Giotto, the son of Bondone, was born near Florence in the year 1276. It is said that he was a shepherd boy, and was discovered drawing a sheep upon a slab of stone by Cimabue, who took him home and instructed him in painting. In him the graphic art was associated with the ecstasy of a contemplative mind, and became a powerful and animated language. He did not astound or flatter the senses by the strength of tints, or the violent contrast of lights and shadows; but like his great successor, Angelico, in the urbanity and variety of lines, in the profiling of countenances, and in the ingenuous movement of the figure, he portrayed that harmony which pervades all creation, and which reveals itself most divinely in the gentle companion of man. Amid the rugged Apennines about Umbria there was reared a simple and solitary school of painting in the fifteenth century, which gloried in sublime inspirations, and cultivated external beauty only to show the splendor of its conceptions. Such were Fabriano, Credi, Perugino, Pinturricchio, and Raphael who came down to Florence to mature their capacities and ennoble their art, in competition with the great leaders of the Tuscan school, Giotto Memmi, Gaddi, Spinello, Pietro Cavallini, and the rest. These are the men who first burst the trammels of dryness, meagreness and servile imitation; who first introduced a free, bold, and flowing outline, coupled with examples of dignified character, energetic action, and concentrated expression; invented chiaroscuro and grouping, and at the point of culmination imparted to their works a majesty unrivaled in the history of pictorial art. That was a memorable epoch truly, and for the imitative arts one of superlative glory. For while the people were struggling between tyranny and liberty; while philosophy was engaged in its deliriums about judicial astrology, and the civil code was cruel and oppressive, painting gradually approached that sovereign excellence to which the genius of Leonardo and Raphael were destined to exalt it; till, with the rapidity that signalized its ascent, it began to sink into decay and ruin. It would seem that oil-painting was practiced in Giotto's time; but it came not into general use until about 1410, when this superior medium of art was either invented or revived by the Flemish artist, John Van Eyck, of Brughes. The place of this invention is significant, and still more the fact that ever since the progress of art and the perfection of color in Europe has neared that vicinity.