Giotto and the Orators

"Painters and humanists were joint pace-makers for the early Italian Renaissance: this was recognized even at the time. But how much the painters' visual art had in common with the humanists' verbal art is still not clear. This book - acclaimed on its first publication as 'almost beyond value in its appeal to the mind' - examines the one firm bridge between them, what Petrarch and other humanists wrote about painting. It makes a survey of the range and main themes of their art criticism. It describes how incessant analysis of their own medium, neo-classical language, also conditioned their own insights into painting. Finally, it explains in detail the genesis of one humanist invention still with us - the notion that a picture has a 'composition.'" -- Cover page 4.