The love of Art pervaded Florence, and a nature so
sensitive and so sympathetic as Dante's could not but partake of it
in the fullest measure. Art was then no adjunct of sentimentalism, no
encourager of idleness. It was connected with all that was most serious
and all that was most delightful in life. It is difficult, indeed, to
realize the delight which it gave, and the earnestness with which it was
followed at this period, when it seemed, as by a miracle, to fling off
the winding-sheet which had long wrapped its stiffened limbs, and to
come forth with new and unexampled life.
[Footnote J: In this year, 1291, Giotto was but fifteen years old,
and probably a student with Cimabue. Benvenuto da Imola, who lectured
publicly at Bologna on the _Divina Commedia_ in the year 1378, reports,
that, while Giotto, still a young man, was painting at Padua, Dante
visited him. And Vasari says, that it was a tradition, that Giotto had
painted, in a chapel at Naples, scenes out of the _Apocalypse_, from
designs furnished him by the poet. If we may believe another tradition,
which there seems indeed little reason to doubt, Giotto went to Ravenna
during the last years of Dante's life, that he might spend there some
time in company with his exiled friend.
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