[25] I should speak now both with greater confidence and much greater enthusiasm of Cimabue. The attempt of certain scholars to dispose of him as a myth has broken down. The late Mr. H. P. Horne found that the documents cited by Dr. Richter to prove that Duccio executed the Rucellai Madonna referred to another picture. I had also failed in my estimate to consider fully the superb crucifix by Cimabue in the Museum of Sta. Croce, a work of supreme artistic merit. In general my defence of Cimabue, though right enough as far as it goes, appears to me too timid and my estimate of his artistic quality far too low (1920).
[26] The important position here assigned to the Roman school has been confirmed by the subsequent discovery of Cavallini’s frescoes in Sta. Cecilia at Rome (1920).
[27] “Drunken with the love of compassion of Christ, the blessed Francis would at times do such-like things as this; for the passing sweet melody of the spirit within him, seething over outwardly, did often find utterance in the French tongue, and the strain of the divine whisper that his ear had caught would break forth into a French song of joyous exulting.” Then pretending with two sticks to play a viol, “and making befitting gestures, (he) would sing in French of our Lord Jesus Christ.”--“The Mirror of Perfection,” edited by P. Sabatier, transl. by S. Evans.
[28] “Florentine Painters of the Renaissance and Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance,” by B. Berenson.
[29] This was the first “representation” of the kind in Italy, and is of interest as being the beginning of the Italian Drama, and also of that infinite series of allegorical pageants, sometimes sacred, sometimes secular, which for three centuries played such a prominent part in city life and affected Italian art very intimately.
[30] The Master of the Cecilia altar-piece has been the object of much research since this article was written, and a considerable number of important works are now ascribed to him with some confidence. He has been tentatively identified with Buffalonaceo by Dr. Siren. See _Burl. Mag._, December, 1919; January, October, 1920.
[31] This quality is to be distinguished from that conscious naturalistic study of atmospheric envelopment which engrossed the attention of some artists of the cinquecento; it is a decorative quality which may occur at any period in the development of painting if only an artist arises gifted with a sufficiently delicate sensitiveness to the surface-quality of his work.