A \OTE ON STORIA, STORIATO 2O

andaronsene su a san Gallo ; e poi tornando da san Marco e da' Servi, e guardando, com' è d'usanza, le dipinture, e veggendo una storia di nostra Donna e Josefo ivi da lato, disse uno di costoro a Giotto : de dimmi, Giotto, perché è dipinto Josef cosi sempre malinconoso ? e Giotto rispose : non ha egli ragione, che vede pregna la moglie, e non sa di cui ? '

(Novella LXXV.) History is used similarly of wall-paintings' by Alexandcr Barclay in his Cyte:^en and Uplondyshman (15 14) :

'Ali the walles within of finestgolde,

With olde historyes and pictures maiiifolde.'

The term, as applied to painting, was used in English of easel-pictures as well. Thus Jonathan Richardson, in his Theory of Painting (17 16), says :

' There are painters of faces, history, landscapes, battles, drolls, still-life, flowers, fruit, ships, etc.. When a painter intends to make a history (forexaraple) the way commonly is to design the thing in his mind, to consider what figures to bring in, and what they are to think, say or do ; and then to sketch upon paper this idea of his... A history painter niust describe ail the varions characters, real or imaginary... The face-painter is under a greater constraint than he that paints history ' (éd. 1792, pp. 20, 62, 77, 79).

Samuel Johnson, as reported by Boswell under the year 1773, observed that

' Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints faces in a history pièce.

History-painting, as appears from the above quotation from Richardson, was classed as a distinct branch ot the art, as opposed to portrait-painting and landscape. It is thus detined in William Aglionby's Painting Ilhtstrated in three Dialogues (1685):

' History-painting is an assembling of many figures in one