And no artist commanded more of public favour than Giotto. Legislator of taste, not in Tuscany alone, but at Rome, Naples, Bologna, and the Venetian State, he excelled his master as much in celebrity as he had excelled him in grace and method. How soon he did this may be seen on comparing his earliest works at Assisi with those of his master in the same place. Genuine elements of composition, expressions inspired by Nature, accuracy of design, progressively appear. It is no hyperbole to affirm, that in certain characters no artist ever went nearer the source of expression than Giotto, and that in the maiden airs of untainted virginity none ever excelled, and perhaps, Raphael and Domenichino excepted, few ever approached him.
Though not the inventor, Giotto was the restorer of portrait-painting; resemblance, with character of face and attitude, date from him. He gave us Dante, Brunetto Latini, Corso Donato, &c. Mosaic was improved by him, and his powers in it shown by the celebrated Navicella, or boat of Saint Peter, in the portico of the Basilica at Rome; though restoration has transformed it to a work of shreds and patches, and reduced his claim on it to the mere name. Missal painting likewise owes him some gratitude; and in architecture the grand steeple of the Domo at Florence is the work of Giotto.
Implicit imitation checks progress; the numerous school of Giotto were for the greater part content to walk behind their master. Taddeo Gaddi, the most familiar and most favoured of his pupils, is said by Vasari, whom time still suffered to judge with some competence, to have excelled him in colouring and mellowness. The works of Taddeo in Sta. Croce are inferior in originality and execution to his compositions in the Capitolo degli Spagnuoli, where, in the ceiling, he represented some Gospel subjects, and in the Cenacolo the Descent of the Holy Spirit, one of the beautiful relics of the fourteenth century. On the sides he painted the Sciences, with their most eminent professors under each, no unfair specimen of poetic conception; here is what remains of vivacity and brightness in his tints. Taddeo outlived the period assigned him by Vasari; we find him mentioned as late as 1352, which still might not be the ultimate date of his life.