Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/320

306 which was, indeed, so coarse that the works produced in it displayed more of the roughness of the raw material, than of the genius of the artist; those statues of theirs being wholly destitute of flexibility, attitude, or movement of any kind, and their draperies entirely without folds, so that they could scarcely be called statues—all this became gradually ameliorated, and when G-iotto had improved the art of design, the figures of marble and stone improved also: those of Andrea Pisano, of his son Nino, and of his other disciples, were greatly superior to the statues that had preceded them; less rigid and stiff, displaying some approach to grace of attitude, and in all respects better. The works of the two Sienese masters, Agostino and Agnolo, may here be particularized, (by whom, as we have before related, the sepulchre of Guido, bishop of Arezzo, was constructed), and those of the Germans, by whom the fat^ade of the cathedral of Orvieto was executed: upon the whole, therefore, sculpture was at this time perceived to make some little progress,—its figures received less rigid forms; the vestments were permitted to flow more freely; certain of the attitudes lost a portion of their stiffness, and some of the heads acquired more life and expression. There was, in short, a commencement of effort to reach the better path, but defects still remained in great numbers on every point; the art of design had not yet attained its perfection, nor were there many good models for the artists of those times to imitate. All these impediments and difficulties considered, the masters of those days, and who have been placed by me in the first period, deserve all the praise and credit that can be awarded to their works, since it must not be forgotten that they had received no aid from those who preceded them, but had to find their way by their own efforts. Every beginning, moreover, however insignificant and humble in itself, is always to be accounted worthy of no small praise.

Nor had painting much better fortune during those times; but the devotion of the people called it more frequently into use, and it had more artists employed; by consequence, the progress made by it was more obvious than that of the two sister arts. Thus we have seen that the Greek, or Byzantine manner, first attacked by Cimabue, was afterwards entirely extinguished by the aid of Giotto, and there arose a new one,