If you have looked long enough, and carefully enough, at the three
previous sculptures, you cannot but feel that the hand here is utterly
changed. The drapery sweeps in broader, softer, but less true folds; the
handling is far more delicate; exquisitely sensitive to gradation over
broad surfaces--scarcely using an incision of any depth but in outline;
studiously reserved in appliance of shadow, as a thing precious and
local--look at it above the puppy's head, and under the tent.
This is assuredly painter's work, not mere sculptor's. I have no doubt
whatever it is by the own hand of the shepherd-boy of Fésole. Cimabue
had found him drawing, (more probably _scratching_ with Etrurian point,)
one of his sheep upon a stone. These, on the central foundation-stone of
his tower he engraves, looking back on the fields of life: the time soon
near for him to draw the curtains of his tent.
I know no dog like this in method of drawing, and in skill of giving the
living form without one touch of chisel for hair, or incision for eye,
except the dog barking at Poverty in the great fresco of Assisi.
Take the lens and look at every piece of the work from corner to
corner--note especially as a thing which would only have been enjoyed by
a painter, and which all great painters do intensely enjoy--the _fringe_
of the tent, [Footnote: "I think Jabal's tent is made of leather; the
relaxed intervals between the tent-pegs show a curved ragged edge like
leather near the ground" (Mr. Caird). The edge of the opening is still
more characteristic, I think.] and precise insertion of its point in the
angle of the hexagon, prepared for by the archaic masonry indicated in
the oblique joint above; [Footnote: Prints of these photographs which
do not show the masonry all round the hexagon are quite valueless for
study.] architect and painter thinking at once, and _doing_ as they
thought.
I gave a lecture to the Eton boys a year or two ago, on little more than
the shepherd's dog, which is yet more wonderful in magnified scale of
photograph. The lecture is partly published--somewhere, but I can't
refer to it.