They supply an element which, except in the work of Fra Angelico, was defective at Florence; but to the Florentines was committed the great charge of interpreting the spirit of Italian civilisation in all its branches, not for the cloister only, or the oratory, but for humanity at large, through painting.
Giotto and his followers, then, in the fourteenth century painted, as we have seen, the religious, philosophical, and social conceptions of their age.

As artists, their great discovery was the secret of depicting life.
The ideas they expressed belonged to the Middle Ages.

But by their method and their spirit they anticipated the Renaissance.

In executing their work upon the walls of palaces and churches, they employed a kind of fresco.
Fresco was essentially the Florentine vehicle of expression.

Among the peoples of Central Italy it took the place of mosaic in Sicily, Ravenna, and Venice, as the means of communicating ideas by forms to the unlettered laity, and as affording to the artist the widest and the freest sphere for the expression of his thoughts.[160] FOOTNOTES: [118] In the _History of Painting in Italy_, by Messrs.