The changes which Cimabue introduced into the art of painting were twofold. In the first place, his pictures show an _increase of pictorial skill_. This picture has suffered much from time. Thus in the Madonna's face, which was originally laid in green and painted over thinly, time and restorations have removed this over-painting, and left the green exposed (see also Duccio's 566). The green and purple of her dress also have changed into a dusky tone; but even so, the advance in pictorial skill may be seen in the shading of the colours, and the attempt to represent the light and dark masses of the drapery, whereas in earlier pictures the painters had been content with flat tints. But the advance made by Cimabue was even more in spirit than in technical skill. He combined the contemplation of the South with the action of the North. He gave the populace of his day something to look at--and something to love. "Is she not beautiful," asks a critic before this picture, "in simplicity and solemn majesty? Is she not a real mother with a half sad and foreboding wistful look that goes straight to the heart?" Cimabue's Madonna is still a Mater Dolorosa--"our Lady of Pain," but there is an attempt alike in her and in the child, and in the attendant angels, to substitute for the conventional image of an ideal personage the _representation of real humanity_. It was this change that explains the story told of one of Cimabue's works, that it was carried in glad procession, with the sound of trumpets, from his house to the church, and that the place was ever afterwards called "Borgo Allegro" (the joyful quarter)--a name which it bears to this day. "This delight was not merely in the revelation of an art they had not known how to practise; it was delight in the _revelation of a Madonna whom they had not known how to love_" (_Mornings in Florence_, ii. 48). In telling this story, Vasari adds that "they had not seen anything better"; the rudeness and quaintness which are all that at first sight are now discernible would then, it must be remembered, have been unseen. We may recall the poet's protest against those who, Because of some stiff draperies and loose joints, Gaze scorn down from the heights of Raffaelhood On Cimabue's picture. MRS. BROWNING: _Casa Guidi Windows_. 566. MADONNA AND CHILD. _Duccio_ (Sienese: about 1260-1340).