On this subject I make two remarks, in which I widely dissent from the opinion of the author of the Sienese Letters, without committing any breach of our long established friendship. The one is, that to prove Guido superior to Cimabue, he frequently compares the Madonna of S. Domenico, which is the only one of his pictures which he mentions,[255] with the paintings of Cimabue, which are numerous, and full of subject; and without setting any value on the colouring, the fertility of invention, and the various other qualities in which the Florentine surpassed the artist of Siena, he dwells on certain little particulars, in which it appears that Guido was superior. An artist of whom it is not known that he ever attempted any picture but Madonnas, might become more or less perfect in this subject; but painting is not so much indebted to him, as to one who has carried it to the higher walks of the art; a merit which Marco of Siena, a writer not inclined to favour the Florentines, denies not to Cimabue, as we shall find in the fourth book. The other circumstance alluded to is, that when he mentions a picture which does honour to the fame of Cimabue, he attempts to discredit its history, and the tradition; as I have already observed with regard to the two large pictures in the church of Assisi, and am now under the necessity of remarking with regard to the two Madonnas at Florence above mentioned. He "strongly suspects"[256] them to be the work of Mino da Turrita, since mosaic, in which Mino was expert, is there represented by a skilful hand; and Cimabue was not dexterous in that art; as if a painter could not represent buildings without being an architect, or garments without knowing how to cut them out, or drapery without being versed in the art of weaving. He even doubts whether Giotto visited France, for, had this been the case, he, and not Simone da Siena, would have painted the portrait of Laura, as if history did not inform us that Giotto visited that country about 1316, long before the period when Petrarca first became enamoured of that beauty. He has introduced some other speculations, which he would not have admitted, had he not been betrayed into it, almost involuntarily, by a system which has some probable foundation, but is carried to an extravagant length. I should have been silent on this subject; but when writing of these artists it became me to recollect that the _unicuique suum_ was no less the duty of the historian than the judge.