the same subjects and the same figures over and over again, only the
figures were more graceful than those of the local Italian, English,
and French artists, who in varying degrees at different times tried
to paint like the Byzantine or Greek artists, but without quite the
same success. So long as there was no need for an artist to paint
anything but the old well-established subjects, and so long as people
desired them to be painted in the old conventional manner, there was
little reason why any painter should try to be original and paint what
was not wanted. But in the thirteenth century a great change took place.

Let us here refresh our memories of what we may have read of that
delightful saint, Francis of Assisi. He was born in 1182, the son of
a well-to-do nobleman, in the little town of Assisi in Umbria, and
as a lad became inflamed with the ideal of the religious life. But
instead of entering one of the existing monastic orders, where he would
have been protected, he gave away every possession he had in the world
and adopted 'poverty' as his watchword. Clad in an old brown habit,
he walked from place to place preaching charity, obedience, and
renunciation of all worldly goods. He lived on what was given to him
to eat from day to day; he nursed the lepers and the sick. Ever described
as a most lovable person, he won by his preaching the hearts of people
of all classes, from the King of France to the humblest peasant. He
wrote beautiful hymns in praise of the sun, the moon, and the stars,
and had a great love for every living thing. The birds were said to
have flocked around him because they loved him, and we read that he
talked to them and called them his 'little sisters.' An old writer
tells this story in good faith:

When St. Francis spake words to them, the birds began all of them to
open their beaks and spread their wings and reverently bend their heads
down to the ground, and by their acts and by their songs did show that
the holy Father gave them joy exceeding great.

Wherever he preached he made converts who 'married Holy Poverty,' as
St. Francis expressed it, gave up everything they had, and lived his
preaching and roaming life. St. Francis himself had no idea of forming
a monastic order. He wished to live a holy life in the world and show
others how to do the same, and for years he and his companions worked
among the poor, earning their daily bread when they could, and when
they could not, begging for it. Gradually, however, ambition stirred
in the hearts of some of the followers of Francis, and against the
will of their leader they made themselves into the Order of Franciscan
Friars, collected gifts of money, and began to build churches and
monastic buildings. At first the buildings were said to belong to the
Pope, who allowed the Franciscans to use them, since they might not
own property; but after the death of St. Francis, the Order built
churches throughout the length and breadth of Italy, not of marble
and mosaic but of brick, since brick was cheaper; but the brick walls
were plastered, and upon the wet plaster there were painted scenes
from the life of St. Francis, side by side with the old Christian and
saintly legends. This sudden demand for painted churches with
paintings of new subjects, stirred the painters of the day to alter
their old style. When an artist was asked to paint a large picture
of St. Francis preaching to the birds, he had to look at real birds
and he had to study a real man in the attitude of preaching. There
was no scene that had ever been painted from the life of Christ or
of any saint in which a man preached to a bird, so that the artist
was driven to paint from nature instead of copying former pictures.

Let us now read what a painter who lived in the sixteenth century,
Vasari by name, wrote about the rise of painting in his native city.
Some learned people nowadays say that Vasari was wrong in many of the
stories he told, but after all he lived much nearer than we do to the
times he wrote about, and it is safer to believe what he tells us than
what modern students surmise, except when they are able to cite other
old authorities to which Vasari did not have access.

The endless flood of misfortunes which overwhelmed unhappy Italy not
only ruined everything worthy of the name of a building, but completely
extinguished the race of artists, a far more serious matter. Then,
as it pleased God, there was born in the year 1240, in the city of
Florence, Giovanni, surnamed Cimabue, to shed the first light on the
art of painting. Instead of paying attention to his lessons, Cimabue
spent the whole day drawing men, horses, houses, and various other
fancies on his books and odd sheets, like one who felt himself compelled
to do so by nature. Fortune proved favourable to his natural
inclination, for some Greek artists were summoned to Florence by the
government of the city for no other purpose than the revival of painting
in their midst, since the art was not so much debased as altogether
lost. In this way Cimabue made a beginning in the art which attracted
him, for he often played the truant and spent the whole day in watching
the masters work. Thus it came about that his father and the artists
considered him so fitted to be a painter that if he devoted himself
to the profession he might look for honourable success in it, and to
his great satisfaction his father procured him employment with the
painters. Thus by dint of continual practice and with the assistance
of his natural talent he far surpassed the manner of his teachers.
For they had never cared to make any progress and had executed their
works, not in the good manner of ancient Greece, but in the rude modern
style of that time. Cimabue drew from nature to the best of his powers,
although it was a novelty to do so in those days, and he made the
draperies, garments, and other things somewhat more life-like, natural,
and soft than the Greeks had done, who had taught one another a rough,
awkward, and commonplace style for a great number of years, not by
means of study but as a matter of custom, without ever dreaming of
improving their designs by beauty of colouring or by any invention
of worth.

If you were to see a picture by Cimabue (there is one in the National
Gallery which resembles his work so closely that it is sometimes said