There aren't just stars that cast light, but also stars that can harm us. Giotto is a supporting angel in the homes of artists, and if he lets angels into their rooms, he has the same capacity as the starry firmament, where stars are enormous but well proportioned. You can enter these rooms by following the rules, not by pulling tricks. With great simplicity, Giotto executed frescoes in Padua and Assisi because that was the desire of the angels, and he was a circumstance in the reality of St. Francis. It is not certain that, from that point of view, such a special circumstance necessarily had to accompany an incredible condition of sentimental rebellion. You have to imagine that rebellion regenerates itself, it reproduces itself continually, and so a creature like St. Francis needed another creature like Giotto to arrest the signs of brewing rebellion. In the same way, Giotto produced a rebellion in art, a necessity that unites with another type of necessity. Giotto invented painting. Without him the history of painting as we know it would not exist, because he united two fundamental elements. He managed to meld a historical fact with the reproduction of rebellion, depositing it by means of painting. Here we have to add the people from the Italian region of the Marches, who were St. Francis' greatest followers. They were the soldiers of rebellion. Some of my subjects are birds and the wolf, because through animals you can combine the facts of rebellion, since they are beings with antennae; they still possess something that humankind does not have; they are still in contact with nature. This is why you need special powers to talk with them. Works of art are the only things you cannot let yourself be dazzled by when you look at them. People often look at them to be dazzled, because when history is incapable of reproducing itself forcefully, people need to be dazzled. Think of how many televisions there are in the world and think of Giotto's angels, who illuminate a heaven that is more glorious than the light of all television sets and all the wars of the entire planet. You say that the paintings that I now have in my studio have the colours of frescoes, something like Giotto used, and you're right, because on a colour like that you can apply a mark that lasts as if it were in the shade, and things last in the shade.
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