Explore "Giotto's Campanile" by Esther Singleton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
MRS. OLIPHANT.
Of all the beautiful things with which Giotto adorned his city, not one speaks so powerfully to the foreign visitor -- the _forestiere_ whom he and his fellows never took into account, though we occupy so large a space among the admirers of his genius nowadays -- as the lovely Campanile which stands by the great Cathedral like the white royal lily beside the Mary of the Annunciation, slender and strong and everlasting in its delicate grace. It is not often that a man takes up a new trade when he is approaching sixty, or even goes into a new path out of his familiar routine. But Giotto seems to have turned without a moment's hesitation from his paints and panels to the less easily-wrought materials of the builder and sculptor, without either faltering from the great enterprise or doubting his own power to do it.