Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/50

30 closing scenes of Christ's life upon earth. All the grief and sorrow of the world seem gathered up in this great Pietà, where the Virgin bends over her Son in a last embrace, and St. John throws back his arms in despair, while angels hide their eyes and rend the air with their wailing voices. In the Resurrection Giotto has combined two subjects. On one side we have the white-robed Angels seated on the red porphyry tomb, with the soldiers, sunk in deep slumber, at their feet. On the other, the risen Lord, bearing the flag of victory in his hand, is in the act of uttering the words "Noli me tangere" to the Magdalen, who, wrapt in her crimson mantle, falls at his feet, exclaiming, "Rabboni!"—Master. No artist before Giotto had ever tried to represent this touching incident, and no master of later times ever painted so touching and beautiful a Magdalen as this one with the yearning eyes and the passion of love and rapture in her outstretched arms. And while the trees behind the sepulchre are bare and withered, here the fig and olive of the garden have burst into leaf, and the little birds carol on the grassy slopes. "The winter is past, the rain over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come." The Ascension is more formal in arrangement; two choirs of seraphs in the sky correspond with two groups of disciples kneeling on the ground, while between them are two white-robed angels, pointing upwards as they repeat the heavenly message. But Giotto's power of expression is nobly seen in the upturned face of the Virgin-Mother, who, strong in faith and love, follows her Son with straining eyes; and there is a wonderful sense of movement