As it was with literature, so likewise was it with art. The most purely mediæval sculpture, the sculpture which has, as it were, just detached itself from the capitals and porches of the cathedral, is the direct pupil of the antique; and the three great Gothic sculptors, Niccoto, Giovanni, and Andrea of Pisa, learn from fragments of Greek and Roman sculpture how to model the figure of the Redeemer and how to chisel the robe of the Virgin. This spontaneous mediæval sculpture, aided by the antique, preceded by a full half-century the appearance of mediæval painting; and it was from the study of the works of the Pisan sculptors, that Cimabue and Giotto learned to depart from the mummified monstrosities of the Miratic, Byzantine, and Roman style of Giunta and Berlinghieri. Thus, through the sculpture of the Pisans the painting of the school of Giotto received at second-hand the teachings of antiquity. Sculpture had created painting, painting now belonged to the painters. In the hands of Giotto it developed within a few years into an art which seemed almost mature, an art dealing victoriously with its materials, triumphantly solving its problems, executing as if by miracle all that was demanded of it. But Giottesque art appeared perfect merely because it was limited; it did all that was required of it, because that which was required was little; it was not asked to reproduce the real, nor to represent the beautiful, it was asked merely to suggest a character, a situation, a story. The artistic development of a nation has its exact parallel in the artistic development of an individual. The child uses his pencil to tell a story, satisfied with balls and sticks as body, head, and legs, provided he and his friends can associate with them the ideas in their minds: the youth sets himself to copy what he sees, to reproduce forms, and effects, without any aim beyond the mere pleasure of copying; the mature artist strives to obtain forms and effects of which he approves, he seeks for beauty. In the life of Italian painting generations of men who flourished at the beginning of the sixteenth century are the mature artists; the men of the fifteenth century are the inexperienced youths; the Giottesques are the children--children Titanic and seraph-like, but children nevertheless, and, like all children, learning more perhaps in their few years than can the youth of the man learn in a lifetime.