"Federici gives powerful reasons for his opinion that the Arena Chapel was employed in the ceremonies of their order; and Lord Lindsay observes 'that the fulness with which the history of the Virgin is recounted on its walls, adds to the plausibility of his supposition.'
"Enrico Scrovegni was, however, towards the close of his life driven into exile, and died at Venice in 1320. But he was buried in the chapel he had built, and has one small monument in the sacristy as the founder of the building, in which he is represented under a Gothic niche, standing with his hands clasped and his eyes raised, while behind the altar is his tomb, on which, as usual at this period, is a recumbent statue of him. The chapel itself may not unwarrantably be considered as one of the first efforts of Popery in resistance to the Reformation; for the Reformation, though not victorious till the sixteenth, began in reality in the thirteenth century; and the remonstrances of such bishops as our own Grossteste, the martyrdom of the Albigenses in the Dominican crusades, and the murmurs of those 'heretics,' against whose aspersions of the majesty of the Virgin this chivalrous order of the Cavalieri Godenti was instituted, were as truly the signs of the new era in religion, as the opponent work of Giotto on the walls of the Arena was a sign of the approach of a new era in art."--From _The Arena Chapel at Padua_, by JOHN RUSKIN.
[Illustration: JUSTICIA. _FRESCO BY GIOTTO._ IN THE CAPPELLA DELL' ARENA, PADUA.]
[57] See note at the end of this chapter for Ruskin's account of the chapel's use and its founder.
[58] I beg the custodian's pardon, for on going to the chapel again this year, I find that it is the Royal Society of Api-Culture who are responsible for the dozen or so of hives.
[59] It would take me at least a page to justify and define this assertion. I must trust my readers to understand that it is written in no depreciation of later artists, and that it only refers to colour as seen in light, scarcely modified at all by shade.
[60] Throughout this book I have purposely avoided, wherever it was possible, long descriptions of the subject matter of the pictures mentioned. The almost inevitable tendency of such description, unless it is done with the greatest reticence as well as skill, is to withdraw the reader's attention from the artist, either to the author or the subject spoken of, and as my main endeavour in writing this book has been to bring the peculiarities of the artist into constant prominence, it would have defeated my purpose to enter into descriptive writing.