Explore "Giotto and Painting" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The fresco paintings by Giotto[1] and others, in the cemetery at Pisa, are most noble. Giotto was a contemporary of Dante: and it is a curious question, whether the painters borrowed from the poet, or _vice versa_. Certainly M. Angelo and Raffael fed their imaginations highly with these grand drawings, especially M. Angelo, who took from them his bold yet graceful lines.
[Footnote 1: / Giotto, or Angiolotto's birth is fixed by Vasari in 1276, but there is / some reason to think that he was born a little earlier. Dante, who was / his friend, was born in 1265. Giotto was the pupil of Cimabue, whom he / entirely eclipsed, as Dante testifies in the well-known lines in / the Purgatorio: -- / "O vana gloria dell'umane posse! / Com' poco verde in su la cima dura, / Se non e giunta dall' etati grosse! / Credette Cirnabue nella pintura / Tener lo campo: ed ora ha Giotto il grido, / Si che la fama di colui oscura. " -- C. xi. v. 91.