The debt which painters owe to Nature, which serves continually as an example to them, that from her they may select the best and finest parts for reproduction and imitation, is due also to the Florentine painter, Giotto; because, when the methods and outlines of good painting had been buried for so many years under the ruins caused by war, he alone, although born in the midst of unskilful artists, was able, through God's gift in him, to endow art with a proper form after it had been revived in a bad style. Certainly it was nothing short of a miracle, in so gross and unskilful an age, that Giotto should have worked to such purpose that design of which the men of the time had little or no conception, was revived to a vigorous life by his means. The birth of this great man took place in the year 1276, fourteen miles from Florence, in the town of Vespignano, his father, who was a simple field labourer, being named Bondone. He brought up Giotto as well as his position in life allowed. When the boy had attained the age of ten years he exhibited, in all his childish ways, an extraordinary quickness and readiness of mind, which made him a favourite, not only with his father, but with all who knew him, both in the village and beyond it. Bondone then set him to watch a few sheep, and while he was following these from place to place to find pasture, he was always drawing something from nature or representing the fancies which came into his head, with a stone on the ground or on sand, so much was he attracted to the art of design by his natural inclination. Thus one day when Cimabue was going on some business from Florence to Vespignano, he came upon Giotto, who, while his sheep were grazing, was drawing one of them from life with a pointed piece of stone upon a smooth surface of rock, although he had never had any master but nature. Cimabue stopped in amazement at the sight, and asked the boy if he would like to come and stay with him. Giotto replied he would go willingly if his father would consent. Cimabue lost no time in finding Bondone, who joyfully consented and allowed his son to accompany Cimabue to Florence. After his arrival there, assisted by his natural talent and taught by Cimabue, the boy not only equalled his master's style in a short time, but became such a good imitator of nature that he entirely abandoned the rude Byzantine manner and revived the modern and good style of painting, introducing the practice of making good portraits of living persons, a thing which had not been in use for more than two hundred years. And although there were some few portraits made in this manner, as has been said above, yet they had not been very successful, nor were they nearly so well executed as those of Giotto. Among other portraits which he made, the chapel of the Podesta palace at Florence still contains that of Dante Aligheri, his close companion and friend, no less famous as a poet than Giotto then was as a painter.