering into the subject; and this, I think, is common with nearly all efforts that have hitherto been made at its representation.  I have never seen a picture of the Baptism, by any painter whatever, which was not below the average power of the painter; and in this conception of Giotto’s, the humility of St. John is entirely unexpressed, and the gesture of Christ has hardly any meaning:  it neither is in harmony with the words, “Suffer it to be so now,” which must have been uttered before the moment of actual baptism, nor does it in the slightest degree indicate the sense in the Redeemer of now entering upon the great work of His ministry.  In the earlier representations of the subject, the humility of St. John is never lost sight of; there will be seen, for instance, an effort at expressing it by the slightly stooping attitude and bent knee, even in the very rude design given in outline on the opposite page.  I have thought it worth while to set before the reader in this outline one example of the sort of traditional representations which were current throughout Christendom before Giotto arose.  This instance is taken from a large choir-book, probably of French, certainly of Northern execution, towards the close of the thirteenth century;[22] and it is a very fair average example