1) Lettera Enciclica di frate Elia a tutte le provincie dell'ordine, sulla morte di San Francesco, inviata subito dopo la morte del santo il 3 ottobre 1226 = LEE;.
2) Vita Prima di Tommaso da Celano, 1228/29 = 1c;.
3) Vita Seconda di Tommaso da Celano, 1246/47 = 2c;.
4) Trattato dei Miracoli di san Francesco di Tommaso da Celano, 1252/53 = 3c;.
6) Leggenda Maggiore di san Bonaventura da Bagnoregio, 1263 = LM;.
7) Leggenda dell'anonimo perugino, tra il 1266 e il 1279 = AP;.
8) Leggenda dei tre compagni, posteriore alla Leggenda dell'Anonimo Perugino = 3Cp;.
9) Leggenda Perugina, fine XIII inizio XIV secolo = LP;.
10) Specchio di perfezione dello stato di frate minore, circa 1318 = SP;.
11) I fioretti di san Francesco, composti probabilmente da Ugolino da Montegiorgio, circa 1327/1340 = Fior;.
12) Delle sacre istimate di santo Francesco e delle loro considerazioni, in appendice ai Fioretti = Cons.

The frescos of Assisi are apparently connected by a guiding thread. They make up a whole like the threads of a cloth whose pattern has been deviced beforehand. The idea underlying this study is that the work was conceived of as a whole by the distinct communities of the friars of the Franciscan Order and the painters that worked with Giotto. Since each individual fresco is logically connected to the rest of the cycle the reading of each piece will be dependent on the logic of the whole plan. If we give the frescos a name and an order we will get an index of the story we are telling.
For the sake of a new reading of the cycle I will suggest to see it as the expression of the will of two distinct communities, that of the friars and that of the painters. Because I feel strongly that the whole work of art was planned before its realization I will argue against any speculation about chronology. The fact of working on one part of the whole project before another could be accidental and caused by restoration works in an area of the church or by financial circumstances, such as lack of oblations. Nowadays we would speak of work done on a time and material basis).
An obvious clue to the unity of the work is the painted architecture above the frescos that also contributes to the unity on the architecture of the basilica. The long frame painted in a perspective that holds the cycle together calls the attention to the existence of one previous original plan. To examine the frescos according to a chronological order would simply divert them from the original plan, i.e. to tell a story.
We do not want to say that this is the only possible way to observe the frescos. Those who happen to look at them as they are placed on the walls of the Church without specific knowledge of the Art of the 14th century will still appreciate their historic value. Starting with the earliest will help understanding Giotto's art of painting and his personality, as well as the evolution of the Art of the 14th century. Yet it will not illuminate our comprehension of Franciscanism or of the project of the Basilica of Assisi.
To start with let us consider the way the frescos are placed in relation to the entrance of the Basilica. They are a continuous line from left to right that starts on the right wall and includes the entrance. Those who have entered the basilica -whether pilgrims or visitors it does not make any difference- had to search for the way of viewing the cycle. The frescos would speak of the Order and Franciscanism, as the story of its Founder's life was being displayed before their eyes. The question was not one of crossing the basilica to get to the first fresco. Order and rationality were to be the criteria for those who planned, those who worked on and those who viewed the frescos. The idea was simple: just like linear writing, onwards from left to right.
For a full understanding of the cycle we will look at the author and the client of the work. So far research has indulged on the individuation of what was original and what was not, i.e. what was Giotto's work and what was done by his assistants. In fact bearing in mind that in those times the magister was the main actor of a whole corporative organization, it would be rather appropriate to argue that the author of the cycle was a group of painters led by a certain Giotto.
Let us consider the distribution of the work itself: some people would see to the preparation of paint, others would lay it out, some others would render the plaster while a sort of stage was being made for the magister or some other experienced assistant to start the painting on those parts of the wall which were ready & that is what we call team work! Indeed a feature of team work is that everything is planned well in advance. In this case, for example, the structure of the image must have been conceived of with a view to allow an easy but invisible joint of the colored areas, which also had to respect the idea of the distribution of the parts that was to be expressed.
The argument here is that a large mural fresco cannot but be a joint work where it is up to the magister, Giotto for these circumstances, to set the mode and the degree of the assistance. If that is the case, to make an effort to establish what was done by Giotto and what was not is pointless. In other words, the object of our research here is one work of art, created by Giotto and his collaborators (who were not merely assistants), and not a series of individual pieces to be appreciated in relation to the artistic personality of the author.
As for the client of this collective work of art, this must have been collective as well: the Franciscan Order, in point of fact. The matter must have been discussed in a larger context than Assisi, and it would be incorrect to speak of dealings between the General Minister of the Order and some assistant-friars and Giotto.
After these preliminary statements, the most relevant issue remains to be discussed : who conceived of the work? In the hope to find an answer to this question we will examine each individual fresco in order to reveal the apparent and hidden meanings and will compare them with their literary sources.
I believe that the sequence of the frescos depends on the theme of the story that was to be told, i.e. the history of Franciscanism. Therefore comparing these stories with the literary examples of the same stories -whether they be earlier or contemporary to the realization of the frescos- turns up to be a critical issue. The fact that the frescos become themselves sources for other literature on the subject is not accidental in my view. Another step will be to analyze the structure of the plan, as one would do to understand the grammar of a sentence. The ideas expressed through that grammar will lead us to the people who felt the urgence of planning the work.
As long as we do not have a certain answer, the argument is the following: the idea of the subject is likely to have originated in the Franciscan community, with the General Minister as their spokesman, and the form and the structure of the frescos is likely to have been fruit of the art of the "group" of painters led by Giotto. The meeting of the minds of the two communities produced the cycle. As for the relevance of the figure of Giotto, the fact that researchers have proved occasional absence of the magister from the worksite supports the argument in favor of the collaborative character of the work, where the ultimate control of the magister, not his constant presence, is fundamental.
In a preliminary stage of interpretation it does not really matter to ascertain which parts of this or that fresco was painted by Giotto himself or by any of his assistants, despite the fact that recurrence of traits does help identification. Here it seems more relevant to investigate the relationship between the magister and the community of friars, which helps appreciating the spiritual and cultural charge they passed on to the artist. This element cannot be disregarded: the Order was not any common client. We ought to read the frescos in relation to the various sources which are available, including biographies. We should learn to appreciate the life of Giotto- the name here also includes the people involved in the project- as a process of his art as well as of his understanding of the figure of Francis. Giotto's knowledge of the life of the Saint has erroneously been taken for granted by most Art Historians.
Historians also frequently write that Giotto's art is "bourgeois". This interpretation conceals the religious character that affects the work, which in fact becomes apparent as the work and the study progress. I argue that we get to know Giotto's spiritual interest through the realization of the work itself. And then we can look better at the frescos which are in their turn illuminated by this new light. The importance of what is being said is not absolute. It is specially relevant to the emphasis that should be given in research on the subject of the collective, or better collegiate character of this particular work of art. The same observation is however appliable to other contemporary works, as this was common in the Middle Ages. Critical studies often exalt Giotto's personality and the fact that Giotto was the first modern artist, which is to a certain extent true. However Giotto was also the last great artist of the Middle ages and it would not be correct to do away with the conservative character of his art with respect to the evolution of the style and the role of religion in the arts. This is mirrored in the complexity the history of art and accounts for the involutions and revivals of the art of the following century.
Appreciating the past in relation to the present is indeed a common mistake. There it is, then, Giotto - the forerunner of a Florentine middle-class spirit that he could never get to experience, the spirit that gave rise to new ideas in the world of the arts and the economy. Even if we accept the assumption that Giotto was a "forerunner" nevertheless we must take into account that there were other artists who considered Giotto's experiments too advanced and unsuited to express an inner spirituality. It is an erroneous assumption that Giotto's art was accepted by the artists of his time. In the 14th century, during and after the Black Death in Florence the prevailing culture was closer to the people and though this did not necessarily mean a return to the past, we cannot call this the age of "the bourgeois". (In effect the conception of spatiality of the cycle of The Life of Christ in Padova was very distant from that of the previous generation of painters, which goes to support the view of an "innovative" Giotto. On the other hand the favorite argument of those who underline that Giotto stands out of his time is the quality of his works, and not merely the innovation of technique and composition).
-With reference to the evaluation of artistic quality I suggest a wider angle for the reserch, that takes into account the literary, musical, and artistic ferment that characterizes the Italy of the late 13th and early14th century. There was a tension towards quality that allowed the acceptance of the new forms of art which would not have been possible had the quality been lower.-.
Besides illuminating some aspects of the art of Giotto, this brief study wants to contribute to the research on the Culture of the 14th century and Franciscanism in particular, the latter being a key element of the European thought and spirituality of the time. The language of this work will not always be correct from the point of view of Art Criticism. This is to make the gist of the argument more clear- in jocund words we could say that there is nothing more obscure, undefinable and undefining, than the language of Art Criticism.
While other studies may follow that will ascertain the chronology and the attribution of the frescos, the present work will focus on the study and reading of the structure of the images. I also believe that it can reveal the evolution of the compositive art of the painters- since it is impossible to argue that Giotto and his collaborators had one way of painting that was not affected by change.
Establishing dates is meaningful for didactic purposes when we want to be accurate as we deal with issues such as influence and originality with respect to the past. To what extent, for instance, can we say that Giotto was a forerunner of Humanism and that he started a new age in the figurative arts that will yeld the phenomenon we call Humanism?.
Giotto was one of the major artists in the history of Italian Art, and his art was very distinctive for sure. His personality was powerful and his contribution to the creation of a new figurative language was great. He could profit from the experience of past generations for the sake of a new vision. It is possible that the evolution of painting was to happen anyway, but I doubt it would have been under that great impulse without Giotto's presence.
With reference to what has been said before about the relevance of establishing the originality of Giotto's frescos, the statement should be read in the context of the interpretation of the cycle of Assisi. On the contrary for what concerns the study of the evolution of the Italian Arts, the inquire about originality is fundamental for the evaluation of the development of visual communication and aesthetics. Needless to say, from whatever viewpoint the study be done, the frescos where Giotto himself intervenes are always aesthetically superior and more pleasant to look at.
One last introducing remark about the present work concerns the name I will use to refer to the author of the cycle of Assisi. Despite what has been said about the collective nature of the work the fact of the matter is that Giotto was the man who urged and guided the group. He was the magister and let me say, the manager in the hierarchy of the project, which for the Middle Ages was of no little value.

The Disposition of the Frescos

Before we examine the criteria of arrangement of the frescos it is worth considering two facts. The first is that the choice of arranging the sequence according to the chronology of the Saint's life is not obvious. It would be interesting to confirm it was the will of the Order. Any decision about it must have followed the internal life of the Order. The second is that any considerable work of art of that age could be read at more than one level, each bringing its input of meaning. These levels concerned the subject, the order, and the number of the differents parts that composed the work. We will try to face interpretation taking into account as many factors as possible.
To start with, we can observe that the culture of the time was not a historicist one. No scholar of the time takes particular pain for establishing exact chronologies, not even Dante. In the Late Middle Ages time is an obvious datum, with no special value of its own, unless the topic be very practical or very speculative. The great works of the age follow other criteria, such as symbols or numbers. These elements, together with the subject of the work make up a whole, as the case is with Dante's Divina Commedia.
Therefore we can argue that Giotto's cycle of Assisi, because of its cultural relevance, must have followed other criteria than the mere chronology of the Saint's life. Most probably theological and rhetorical consideration guided the plan of the frescos, as regards the number, the disposition and the symbolic value that was to be given to the whole and to its parts. Support for this argument can also be found in the main literary source for Giotto's work, i.e. Saint Bonaventura's Legenda Maior.
In the light of what has been said we want to articulate the possibility to subdivide the cycle into groups of frescos and see the logic of it. The first idea that comes to the mind is that the total number of 28 frescos could be subdivided into four groups of seven or seven groups of four- both numbers being charged with symbolic and allegorical value. This hypothesis cannot be proved . A third will be considered: the cycle of Assisi can be subdivided into three distinctive groups: the first and the last of seven pictures each, and the central of fourteen, that is seven pairs. The combination of three and seven should not puzzle: it was common in the organization of contemporary texts, three being the figure for pefection (the Trinity) and seven being the figure for the completed work (the Seven Days of Creation). The fact that the central group is made up of two pairs can be explained by the consideration that that phase was the most important in the Saint's life, i. e. when he acted with and for the Order, which by then had become a reality of great relevance.
The first seven episodes represent the iter of Saint Francis's conversion until the approval of the Rule. The last seven represent the exequies and the canonization of the Saint, including the post mortem miracles necessary for the process of canonization . The central group, the most important one, shows the development of the Order during the life of the Saint. As a matter of fact the idea of the first and the last group is pretty intuitive whereas to establish links between the central seven pairs of frescos which are oredered by theme and not chronology was a cogitative matter.
In short, in the first group the Saint is not in the Order yet, in the second he is with the Order, in the third it is the Order that continues the work of the Saint. The protagonists of the groups are in the numbers of 1,2,1, (Saint Francis, Saint Francis and the Order, the Order): when the protagonists are two the pictures are double.
The Divine Comedy has a similar precision in its structure. I like referring to Dante's work because it gave birth to the Italian literary language as well as Giotto's painting gave birth to the Italian language of painting. What is more, both the Italian vernacular of the Comedy and the frescos were made to be read by the people. And in those times the images in Churches were the only source of education for the people.
With reference to the scheme that we suggested above, we can sum up as follows:.
- the first episode is a prophecy of the future vocation;.
-the second is the inner conversion, the choice, with the gift of the cloak, as a symbol for a new path;.
- the third, the dream of the palace, shows the road to perfection;.
-the fourth is the open exhortation to restore the Church expressed through the image of Saint Damian praying Christ Crucified;.
-the fifth is the renunciation to the father's possessions, the first act of a new life and the Bishop's acceptance of Francis among the clergy;.
-the sixth is the manifestation of the Divine Will to the Pope in the dream of the falling of the Basilica Lateranense.
-the seventh is the confirmation of the first rule of the Order which closes this first part of the cycle.
All this is aimed at showing that the birth of the Franciscan Order was part of a Divine Plan to restore the Church that arises from the choice of one man, Saint Francis, and produces the creation of an early community thanks to a process of conversion that is described in the various episodes.
The following fourteen frescos are more difficult to read. They present common themes in pairs:.
-the eighth and the ninth are obvious prophecies of the future glory of the Saint: here Saint Francis stands together with the great prophets (Isaia) and the angels (Lucifer's throne is for him). These episodes are placed at the initial phase of the Saint's action as the Founder of the Order;.
-the tenth and the eleventh witness to the power of the Saint's Word even where he is not acting personally (the expulsion of the demons from Arezzo) or is not successful (the meeting with the Sultan);.
-the twelfth and the thirteenth show the Saint's closeness to Christ; thence the possibility to follow His example. The first of the pair, that showing the Saint's ecstasy, is medieval in the portrayal of sanctity. The second, which shows the Nativity Scene of Greccio, is particularly important for the study of Italian folk traditrion.
-the fourteenth and the fifteenth which are placed on the sides of the portal are at the centre of the cycle. They show the Saint's power on nature and also bring in allegorical meanings (the miracle of the sprng-water and the sermon to the birds).
-the sixteenth and the seventeenth emphasize the prophetic spirit in its proper sense: it is the Holy Spirit speaking through the Saint when he foresees the Knight of Celano's death and when he preaches in front of the Pope;.
-the eighteenth and the nineteenth underline the likeness between the Saint's life at the end of his journey in the footsteps of Christ (the gift of ubiquity in the case of Assisi and Arles and, most importantly, the stigmatas)and Christ himself. Independently from the time when these episodes occurred, they are placed before the corporal death to mean that Saint Francis reached his perfection on this Earth;.
-the twentieth and the twenty-first show the Saint's corporal death together with his ascension to the Heavens . In the twenty-first, in particular, two scenes are represented but the episode is one: the Saint's death. It was apparently necessary to picture both as they were both decisive at the moment of canonization. On the other hand if the two episodes had been separated to cover two frescos, the planned symmetry of the cycle would have been broken.
The last series of seven frescos describes episodes occurred after the Saint's corporal death and is aimed at proving the continuity of the Saint's work:.
-the twenty-second is about the attestation of the stigmatas;.
-the twenty-third shows the funeral;.
-the twenty-fourth describes the solemnity of the canonization as if to prove that Saint Francis was the greatest of all Saints;.
-the twenty-fifth is connected to the preceding ones and confirms the truth of the Holy Stigmatas, through the Pope's prophethic dream. This miracle was indeed the most difficult to prove and yet the most valuable.
- the last three frescos are miracles after invocation that prove the Saint's power post mortem.
It must be acknowleged that the close analysis of the pairs or individual frescos is definitely richer in meaning than the overall picture we tried to present here above. This study will be faced below. However to end this chapter it might be worth recalling that the frescos are not placed in relation to the entrance of the basilica, but winding from left to right and including the portal. The pilgrim would go through the whole cycle, learn about the Order and the Life of the Saint and no attempt was made to exploit the fact that the vistor should walk along the whole church before facing the first fresco of the cycle.

The Structure of the Picture

After the analysis of the overall structure, the next step in our study is dealing with the structure of the individual frescos. We do not want to go on with the idea that Giotto variously attempted to work out ideas of space through perspective, as this is not the case here. He had not yet started research on perspective since he had not an idea of perspective as a mathematical representation of space. However, at the time he was certainly making efforts to clear up his doubts about space, which eventually refined his way of thinking of the structure where he composed the picture.
What he did was something more than simply letting spatiality be determined by the position of characters and objects. Here part of the play is done by invisible agents, such as the lines that our eyes draw when they follow the characters' looks, or the inclination of the figures or the heads of a crowd. These elements create links between things and people and , adding to the lines of the architecture and the landscapes, form the structure of the picture. The latter is not pre-existant and it will be correct to say that all the elements of a picture, the visible and the invisible ones, make it up.
In later days the structure of the image will become an independent feature and will have a name- Perspective. It will be endowed with a life and a history of its own, independent and prior to the objects that will be inserted into it, even though the picture will need elements and clues to its invisible presence. This is not the case with Giotto's frescos; here it is impossible to distinguish between the arrangement in space and the structure. However this does not mean that the destination of space is either casual or intuitive of a sense of perspective. It is rather conceived of rationally, or I prefer to say.. structured. Incidentally, I apologize for the repeated use of a certain terminology, which I think necessary for the sake of clarity. When a word is chosen for its proper meaning, it is indeed hard job to replace it successfully.
To bring it home, those elements that in the past were functional to the narrative of a picture (e.g. the direction of a look, a simplified architecture or a gesture) are now deliberately co-ordinated in a rational whole, that is in a spatial and temporal structure. The image is framed and in effect the progressive refinement of the technique used in the cycle induces to think of the perspective net as the next step to be made. These observations do not apply to the frescos where Giotto did not contribute his control. In these cases the ability to calculate spatiality is lacking.
The last three frescos, for instance, where Giotto did not have a part are set in the atemporal space of popular tales.
With regard to the lines formed by the looks of the faces, I want to argue against those who have observed a lack of feeling in Giotto's characters. In fact Giotto tended to express individual feelings in relation to a more general reality, which has a collective character. The looks, such a distinctive feature of a face, are always set in a context, in a structure in point of fact. Giotto uses the lines that the observer mentally forms to follow the looks of his characters to give clues, meaning and sometimes Pathos to the picture.
Another feature related to overall aspects of the cycle is the delineation of interiors: in general terms it is rather precise and solid. With a wider background scenery farther details lose precision and the landscapes are delineated only through few elements of set purpose that cannot be considered for that symbolical. Very often a more limited space within the wider scene frames one or more characters as if the painter needs more controllable boundaries for the main episode.
The tendency is to give each element of the narration its space as as The Death of the Knight of Celano, or The Miracle of the Spring, or The Miracle of the Stigmatas and finally in Vision of the Thrones in Glory and The Chariot of Fire. In these cases the presence of architectural elements rather distinguishes priviliged spaces than delineates a proper architecture.
We can also consider the spatial coherence of the area of the confirmation of the Rule and the effect of unity of the two groups of characters. The same coherence is to be found in the symmetries of The Gift of the Cloak, or of The Renouncing to the Father's goods, or The Preaching to the Birds, or The Preaching in front of Onofrio III. In all these cases even if the spatiality of the picture is not always conceived of as a whole, the structure of the fresco is.
It is worth noting that in the frescos realized when the magister was absent, his instructions were often misunderstood by his collaborators who either placed the characters irrespectively of the limits thought for them or filled up the various spatial areas of the frescos or alternatively did not fill them enough. Cases of excess are The Death of the Saint, The Nativity Scene of Greccio, The Canonization and The Lament of the Clarisses. On other occasions, such as The Vision of Saint Augustin, and the last three frescos of the cycle, which Giotto certainly did not supervise, the characters are forcedly placed in the panel. For a better understanding and more evidence of what has been said, please refer to the analysis of the individual episodes.

The New Art of Franciscanism

In the context of the culture of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Franciscan world appeared to be the most fertile in ideas and spirit. As we know, humanism connects the historicist view of the world to solidity and unity at the level of architectural spatiality, which is one the many mirrors of a whole reality conceived of in those terms. This will be theorized by the great architects of the following centuries with particular concern for the notion of perspective construction of spatiality as a mental construction of reality. The Franciscan Order was ahead in time in applying these ideas to its relationship with the world.
The Churches of the Franciscan Order tend to do away with aisles, spires, and excessive stained-glass windows in order to keep a basic unity and a spatial solidity despite the fact that the Franciscans looked to Gothic architecture because they wanted to adopt forms of expression which had become common in the whole of Europe and that were the expression of a collective mind and the realization of a collective action ( let us think of the architecture of the Romanic and Gothic churches of the age preceding Giotto's times).
In fact the Franciscan churches were not Gothic in structure not at least in the ways that Gothic was thought of in the North of Europe. The proper Gothic involves a type of linear and spatial tension that does not derive from or get to a global vision of spatiality. Furthermore the collective consciousness that produced it did not acknowledge a global vision of the world in Time and never made that fundamental step from the collective to the universal while continuously wanting to transcend to the atemporal and eternal, that is God. On the contrary the Franciscan order sets itself down as the Order that lives in the reality of history and operates the mystery of Salvation on this earthly world. Saint Francis is an alter Christus not only for his imitation of Christ at the limits of human nature, but also for the fact that his action is addressed to this world just like Christ's was. In effect many scholars have also read the Saint and his followers' attitude to Nature as an anticipated sign of the Renaissance.
The newly acquired purity of spatiality also involved the knowledge of new criteria of representation, which complicated the acquisition of meaning of the image in spite of its increased realism of the image. In order to appreciate this, let us consider the case of the position of the main character in a painting or a mosaic. Before Giotto this was generally central, and its size was usually bigger which also guided the interpretation of the subject. From now on these standards disappear and other information is needed for a full understanding of the work of art, which then eventually becomes much clearer and detailed than in the past.
My idea is that Giotto and his collaborators did not apply modern composition schemes to given subjects: they perfected or invented those schemes in order to represent the novelty that was being proposed by the friars. Part of the novelty was the expression of new notions of nature and spatiality, which was not open in the literary sources, but yet clear enough to be analyzed both in written and in visual sources.
When Giotto represents nature in a way that seems conspicuous for the age, the novelty lies more in the new attitude of the Order than in the artist's originality. In fact the episodes witnessing to the Saint's love and respect for nature in its various manifestations are already described in the early literary sources and Giotto does not add any new element in the narration. In other words, working on this cycle Giotto is complying with a tendency which arose originally in the religious movement and only later florished as part of the aesthetic criteria of humanism.
On the other hand the way for the imitation of Christ that was being suggested rested on values such as work and its fruit rather than mortification and ascesis. Wasn't this a response to the society of the time which tended towards earthly matters and needed positive examples of poverty? This is the new consciousness of Franciscanism that operates in the world- and this is why those internal currents that still stood on late-medioeval principles of poverty and abstinence were less fortunate.
Bearing all this in mind we want to inquire about the structure of the picture as well as consider the intended audience of the frescos, since participation has always been particularly important for religious art. A factor that has been considered by scholars is that for some time Art had been the repetition of an established iconography, which made the artists feel mere executors of pre-constituted forms. I believe that this factor did not affect the pilgrims that visited the Saint's tomb or the crowds that looked at the images that after the Assisi model decorated the monasteries and churches of all Europe with the new iconography.
The degree to what Giotto was independent of the clergy is an issue that concerned him at the time and relatively affects our studies today. The main question was indeed creating an iconology for the founder of the Order and an iconography that was innovative and therefore might risk rejection: an innovative painter was called for the task. One problem was the representation of the Holy Stigmatas, which placed Saint Francis in a special position as compared to other saints. In point of fact Giotto's frescos were nothing but the perfection of a process already started in the iconography that other artists had started in the lower basilica.
At the time of the decoration of the Basilica the Order was going through internal debate that started around the question of the interpretation of the Rule but in fact ended with the formation of currents, if not factions that questioned the very role of the Order within the Church bringing it on the verge of a Reformation. In this context Giotto's frescos appear as the "official" position of the Order.
The fact that the frescos were addressed to travelling pilgrims is at one with the peculiar action of evangelization which was being done in accordance with the ways and times of the Rule. It is worth recalling that except for Germany, the Franciscan Order was the most powerful, most complex and most popular of all religious organizations of the time- its influence was in fact comparable with that of Rome.
It was not by coincidence that the frescos were started not long before the first Holy Year, which Bonifacio VIII proclaimed in 1300. One obvious reason was the expectation of large numbers of pilgrims crossing Italy all the way from Europe to Rome. The enthusiasm and zeal of the Order for the realization and decoration of the two churches must have been impressive, worthy of the greatest architectural and artistic undertaking of the time.
The frescos of the Basilica can be compared to the Aperta, those books which were addressed to the laymen and the common people as opposed to the Arcana or Profunda, which were only accessible to the clergy (the words aperta and arcana refer to the Holy Scriptures). The Franciscan friars preached by way of example- the 28 episodes- apparently abandoning the complexity of rhetoric, although in point of fact the very structure of the cycle is complex and rhetorical.
It seems important that the common people, which are addressed by the frescos, are present in the scenes so that they can easily identify with the message. This also explains the fact that the spatiality of the panels is often distributed in a similar way to that of sacred representations. Moreover, the image of Christ that is most adopted in the cycle, a suffering Christ, is very significant for an evangelization work that addresses the destitute and the suffering.
One last consideration about the Tituli at the bottom of the frescos. Various medioeval sources state that the figurative language is regarded as a necessary makeshift for the written word, but of a lower value. Thence the necessity of the Tituli in verse or prose form to explain the images. The medioeval art therefore struggled for a precise iconography that as time passed could become established in the popular culture and do away with the Tituli. The question of religious figurative art was how to create a new iconography and not have to call for participation in the event, or how to propose models and not exploit the power of wonder at miracles.
Let's make a step back in time. In the Libri Carolini the authors want to prove that the images of religious art are admired for their beauty and not because they possess something divine in them. This was a response to the iconoclast decrees of Constantinople that denounced the worship of images. One argument of the book is that the same image can convey different meanings, and therefore sacredness could not be inherent in the image but originated from faith. Another argument is that the artist's own devotion is not sufficient to draw the believers' worship, whereas the aesthetic qualities can do that, which implies that the more beautiful the images, the more they attract. This may sound too mundane to our religious spirit, but it was an effective argument against the accusation of idolatry.
In effect the need grew to embelish churches with images that were as direct as possible in order to educate the believers that walked in. Abstractions and allegories gave way to simplicity and contact with reality for better communication with the world.
Giotto was the painter who could combine the portrait of spirituality and the narration of a new action in the world, that was the calling of the Franciscan Order. The Franciscan Order was the most obvious agent of this change as their vocation was to be close to common people and, when it came to helping the destitute, their action was very practical both in understanding and in comforting those who needed aid. He had to face the challenge of the time: devicing a new manner of representing and understanding reality that satisfied the needs of the new ideology while effectively creating the iconography of the Saint of Assisi. The process was inevitable in the History of Italian Art and the fact that Giotto initiates it throws light on the appreciation of the artist. Giotto has for long been considered the painter of the arising middle-class interpreting the religious feeling in a bourgeois manner. This kind of criticism in fact neglects the importance and the quality of the religious spirit of the age, which I tried to convey above.

Giotto as a Source

The main source for the stories of the cycle of Assisi was Legenda Maior by Saint Bonaventura from Bagnoregio. All of the 29 episodes of the frescos (one panel has two) are contained in the book, which was in fact the official biography of the Saint, the only that might be credited. When Saint Bonaventura became General Minister of the Order he even ordered to burn other existing Legendae, according to what was decided in the General Chapter of Paris in 1266 to put an end to the internal debate that often recurred for support to other sources, ascribed to Francis's early mates.
The scenes of the cycle are not always faithful to the Legenda Maior and very often diverge from it significantly, with occasional inspiration from other sources, and more frequent original innovations. I believe that these differences can be considered telling clues of the attitudes and regulations of the Franciscan Order at the end of the 13th century rather than new possible sources about the Saint's life. An example is provided by the two frescos dealing with the climax of the saint's perfection on Earth, one of the key moments of the cycle, where Saint Francis is considered a Christ-like figure in body as well as in spirit. This pair of rescos (the 18th and 19th) diverges from Saint Bonaventura's text.
Just like any literary text, the cycle of Assisi has both universal value and historic interest. Since it was at the heart of the cultural activity of the Order it bears significant witness to their vision. We will have to see into the images and interpret them in the light of the cultural context so as to identify also the ways and reasons that influenced Giotto's own vision and art. It is worth recalling here the hypothesis of this research, that is to say, the belief that the cycle was planned before its realization and that nothing was left to improvisation but decided and organized by two distinct communities, the friars' and the painters', of which the most important figures were Giotto from Bondone and Giovanni della Marca.
There are many issues at stake here that can be studied more profitably by historians than by critics of art: the references to the Saint as an alter Christ, the question of how having the stigmatas accepted in popular iconography, the preoccupation for a balance between the necessity to show the decisive moments of the Saint's life as a events of the divine Will rather than consequences of the clergy's decision and the equally important necessity to underline the submission to the Order.
These cases also show the influence of other legends than the official source and older traditions: scholars of other fields than mine may deal with these topics better than I could, but I strongly feel the importance of a couple of remarks here.
At the time of the works on the Basilica one of the contemporary sources of the cycle, the so-called Leggenda Antica Perugina or Old Legend of Saint Francis, was being collected out of various material that could reconstruct the oldest memories of the Saint's early followers. When it came to the frescos devoted to the Saint's death Giotto placed these characters close to the body mourning apart from the rest of the clergy. This was an acknowledgment of a certain privilege of the originary members of the Order, but at the same time it was a statement about their role, bound to the presence of their spiritual Guide.
Thus when the Order was fixing once and for all the official life and iconography of the Saint, they also took care of according a special role for his early followers, even though limited in time and space to the Saint's life on earth. In this way, the Order could get rid of the extreme fringes of the Order, who wanted a stricter respect of the Rule.

New Attributions?

About the possibility of new attributions of the frescos of the Upper Basilica some methodological remarks should be done as far the specific case is concerned and in general terms.
At the time of the recent restoration of the cycle the earlier attribution to Pietro Cavallini has been reconsidered in consideration of formal similarities which have been observed in the coloring technique of a number of faces. These similarities are real, but so is the argument that any painter of the age could have used that technique of laying color in respect of the specific inclination and direction of the brushes.
However I would rather face the matter from the point of view of history and methodology rather than style. In fact nothing is incontrovertible unless supported by positive sources, which are rarely direct in this case. In fact it is true that little documentation exists but it should be kept in mind that as long as he did not possess the juridical status of magister Giotto was not allowed a real artistic or managing autonomy that could be attested.
I believe that the big mistake is insisting on wanting to indentify one name in a case where the nature of the work requires the co-operation of many. This was even more frequent for bigger companies that were involved in more than one concerns at the time and had to share the tasks of the works, so that some people would do the more simple or humble jobs and others would be involved in the more artistic tasks.
Moreover I believe that the great fame that Dante associates with Giotto in the year 1300 - the year of the first Jubilee derived from the fact that the painter was sent for by Pope Bonifacio VIII on that occasion, which also explains his having to leave the cycle to a group of painters of his workshop different from the one that had started the work.
Another argument against Giotto's attribution was his young age for such an important task. The issue needs some historic remarks: in those centuries people were considered old at the age of 50. Therefore whatever date we decide to assume for the beginning of the works, Giotto could have been in his late twenties at the time, which means that he was definitely a grown-up. To prove what I am saying suffice the literature of the time or the very iconography of Saint Francis, who is portrayed as a beardless youth when an adoloscent or just older than that and as an old canute man in his last days, that is when he was about 44 or 45!.
In conclusion, at least three hands must be admitted to have been working on the Upper Basilica. For chronological reasons the young Giotto is likely to have worked on the last two episodes only of the stories of the Old Testament. This is common knowledge and there is no reason at all to present it as a sensational outcome of research. As far as the Lower cycle is concerned there are many more than three hands that can be recognized and the last six or seven episodes appear to have been done by different painters from those who worked on the others. Yet, at the cost of being repetitive, I want to underline that the plan of the cycle remains one regardless of the hands that may appear or disappear on the individual panels. This plan is referable in style and meanings to one organizing mind, Giotto's in fact.
There remain many doubts about the attribution of the frescos of the Lower Basilica. Here the name of Giotto has always been associated to that of Cimabue, and maybe, Cavallini, on account of the archaic character of the iconography.
However there is very little documentation available on the subject, if any at all and no hypothesis is presently possible. That is why I argued above - almost provocatively, that it does not really matter to establish which parts were done by Giotto himself and which not.
But indeed this statement did not want to open up the subject to further speculation, like that around such a vague artist as Cavallini, whose presence is unattested in Assisi, differently from Giotto's, whose movements are all recorded even though not precisely.
To put it very simply, what is the point of replacing the documented presence of Giotto in Assisi with that unattested of Cavallini ? More importantly I believe that the Cavallini of Saint Cecily's was still very much attached to tradition to be entrusted such iconographic and stylistic novelties as the frescos of Assisi.
On the contrary, Giotto derived a new way of seeing things in space and time from Cimabue's ability to get close to human feelings, which expressed the change in the medioeval society of the time and will later yeld his studies on perspective. In a few words the two might have spoken the same language but said different words: how could we mistake one for the other?.
Cavallini was distant from Cimabue and Giotto as regards both technique and mentality, even though his collaborators were probably more aware of the changes than he was. In fact it is more likely that one of his assistants was employed by Giotto who was sent for to work in Rome, where Cavallini had already been working. This either means that Giotto was the painter à la mode at the time or that the Pope decided to deprive the Franciscan Order of their best artist, a political choice then to reduce the power of the ever more independent friars of Assisi.
One last supportive argument is Dante's reference to Giotto as an example of clara fama at the time of his voyage to Hell, that is in the year 1300, which could have not been made if the painter had not been invested with such an important task as Assisi's frescos.
Finally it might not be worth replying to Zeri's observation the Giotto of Assisi would be too different from the Giotto of Padova to be credited for attribution. In fact Lionello Venturi already found a linking moment in the Christ of Rimini and, apart from that we could remind the eminent scholar of the many great painters in the history of art that evolved their style gradually or suddenly even in the span of relatively short lives- Raffaello and Picasso to name but the most famous.

AN ANALYSIS OF THE FRESCOS.

The analysis of the frescos will be grounded as follows. In the first place I will have recourse to the vernacular reconstruction that Father Bonaventura Marinangeli did of the titulus.Then I will make reference to the literary sources where the episode is narrated and finally I will examine the fresco in connection to the group where it belongs. Observations which are valid for more than one fresco will not be repeated to avoid loading the discourse with useless information.

FIRST EPISODE
(The First of the First Group)

When a simple man of Assisi lays out his clothes on the ground before the blessed Francis and pays homage to his passage also declaring, inspired by God, as it is believed, that Francis is worth every reverence, because he is to do great things soon and therefore must be honored by everyone.

LM 1,1.

As for many other frescos of the cycle, the perspective keeps all lines parallel whether they be frontal or lateral always showing the viewer the right side of the buildings. Saint Francis and the simple man form a right-angle triangle where the figure of Francis is one cathetus, the line formed by the edges of the man's cloak and clothes is the other cathetus, and the ideal line linking Francis's and the man's looks and going down to the latter's feet forms the hypotenuse.
All the figures are enclosed in the line that the color of the clothes forms and the composition is symmetrical with respect to the church in the background. The latter is an obvious reference to the Roman temple of Minerva, the present-day church of St Mary's in Assisi, a prison at the time. Here the portal is missing and the diameter of the columns is reduced in order to show the rear wall. The most important part of the composition is hardly contained in the hemycicle that is formed by the four figures placed at the side, according to a a scheme which will be very successful in the 15th century.
In this composition the figure of Saint Francis is not yet central as if the Saint were not ready yet to become the protagonist of his own mission. The simple man of Assisi laying the cloak at the center of the composition is inviting the Saint to take the place that is for him. Francis seems to be questioning the man or maybe himself as he looks down to him, and even if with hesitation, he obviously accepts the offer and makes the first step on the cloak. Matching the simple man ( "a very simple man, for certain" in the Legenda Maior) there stand the learned and rich men framing the scene. The four figures are placed on lines converging towards the centre of the composition while Saint Francis and the simple man are located more to the centre and in the foreground, the background being constructed in a viewpoint of its own, which is not in perspective yet.
This composition, albeit naive, allows Giotto to distinguish the various moments of the Legenda Maior: the town, the Saint and the simple man, and the men who are "not simple". Each moment possesses its exact logical place. The emphasis on the contrast between simple and learned that was expressed in the literary sources was in relation to the social hierarchy of the time, when the idea of education was associated with the upper classes. In the fresco another meaning is added: simple here means "immediate", ready to follow God's command. The fresco here expresses the exhortation to Francis not to hesitate and be immediate to follow Christ's example.
There is a contrast in the attitude of the characters portrayed in the fresco. The four beholders in front a place where justice was administered can be considered witnesses of the event, - they are four as in legal cases or marriages. They do not show any sign of comprehension of the divine aspect of the episode, the two on the left seemingly indifferent while one of the two on the right points to the scene as to question the other who slightly raises a hand to mean "Don't worry about that!". On the contrary, the simple man addresses Francis in a very clear and direct way as if God on giving him the impetus to act also provided him with the awareness of the "justness" or better "righteousness" of the action.
The gesture, consequently, rather than "strange" in itself is "stranger" to the people of the town, since they cannot respond spontaneously, being their hearts closed to any divine message. Other is the reaction of Francis who agrees to walk on the cloak even if still unaware of the reasons or implications of the act. We should here recall the many invitations to follow the ways of the Lord without questioning that recur in both books of the Bible. An example is Luca 19, 36 where Jesus enters Jerusalem. Francis is indeed portrayed as an alter Christus.
A more significant reference is Giobbe: "Francis did not yet have a knowledge of the Lord's designs over him". This quotation accounts for his inquisitive air, but does not explain the attitude of the beholders. The fact that they are four witnesses like in a legal matter may want to underline the factuality of the episode, which had been mentioned only in San Bonaventura's text. While an accepted reading of this fresco sees it as a reminder of the necessity to be or become "simple" in order to follow the Lord's ways, and the current formula Homage of the Town to the Saint will not add more to that, I believe that it plays down the memory of the misunderstanding that the Saint had to endure and that there could be a more extreme interpretation : the temple is deprived of its portal as a sign of the decadence of the Church, which living only on appearances, lost the true way to Christ.
Let us consider the image of the temple on the fresco: as it has been mentioned above, the present Tempio di Minerva was the prison of the municipality in Giotto's times. Yet, on drawing the shape of that ancient Roman temple, the painter includes a rosette supported by two angels, as in suggestion of a church. Still, this remains a church with no entrance: in stead there is a column in the middle of it, that is a place where nobody would have imagined one, neither in the classic age nor in Giotto's times not to hide the rear door or hinder the passage. On the other hand there is neither evidence nor reference to explain why the columns that in the Tempio di Minerva are in the number of six are only five on the fresco. Was it mere inaccuracy or was there any idea behind it? We have had no means to find out.

SECOND EPISODE
(Second of the First Series)

When the Blessed Francis meets a noble and poorly dressed knight and moved and respectful of his poverty immediately takes off his cloak and covers him.

LM 1,2- 2c5- 3cp 6.

Although there is nothing of a miracle about this episode, it is presented as a miracle because it represents the moment of Saint Francis's conversion. The sources date it differently: in the first biography by Tommaso da Celano and Saint Bonaventura the dream that announces God's call occurs after Francis has opened his heart by making a choice with this act; in Leggenda dei Tre Compagni first there is the call and then the conversion and the miraculuous call is emphasized by a parallel with Saint Paul's falling off his horse when he hears a mysterious voice.
This memory is absent in earlier biographies and the very episode is minimized. Tommaso da Celano sees it as the homologous inverse of Saint Martin's gift to the poor man. But Saint Martin's deed occurs at the end of a life of perfection whereas Saint Francis's rejection of the superfluous befalls him at the beginning of his life, so as to suggest that his road wiil lead much farther that Saint Martin's. However this parallel leaves no trace in Giotto's fresco (some indirect reference can be found in the later frescos by Simone Martini in the Lower Basilica).
Both Giotto and Simone Martini picture the Saint leaving the town, but Martini's town in the Lower Basilica is just the setting for the episode- people would wear a cloak only when they set for a journey. For Giotto, who is apparently highlighting this episode as the climax of Saint Francis's life, the setting is extremely important. He represents the old and the new life - the town and the Church- on two mountains, so as to emphasize the gap between them. Differently from Martini's picture, the town is deliberately far and indefinite. It is certainly an opulent view and even if it does not belong totally to the rich, it appears as a mundane world that the friars abandon in order to live in the Church of God, in poverty. It is not coincidental, then, that the mountain where Giotto places the Church rises in the area of spatiality assigned to the poor knight. That is the direction that needs taking.
The Saint is portrayed in the middle of the scene, at the road-fork, as he chooses to change his way. His posture is firm in contrast with the previous scene where the Saint seemed to question the poor man that lay the cloak on the ground for him. The line that ideally joins the Saint's and the knight's looks makes a quadrangolar mass, higher than the other quadrangolar mass formed by the figure of the horse dismounted by the Saint. Accepting the new life, Francis humbles himself and by stooping he rises.
Saint Francis decides to do without the cloak, an essential piece of cloth for the upper- class of that age and an expensive one because of the quantity of wool employed and of the close weave of the warp. He is not giving up what he does not need, as Saint Martin does when he gives half of his cloak. Francis gives up the whole of his properties, including his horse - another symbol of the powerful and the rich- , which Giotto portrays left alone on the old way.
Another significant reference for the interpretation of this fresco is the fact that Francis would have liked to go to Gualtiero di Brienne for a knigthood, a title that for instance Saint Martin never gave up. With this episode we can say that he is taking another road from the one that he wished to take: the road of religious conversion. However it might be noteworthy the fact that the religious Order founded by him will be often compared to a chilvary order.
As far as spatiality is concerned, Giotto portrays Francis standing and the knight slightly bent, the Saint now at the centre as the main actor of the story, above the others. The various moments have each its own place, with a special interest in things and the nature, which is also so peculiar of Saint Francis' preaching.
The horse bends his head with the same curve that the poor knight's back makes as he receives the gift from Saint Francis and an ideal line connects the looks of the two characters. The actor of this episode is evidently the Saint, who invites the poor knight, consciously depriving himself of what is now worthless for him. The conversion here is action and initiative rather than repentance.
As far as color is concerned, the Saint and the sky over his head behind the aureole are in cold tones, whereas the poor knight and the horse are painted in warmer tones. The mountains, the buildings of the town and the church have a thicker color in neutral tints. The color and the line that encloses a color delineate the mass of the image: for instance, the volume of the horse is given by its color (the body) but is also enclosed by the lines of the neck, of the legs and the tail. Another example is the way the feet are painted. Apparently out of the border of the mass, they are askew and nearly independent.
The mountains present two different landscapes. The one where the town rises is rocky and indented and complex in its construction like the town is. The one where the church rises is gentle and simple and the church itself forms a compact and well-defined mass.
There is here an initial idea of a central point, like a vanishing point from which two lines depart as in a very primitive perspective. The image is constructed along these two diagonals: one runs along Saint Francis's arm and upper edge of the cloak up to the mountain where the town rises, the other runs along the opposite mountainside and the line of shade that delineates the dark side of the mountain of the town.
The structure of the image has more unity than in the previous fresco where the action and the setting were allocated two different areas. Here there is no intermediate element connecting the main characters and the mountains, because they would have been logically useless. Among the characters we include the horse, although the animal is not yet at the same level of the protagonist as, about three hundred years later, one will be in Saint Paul's Conversion by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome.
As we have said, Giotto tends to show the right side of things portrayed in his frescos. Right is also the side from which the pilgrims walk in the Basilica when they see the frescos, which seems to suggest that Saint Francis gets on the road of perfection at the point where the others have stopped. This idea may also be referred to Tommaso da Celano's declaration that no founder of religious orders was as perfet as Saint Francis. Taking everything into account we can say that this episode is initial and essential to the Saint's spiritual iter.

THIRD EPISODE
(Third of the First Series)

The Blessed Francis, as he had fallen asleep the following night, saw a wonderful and sumptuous palace and arms with the insignia of Christ and as he asked whom they belonged to, a voice from above answered they would be for him and his knights'.

LM 1,3- 1c6- 2c6- 3Cp5-AP 5.

Before this dream, Saint Francis had already made the decisive act of his conversion. The dream continues the idea of the parallel between the Franciscan Order and a chivalry order and in point of fact emphasizes it. But there are significant variations in the sources.
The Vita Seconda by Tommaso da Celano also includes a beautiful bride together with the arms and the suits of armour. This figure, obviously representing poverty, does not appear in Giotto's fresco, who follows the "official" biography by Saint Bonaventura. On the other hand this turns to be in accordance with the painter's style of this period when he chooses to reduce the number of characters in order to simplify the action and contain it into few distinct spaces, easily identifiable, each with a different "view".
Other differences concern the figure of Christ and the voice that the Saint hears. For Tommaso da Celano Christ appears to Saint Francis as well as to Saint Martin to praise them. For Saint Bonaventura there is no relationship between the voice that Francis hears and Christ and the voice mentions, together with the master and the servant, the rich and the poor- obviously in spiritual riches- in order to indicate what shoud be the true wealth of the Order . Bonaventura believed that the connection between the Order and the Knights was too mundane and that the other with Saint Martin was pointless as the figure of Saint Francis had now dimmed that of Saint Martin even in popular culture. Finally in the text by the Anonimo Perugino Christ is not mentioned, nor is the voice, but an undescribed companion is.
In Giotto's fresco the bride is missing, the arms do not bear the Cross but Christ appears beside Saint Francis. This synthesis shows Giotto's wide knowledge of sources. I will now analyze the fresco as far as its structure is concerned.
There are two viewpoints of the palace, which is divided into two parts: the lower is massive, with a porch downstairs and an open gallery above it; the upper part is smaller, like a large tower, with a terrace and two storeys with windows so close as to form three-light windows. The palace is viewed from the front and the right side, but the lower part is viewed from above and the upper part from below. A very different view (I deliberately avoid the phrase "point of view", which pertains to the study of perspective) is assigned to the two characters in the foreground, Christ and the sleeping Francis. Dream and reality are reported with adequate distance.
The shape of the bed repeats the lines of the open gallery of the palace, with two lateral avant-corps and one central recess. Both the bed and the tester are viewed from the right side but its feet and the tops of the staffs that support it seem to be on two straight lines converging towards a point back in space, very similarly to a real perspective.
Giotto exploits the tester to build the main image in spatiality or to build spatiality through it. This image is a parallelepipedom where the two main characters are seen frontally and form an independent figure. The main axis runs along Saint Francis's body. Giotto makes it visible creating a deep fold in the blanket that reveals the hip and the leg of the character. This line is one side of a triangle, whose other sides are one of the staffs of the tester and Christ's arm, the latter being highlighted by the shape of the gown.
Saint Francis's head is laid upon the Saint's hand instead of upon a pillow, as to suggest the idea that the Saint was half-asleep rather than dreaming, which in fact follows the Leggenda dei Tre Compagni.
The front curtain is rolled up around the pier of the tester to fill in a void in the composition of the image. The latter is given unity in spite of the ignorance of perspective thanks to a way of viewing objects in the lower part of the fresco from above and objects in the upper part from below. This is definitely true for the bed, the open gallery, the door of the tester and the palace. The Saint is also approximately seen from above, probably also to emphasize the curve of the leg under the blanket. Christ is seen frontally thus acquiring a centrality that does not depend on the vertical line that cuts the image into two parts separating the tester-space-parallelepipedom from the palace. However Christ's arm indicates the vertex of the group, Saint Francis. In fact, as it has already been said, Christ and Saint Francis form a triangle, that is a symbol of perfection. Here Giotto emphasizes the most important character (generally Saint Francis, Christ here), showing Christ standing and the Saint lying. The painter does not need to resort to differences of size to suggest hierarchy, as painters had always done in cases like this.
One last remark is about the comparison between the composition of spatiality in this fresco and that of the others that have been analyzed above. As I have said, Christ and Saint Francis here make up a triangle that fits perfectly the whole composition. It is not so for the triangle that the figures of the episode of the simple man form, and on the other hand the whole fresco keeps a distance between the episode and the setting, the town, where it takes place. The second episode, that of the cloak, shows more resemblance: it is constructed on diagonals tracing a cross in the centre of the image. In point of fact in these cases we could speak of four ideal triangles constructing spatiality, which is a combination that was particularly considered at the time, especially for buildings of importance and cathedrals.

FOURTH EPISODE
(Fouth of the First Series)

As the Blessed Francis is praying in front of an image of Christ Crucified, a voice from the Crucifix said these words three times:" Francis, you will go and restore my house falling to ruins" thus meaning the Church of Rome.

LM 2,1 - 2c10- 3Cp 13- 3c2.

The episode is reported in Legenda Maior with an emphasis on the factuality of the miracle since the voice is said to be heard by the Saint's "corporal hears". The text also explains that in the beginning the Saint thought he had to restore a physical church made of material walls rather than the Church that Christ gained by his own blood, as it was written in The Acts of the Apostles (20,28).
Saint Bonaventura's source is Vita Seconda by Tommaso da Celano where in fact the conversion is more sudden and Francis understands the meaning of the utterance, which is pronounced just once. For Tommaso da Celano Francis intentionally does not want to accomplish his task preferring to "gradually move from the flesh to the soul". On the other hand, it has already been said that the writer considers the episode of the cloak- the point of arrival of other Saints, such as Martin- the starting point of Francis's conversion.
Both Leggenda dei Tre Compagni and Vita Seconda explain the episode as Francis's reception of Christ's passion into his soul- the first step towards the Holy Stigmatas. The moment when he hears the voice in San Damiano's does not represent a miracle, but a step forward a new path in life: Francis, the man, will start living and acting as God's poor servant or mad man as one prefers to say.. in any case a life based on poverty and renounce to worldly riches. In fact the sale of the riches in Foligno, the proceeds of which he will use to restore San Damiano's, is another event in the process which has been related to this episode alternatively being set just before or after it.
Back to the question of the reality of the voice speaking to Francis, the earliest sources, and the very first, in particular, the Vita Prima by Tommaso da Celano do not mention a physical voice, and also the Vita Seconda leaves some doubt. But Saint Bonaventura is positive about it and Giotto's image- the Saint on his knees, his hands opened as if they had just been held in an act of praying, and a look of wonder in his eyes towards the crucifix seemingly slightly bent towards him- seems to suggest that the painter is following the official biography.
About the iconography of the Saint, this fresco shows an unusual image of Francis, not wearing a tonsure or a habit, but some head-gear, which would suggest that the iconography became established as the works of the cycle progressed. This would not surprise the modern mind but in the past a fixed image was essential for recognition of a character or Saint. However the aureole and the described image cannot leave doubts about the Saint's piousness. One final remark about Francis's image here is that even though this is not a strict profile, only one foot is visible - - another clue to Giotto's disregard for this feature of the human body.
About the structure of this fresco, there is a lot to be said. Giotto depicts the moment when the Saint is astonished on hearing the words from the Crucifix that tell him to restore the Church. Therefore the elements he has to represent are Saint Francis, the crucifix, and the Church of Saint Damiano in ruins.
For the purpose he decides to split the panel into four parts by an ideal cross and assign each element a part. The Saint is on the left and Christ Crucified is on the right; the third element, which is necessary for the individuation of the miracle, i.e. the church, is the place where the two elements are inserted. Not wanting the building in the background with its proper dimensions as he had done for the other frescos, and considering that the dimensions of the protagonist of the cycle could not be reduced to make him proportionate to an element which is fundamental, yet subordinate to the overall image Giotto resorts to stratagems.
He subdivides the space of the church into a number of areas and assigns the characters separate, autonomous spaces, which partially solves the problem of the impossibility of likely proportions for the three elements. In fact Saint Francis still appears extremely big in relation to the aisles of the Church, reaching the height of the columns even though on his knees whereas the crucifix is proportional to the building in one dimension only, the height . Yet there is some imagination working here: the Saint becomes visible only if the external wall of the church were missing or better as if its lower part were transparent up to the architrave whereas the upper part on the left is closed by the external wall and by the roof. The Saint thus occupies one of the four parts in which the image is divided, the lower left, and this space is autonomous, encircled by four columns, two pairs in fact, one behind him and one in front of him. Moreover, of the two pairs, one is closer and one is farther to the viewer since the church is viewed from a side. The farther pair is the inner, nearly placed according to the schemes of a perspective with a central vanishing point in relation to the space assigned to Saint Francis. However, irrespective of perspective laws, the columns all have the same diameter and height.
This composition seems to suggest a first break of the rule according to which things within a spatial unit are always seen from the same side and the lines along which the image is constructed are always parallel. Only one area is divided in such a way as to create distinct, even though not separate, spaces: one for each element to be represented. Only the roof of the closer aisle is panelled along parallel lines sidelong leftwards, thus repeating the usual scheme.
The right half of the fresco is structured so that the space where the crucifix is placed appears as a whole. The cross that cuts the panel into four can be worked out by intuition through the projections of the architrave which appears broken because of the fall. To the extreme right there is a column signalling that the lower part of this half of the panel can be seen in consideration of an imagined transparent or missing wall like in the area where Francis is located. Only here the wall is totally missing as the imagined fall includes the architrave and the upper part of the church which on the left have been kept in order to divide the space. Here the space is kept one and the view opens up from the altar to the apsidal vault and up to the sky since the very roof is broken.
The reasons for this are in the already mentioned play with proportions and space in order to keep hierarchies: as the Saint is already too big for the architecture of the church, the crucifix cannot possibly be bigger. Therefore Giotto places the crucifix in an area which has a double height compared to the other, with the result that the Saint is the protagonist according to dimension and Christ is according to spatiality. The space assigned to Him includes the altar where He is made flesh, the Crucifix, His image, the bowl-shaped vault representing the heavens where He dwells, and the very Heavens, the sky. Nothing is casual in Giotto's frescos, which on the other hand was expected of any artist of his time.
To create the effect of a closeness between Christ Crucified and Saint Francis, Giotto has the space spin around an imaginary axis on the right corner of the apse, which is for this reason viewed almost frontally not concealing any part of it to the viewer. Moreover the shorter sides of the altar are not parallel (which is very unusual for Giotto who always keeps the parallelism of lines) as if they were rays from the front column of the space assigned to Saint Francis. This second anti-clock rotation shifts the altar leftwards, that is towards the Saint. The step of the altar also appears funnily twisted to reach a harmonious perspective result with the space around it. In fact when one object is given more than one angle of inclination in the same image the result is apparent rotation- Guido Reni will exploit this effect for his crucifixes in later times.
Finally because the external wall and the architrave mark off the front plane, the elements painted in that space - the crucifix, the altar and the apsidal vault- must be all contained within it, thus causing an apparent movement of the crucifix, which on the other hand is a bi-dimensional object, a painted board, as it was commom in those times, along whose longer arm some pious women are represented.
The complexity of this artifice is justified by the seriousness of the matter. Although the image of Christ is quite damaged, Giotto's intention to emphasize the communication between Him and the Saint is clear. Looking at the crucifix, the viewer's look immediately turns to Saint Francis and viceversa. It is not so much a question of gestures or poses as it is of ideal lines that represent the characters' looks and create links within the image. In this spiritual dialogue Saint Francis becomes converted and accepts Christ, but his attitude here is rather passive as it is the Divine Will to be operating on the fertile land of the Saint's soul which is undergoing its process of conversion and devotion.

FIFTH EPISODE
(Fifth of the First Series)

When he returns everything to his father and, taking off his clothes, he gives up his father's riches saying to him: "From now on may I say with absolute certainty: Our Father that dwells in the Heavens, since Pietro di Bernadone has repudiated me".

LM 2,4- 1c15-2c12-3Cp19-AP8.

This episode is one of the most important steps in the process of the Saint's conversion and for the foundation of the Franciscan Order. The first four panels have already showed the first urge to conversion through a presage (the episode of the simple man), the inner conversion manifesting itself in a gesture (the gift of the cloak), a second presage, this time coming from Christ himself (the dream of the palace) and finally the open exhortation to start a new path (the episode of San Damiano's).
These episodes can be subdivided into two groups: the first relating to the achievement of an old form of perfection (Saint Francis equalling Saint Martin) and the second to the preparation to a new form of sanctity through the direct intervention of Jesus Christ speaking to him first obscurely and then openly. The scenes that come after these episodes will therefore depict the beginning of this new phase: the renunciation to the riches, together with the dream of the Lateran and the approval of the Rule make up a trilogy related to the birth of the Franciscan Order.
In the course of time this fifth episode was deprived of its dramatic character and the symbolic and legal sense were emphasized. In Vita Prima by Tommaso da Celano the renunciation to the riches and the restituition of the bag with the money are one episode which causes Francis's father to lose his temper. In Vita Seconda the scene is played down: Francis is not taken by his father in front of the bishop, but it is the latter to advice him to return the money. At this point Francis returns his clothes together with the bag and shows he is wearing a hair-shirt. Saint Bonaventura in Legenda Maior adopts the earlier scheme but includes the idea of the hair-shirt, a detail that emphasizes the idea of the religious mortification of flesh. Giotto's interpretation emphasizes the notion of poverty rather than that of the mortification: the reason might be that the hair-shirt was later abolished by Saint Francis for his Order. What is important here is that Pietro holds his son's clothes, including the underpants, showing that Francis had turned himself into a totally naked poor man.
We should here remark the absence of women in the painting, which cannot be justified by the fact that the subject of the painting has legal implications and that women were not full legal subjects at the time. Neither children were, but they are present among the crowd that witness to the episode. The reason for the exclusion must then be the nakedness of Saint Francis: the episode should not be an example of scandalous behaviour for the pilgrims and visitors of the Basilica.
Leggenda dei Tre Compagni provides a different version : Francis's decision is taken after reflection in a room where his father also comes to know about it and loses his temper. Moreover Francis's choice is offered a sort of justification in spite of any possible reaction by his father through the introduction of the figure of the consul. Leggenda dei Tre Compagni refers to a summons to appear that Francis receives, according to the law, to which he replies that he has devoted himself to God. At this point the consuls openly invite Francis to see the Bishop because according to ecclesiastical law an individual could not enter the clergy - and therefore pass from civil to ecclesiastical jurisdiction - simply by an act of will, but had to accomplish formal procedures that required the approval of the Church. As these procedures were common knowledge, the reference in Leggenda dei Tre Compagni seems to emphasize the fact that Francis has belonged to the Church since the revelation of San Damiano's and because of a direct call by God. The formal admission will then become obvious here with the Bishop's protection and later with the approval of the Rule.
Giotto's fresco is generic as for its reference to sources: the Saint returns his clothes to his father and the Bishop covers him by his mantle while the clergymen stay behind. On the left stand the people of the town, Pietro Bernadone among them wheras Saint Francis is placed more to the right with his hands joined in an act of prayer. An ideal line joins the Saint's hands with another hand that appears from the Heavens with the typical gesture of the Christ Pantocrator of Byzantine art. The forefinger points to the group on the right part of the panel, in sign of command over the Church, even if the hand is perpendicular to the figure of Pietro Bernadone. The hand obviously represents the Divine Will that with the gesture commands the clergy, including the Saint, who is therefore called on directly by God and not by the representatives of the hierarchy of the Church. Pietro Bernadone's reaction, which is justifiable in terms of him being Pater Familias, is in fact hindered by a man wearing a gown and a cloak, most probably a magistrate.
The scene can be interpreted as follows: Giotto places the two groups of people facing each other in a sort of opposition, but when the Saint is called on by God and receives official protection by the Church, the lay world also has to acknowledge the new choice. We can say that the fresco represents the moment when Saint Francis is freed from his father's control by the Divine Will even though he does not belong to any religious order or to the regular clergy yet. The Bishop of Assisi, covering Francis's naked body and looking away in sign of chastity, acknowledges the act that comes from God.
The Bishop also seems to be speaking to a clergyman: Legenda Maior refers that the Bishop tells the clergymen to give Francis something to put on while he himself is covering his nakedness out of pity. Vita Seconda by Tommaso da Celano seems to suggest that the Bishop has got a feeling of the divine intervention. Giotto includes both details: the hand and the dialogue, which confirm that he made use of various sources for his frescos.
Like the other frescos already examined, this panel is subdivided into very distinct areas: Giotto places the people of the town on the left and the Bishop, the clergymen and Saint Francis on the right. The separation between the City of God, the Church, and the City of the people, which was clear in the episode of the cloak, is less obvious here. The background here is formed by generic town buildings that are not in a continuous line but cannot possibly form a circle or a square. As it was typical of Giotto's way of painting buildings, they are higher on the exterior side of the panel taking up the upper part of it, which also concides with the sky, wheras the lower part is filled in with living figures.
In this case the buidings show the corners and not the front side, thus making two sides visible instead of one. Moreover, although the parallel lines are kept parallel , the perspective is rather diverging than converging. This is especially apparent in the building at the back of the group including Saint Francis and the Bishop.
Saint Francis's looks are parallel to his arms and directed to God's hand: this ideal diagonal cuts the large blue empty sky that overlooks the scene. In fact from a structural point of view this emptiness is thus filled making a difference with the cold sky of the episode of the gift of the cloak, where a sense of depth was produced in the painting, thanks to the total absence of relation with the main scene.

SIXTH EPISODE
(Sixth of the First Series)

As the Pope sees the Basilica Lateranense almost in ruins and a poor fellow, namely the Blessed Francis, supports it on his back to prevent the fall.

LM 3,10- 2c17-3Cp51.

Also this panel can be divided into two areas, as many as the elements of the story: the Pope who is asleep and Francis that supports the church.
Differently from its sources, which described Francis as a ragged fellow, the fresco portrays the Saint in religious clothes. This is actually the first fresco where Francis is wearing a friar's habit, a tonsure and a beard, i.e. the iconography that will become established for the Franciscan order. But if we think that the preceding panel had showed him among the clergymen it is not surprising now to see him in religious clothes.
Here the motives of iconography take priority over the didactic intent which urged the representation of the Saint's humility as the real strength of the Order as well as of the whole Church. It is also for reasons of established iconography that the Pope is portrayed with his mantle and tiara on and with two attendants sitting at the feet of his rich bed, as the dignity and high rank required.
A number of stylistic remarks can be made about this fresco. In the first place Giotto is here more careful about the inner perspective of buildings Both the tester and the porch of the Basilica appear more accurate than, for example, the Palace with the arms. In the second place there is here extraordinary attention for the portrayal of characters, which makes Giotto stand out as a painter of his age. With this fresco each character seems to be enclosed in the formal perfection of its drawing and receives more attention, with the exception of the Pope that is awkwardly laid on his bed to be seen frontally as if he were sleeping on a side in spite of the posture of the body, which is typical of one sleeping on his back.
As we have said, the figure of the Saint is not at all mean, nor does he look small or low as the sources would have him. On the contrary he has a rather strong appearance even in comparison to other episodes of the cycle. It is a fact that Saint Francis is the protagonist of the cycle and that therefore his dimensions must be proportionate to the role. On the other hand when Giotto wants to underline the humility of the figure he prefers to study a posture that may reveal modesty rather than play with dimensions. Apart from these remarks about proportions, there is here the usual inaccuracy concerning the position of feet that in this case implies an inconsistency in the composition of the fresco since the Saint's foot is placed somewhere illogical, i.e. on the very porch he is supporting. However there is skill in the way the painter expresses the tension of the Saint's left leg and the graded effort of the body, which are shown through the accuracy of the draping and shading of the cowl. An intense look and a firm posture add to the accurate depiction of the Saint.
There is remarkable care also in the portrayal of the servants whose figure might correspond to the reference that was added by Father General Gerolamo d'Ascoli to Legenda Maior about some attendants of the Pope who, on his awakening, were sent to invite Saint Francis into His presence. Their existence had been precisely described in the sources thus causing a special importance for their figure as the first witness to the miraculuous dream. Both characters nobly wear a beard, which is perhaps a detail conceived of in order to distinguish these figures from the clergymen, and both appear natural. Giotto must have devoted some attention to their portrayal, which indicates a new pictorial interest in minor characters- let us notice, for example, the contrast of light and shade between the dark mantle of the servant on the left and the light clothes with effects of shading and chiaroscuro of the one on the right.
I will conclude the analysis of this fresco with some considerations about spatiality. First of all the sky is filled with complex architecture instead of being clear and empty like in the previous frescos. Secondly, if we wanted to subdivide the fresco into four areas by a cross like we did for the previous panels, it would be impossible to tell which pillar is the vertical of the cross or which staff of the tester is the horizontal. Even more apparently, the crooked roof of the church makes the whole composition much less precise than that of the other frescos.
Indeed the space assigned to Saint Francis supporting the Basilica interferes on that assigned to the Pope, nearly falling on it. The pillars of the bed that stand between the two areas are not a well-defined border and even though the figure of Saint Francis is tangent to them and does not go beyond the first pillar, the idea that the painter conveys is very close to what should have been the Pope's dream: the Basilica seems to be falling over him and the Saint is stopping the fall by supporting it.
In conclusion we can say that in spite of the existence of two areas assigned to the two main characters, the Pope and Saint Francis, these portions of the panel are neither well-defined nor symmetrical to each other. This is not a sign of regression in my opinion because it suggests that the painter is on a new way of painting heading for the.
unity of the scene.

SEVENTH EPISODE
(Seventh of the First Series)

When the Pope approves the Rule and assigns the mission to preach penance allowing the tonsure for the friars that went with the Saint so that they would spread the Word of God.

LM 3,10- 1c33- 2c17- 3Cp51- AP 36.

This is one of the most important episodes in the history of Franciscanism. The Pope makes the movement lawful, which may also mean that he simply acknowledges its existence: from a formal point of view authorities give permission or recognition even when they merely acquiesce or let be. In this case the sources refer to a permission by word of mouth, nearly a period of trial which is possible on consideration of the fact that the Rule was written and discussed at large only later on.
Tommaso da Celano does not mention the Rule in either biography, whereas Saint Bonaventura has the Pope "approve" the Rule since Saint Francis "wrote in simple words a formula of life for himself and his friars". Both Vita Prima and Leggenda dei Tre Compagni record the attendance of the whole Order. Giotto paints twelve, including Saint Francis following the Anonimo Perugino and possibly alluding to Christ and the Apostles.
The most conspicuous image of this fresco is the Pope's, who is portrayed in a blessing posture with his right hand over Saint Francis while his left is handing a parchment to him, apparently the approved Rule of the Order. Giotto must be following here the official biography, since the friars are also wearing the tonsure mentioned by Saint Bonaventura as a sign of not belonging to the lay jurisdiction anylonger. This also suggests that since the earliest contacts were established with the authorities, the Order had possessed a constitutional form which was not very dissimilar to the definitive Rule. This is obviously a defense against those who, in Giotto's times, invoked better accordance with the original rule. How could it have been otherwise in the main see of the now established Order?.
The analysis of this episode is complex. To start with, there are two distinct groups even if they are not viewed separately: on the left Francis and his friars and on the right the Pope and the prelates. Among these stand the two servants of the previous episode, which suggests that Giotto follows the narration that had the Saint brought in front of the Pope after the latter's premonitory dream- since the Pope himself had firstly rejected him. In fact the two servants only represent two witnesses to the dream or executors of the Pope's decrees, but in the context of the cycle their presence underlines a more important interposition in the history of the Order: the Divine will.
Since the Consistory must have been public- for no sources refer to secrecy- we can suppose that the prelate sitting next to the Pope and wearing a red mantle can be Santa Sabina's Cardinal and that the character standing right of the Pope could be the Bishop of Assisi. The sources refer to them as intermediaries that introduced Francis to the Pope, but here they appear within the group of the papal court.
The structure of the fresco clearly shows a separation between the newly born Order (on being accepted the Rule, the movement becomes an Order by right) and the prelates of the traditional hierarchy, their only bond being their subordination to the Pope. The image is clear: the Pope stands higher but the central figure is that of Saint Francis, to whom all looks are directed. The Saint is slightly separated from his own group, so that a series of converging lines may fall on him, from the right and from the left of the picture. The play with the looks is such that a bundle of beams departs from the friars to the Saint and from there it is directed to the Pope, which at the same time highlights the unity of the Order and the centrality of the Saint.
Fom the point of view of perspective the composition of this fresco presents a novelty: the space is unitary. Even if groups of characters are still obviously discernible, there is a larger unit that includes all of them. The three walls that surround the scene and the arcade supporting a hypothetical coffer ceiling mark the bounds of this space.
The perspective makes the side walls converge towards the back wall and shows the inner part of the three little arches farther and adherent to it, wheras the outward part of the arcade is closer and larger. Thus the three arches form a series of barrel vaults whose surface is all visible. Moreover if the horizontal lines of the two side walls had not been kept parallel the perspective would have been very similar to a Renaissance central perspective. But this is not the case yet and there is only one viewpoint for the two sidewalls and two different directrixes diverging with a rather wide angle.
The ceiling, which could have been theoretically visible, is missing and therefore there is no element of convergence for the lines with respect to a central line, perpendicular to the back wall in perspective and vertical in the execution of the drawing. But it is too early for such an advanced step and the new unity of spatiality is already a leap forward.
A final remark is about a detail: the decoration of the upper arches is of the mosaic sort and the walls are covered with heavy oriental curtains, which were used in rich houses also for thermic reasons, that is for their non-conductivity.

EIGHTH EPISODE
(First of the First Pair of the Second Series)

As the Blessed Francis was praying in a hovel (by the Bishop's seat in Assisi) and being physically away from his friars at the hovel outside the town (at Rivotorto),he was seen on a chariot of fire brightly wander about the house round midnight and the hovel lit up as it were day for which reason those who were awake were amazed and those who were asleep woke up and were frightened.

LM 4,4- 1c 47.

The sources refer to this episode as a reward (Tommaso da Celano), or as a sign of the Divine Will (Saint Bonaventura) which chose Francis as a new Elijiah, the "chariot and charioteer" of the spiritual men. In the original version the chariot brings an igneous globe and Saint Bonaventura adds that the spiritual light coming from the soul of the Blessed Francis allows the friars to see into each other's mind, thus causing a premonition of Paradise and a better confidence among the members of the community.
Giotto alters several elements of the episode, the most important being the portrayal of the Saint, specially bright on this occasion, on the chariot instead of the globe so that the image could be clearer to the pilgrims. Also the chariot does not wander about the house, but over it making the friars witnesses to the miracle rather than co-protagonists of the episode and as a consequence the setting must be modified. The house, one closed space in the sources, is turned here into a small porch within which some friars sleep while others call them from the outside to watch the prodigy.
Since the analysis of the previous fresco has proved the conspicuous progress achieved by the painter as far as perspective drawing, we have to assume that there are other reasons for setting the scene in an open space than wanting to avoid the trouble of painting interiors. Nor does Giotto recur to stratagems like the break in the wall of San Damiano's. It then appears that Giotto chose to show the episode as a miraculous premonition of the role of the Saint as the new Elijiah and of his ascent to the Heavens in the Glory of God.
There are a number of technichal remarks that can be made about this fresco. The image is no longer divided into four and the chariot of fire is not placed symmetrically to the friars standing on the right and those sleeping on the left. Now when painting in fresco each layer of plaster dries very quickly and certainly Giotto's complex composition and outspread figures could not possibly be painted in one session.
There is a technique that exploits four different cartoons for the pouncing, which could explain the fact that the previous frescos were divided into four panels. Supposing the technique was practised at the time, the sinopites would coincide very skillfully on this fresco, allowing to paint figures closer. Alternatively, and more likely, supposing it unknown, and even admitting the usage of dry retouching for correction and addition, the ability at having parts painted at different times coincide is even greater.
There is definitely a new effort and skill in the arrangement of the work. The narrative elements are placed each in its own area for other reasons than technical. An important feature of the composition is the play of looks. Here, like in other panels, Giotto has the looks fix on each other: the viewer realizes that by following ideal lines and also thanks to the inclination of the heads.
One of this lines joins the friar in the middle of the sleeping group with the other inviting him out by his left arm. In addition, his right arm is in accordance with the left arm of the friar that is pointing to the chariot and both are ideally joined by a parallel to the line of the looks mentioned above. Thus the looks of those watching the fresco must eventually focus on the Saint, the ultimate object of the whole composition.
One final remark here about the way of exploiting spatiality concerns the shape of the front part of the chariot, which in a sort of V , results slightly bent outward. The figure of the Saint, nevertheless, is still utterly a profile.

NINTH EPISODE
(Second of the First Pair of the Second Series)

When a vision from the Heavens showed a friar many seats amongst which one higher in dignity and shining in every Glory and a voice said to him: "This seat belonged to a fallen angel and is now kept for humble Francis".

LM 6,6- 2c122,3- LP 23- sp60.

The episode is set by Giotto at the time of prayer when a friar, not daring disturb Francis, stays behind and sees the Thrones of Glory. An angel addresses him pointing to the magnificent central Throne with his left and to Saint Francis with his right.
In fact the sources never mention an angel, and two of them (Legenda Perusina and Speculum Perfectionis) emphasize the spiritual character of the vision by adding a quotation from Saint Paul: "whether within the body or outside it only God knows".
Giotto embodies the voice in an angel just like he had done with Christ in the episode of the Dream of the Palace so that people could understand that the relationship between the Saint and the Throne was God's decree and not an arbitrary inference of the painter or of the friars.
Like for other frescos where the sense becomes clear thanks to the relations that the lines ideally joining looks and arms create between characters, this fresco can thus be interpreted without further information.
Differently from the sources, Giotto's fresco does not portray the church where the vision takes place. Its prodigious character is thus stressed and the composition focusses on the triangle that the threee figures form.
The characters are set against a uniform light blue background where the five thrones float in a space where geometrical distances do not matter (Noteworthy for specialists of the field are the wooden fabric of the thrones and the special padding of the seats).
The only hint to the church is an altar with a canopy over it in the shape of a small apse.But it does not strike the imagination and its function is to highlight by contrasts of color -white and blue- the value of the dominating sky.
The altar is laid on steps, on the lower of which the Saint is kneeling. This is the bare minimum to suggest that the episode occurred in a church. Simplifying and saving work seem to be the rules of this fresco.
The upper part of the altar is viewed from below and is drawn on parallel lines leftwards, wheras the thrones are drawn rightwards, which indicates a deliberate separation of the two images.
The altar itself is viewed from above; its sides converging towards the front as well as the steps and the wooden predella.
The whole altar is drawn in a way that seems to open the space from the back to the foreground to include the three main figures. Its right side is viisible whereas of the thrones we see the left side. In conclusion the setting seems to be drawn on a series of visual and perspective differences, that someway make sense.
The three figures are more detailed and the friar's and the Saint's in particular are endowed with a certain elegance, their countour suggesting those of miniated figures- another evidence of the well-known relations between the painting and the miniature of this age. The friar's and the Saint's figures possess movement and draping, the faces are not mere profiles and respect proportions- the Saint is here painted as a small man like in written descriptions, but of course Giotto underlines the importance by placing him on a slightly higher level and in a central position.
The angel, that cannot be less fundamental than the Saint from the standpoint of iconology, is isolated and placed in the middle of the blue background, against which he stands out but also blurs with his white and bluish wings.
This episode like the previous is a prophecy, this time involving the Saint in the first place and the Order in the second. The history of the Order lives through the Saint and its future depends on the special position that its founder has in the history of Salvation.
The message directed to the pilgrims of the Jubilee of 1300 was that Saint Francis was the greatest of all Saints, worth replacing Lucifer on the nearest Throne to perfection.
Thanks to this unique blessing, Francis achieves a special authority over the Order which is emphasized in this image.
Differently from the Approval of the Rule, where the collective moment was the subject of the fresco, here the focus is on the Saint's Glory in the Heavens (which on the other hand had already been promised in the episode of the Palace with the arms).
Summing up, this first pair of frescos establishes the principles of the new iconography: the glory of Saint Francis is the Glory of the Order and the friars, ever present in the scenes, represent the body of which the Saint is the head.

TENTH EPISODE
(First of the Second Pair of the Second Series)

When the Blessed Francis saw a multitude of rejoicing demons over the town of Arezzo and said to his follower Silvester ( who was a priest) : " Go, and in the name of God, shouting by the walls, drive out the demons" and as in obedience he shouted, the demons fled and suddenly there was peace.

LM 6,9- 2c 108- LP 81.

This episode is a glorification of obedience, a virtue that Saint Francis considered the best proof of humility. Here obedience is expressed through the relationship between Saint Francis's command and Friar Silvester's execution. There are, however, different readings of the episode in the sources and the structural and iconological study that follows will ultimately not provide any decisive element to ascertain which influenced the painter most beside the official Legenda Maior.
Saint Bonaventura underlines that obedience is absolute, admitting no questions whatsoever: Silvester is "simple as a dove", showing "true obedience" when "executing orders". In Legenda Perusina too Friar Silvester is "a man of great Faith, extraordinary simplicity and purity" but he drives out the demons with the words " From God the Almighty and by virtue of the Saint Obedience of Francis' s order.." instead of "from God the Almighty and by order of our Father Francis" ( in Legenda Maior). In Legenda Perusina the notion of obedience as a virtue originated by the Saint is more similar to that of loyalty rather than of hierarchical authority.
There are obviously issues at stake within the Order as for these differences of interpretations and in fact only Tommaso da Celano, who wrote when the Order was still young, seems to highlight another aspect of the matter, namely the power of the Saint through his followers. Finally we will see that Giotto's fresco, though placing Francis in a corner, emphasizes the centrality of the Saint's figure.
The fresco repeats a scheme that has already been seen (in the Renunciation to the father's wealth): the picture is divided into two by a vertical slice of blue sky that here goes down to the ground while a horizontal line forms a cross at the height of the town walls and of the upper part of the first order of the church. This line is also marked by the height of Friar Silvester, whose hand is directed to the sky thus creating a connection with the supernatural, just like in the Renunciation.
The cross appears to be in the background -also figurately- since it takes shape behind the main characters. A diagonal that starts with the Saint's back and head, touches the friar's arms and ends over the roofs of the buildings the town, appears more in the foreground. As it finally directs the powerful looks of the Saint to the devils it eventually brings the message of power of the Saint's will through his friars.
The representation of the demons is interesting and telling about the composition of the work: there must have been different hands working on this panel, probably assistants, who lacking Giotto's direction applied outworn schemes to unfinished parts. This is likely to have happened for the shape of the demons, for the drawing of the houses with figures at the windows as witnesses to the episode and for the the fur (or feathers) covering the monstruous bodies. This image reminds of the bizantine draping of clothes that was common throughout the Middle Ages up to Cimabue's times. The magister, undoubtedly Giotto, must have taken care over details probably knowing these would impress the most. He may threfore be the author of the demons' wings and paws which are innovatively modelled on bats and hens in a naturalistic manner, let alone of their attitudes and faces which possess a peculiar "feel", and suggest the touch of genius.
As far as the town is concerned, this is conceived of in a medieval manner, the buildings being seen one over the other leaving no space in between. The curved walls are not a solved matter in Giotto's style yet, but they are somewhat relevant to the perspective of the whole image. A more effective role of perspective is played by the church on the left whereas none is done by the roofs of the buildings. Here the usual front-one side view is reduced to a two sides- no front view (with the corner close to the viewer). Up to this fresco the parallel sides of buildings had always been kept parallel. In this case, apart from the parallel lines of the roofing-tiles, the lines diverging from the corners highlight the spatial dimension. The fact that only the upper part of the town is painted also affects the illusion of depth.

ELEVENTH EPISODE
(Second of the Second Pair of the Second Series)

As the Blessed Francis, in order to testify to the faith of Christ, wanted to go into a big fire with the priests of the Sultan of Babylon ,but none of them wanted to go with him and fled away from the Saint's and the Sultan's presence.

LM 9,8- 1c57- Fior 24.

The episode is mainly drawn from Saint Bonaventura's Legenda Maior that highlights the priests' withdrawal from the test.
The structure of the fresco is given here as in other cases by the lines connecting looks and gestures. A triangle is formed by the lines joining the Sultan's open hand, inviting his priests to the test, their looks and the fire, which are the three vertexes. The Saint, in the middle of the image intercepts the Sultan's gesture and points to the fire and himself with his hands. The facial expression of the friar behind him shifts the viewer's looks back to the priests, thus closing the lines of relationships between the characters, whichever the starting point.
The composition of these ideal lines is almost on one plan which has little depth and is divided into areas by the three groups of characters: the priests on the left, the friars in the centre, and the Sultan with his court on the right. The space behind them does not follow the tripartition. There is actually coincidence between the friars and the priests and the pillars of the tribune behind them and similarly between the Sultan and the baldachin. However, in general terms, we can say that two architecture units correspond to three groups of people and that the empty cesure is not in the centre.
Moreover, the two buildings are not oriented in the same way, which is evident if we watch the lacunars. The tribune is viewed from the left and its upper part, which is open at the back, wide and deep, projects over the Saint. The baldachin is viewed from the right jutting over the Sultan , but this space is smaller, narrow, and rather inclined and decentred.
The two characters are treated differently and the Sultan is belittled by Giotto's composition. In addition, the priests are placed in a corner, which seems to emphasize their gesture of fleeing: they vanish from the story just like their position- a sort of vanishing point- suggests.
This episode stresses the "power" of the Saint's word and shows that the unwillingness or rejection to opening one's heart can cause its inefficacy. This relatively unsuccessful episode is represented with no fear it could be interpreted as a failure. Miracles and extraordinary facts are not necessary elements of Franciscanism, whose strength lies in the Word, that is the Word of Christ, and in the example that the truth must always be proclaimed even in difficult situations.
Later, however, in the Little Flowers, it is suggested that the Saint could have gone through the fire and that the Sultan was secretely converted to Christianism.
A few words should be spent about the representation of the Sultan: his dignity is adequately respected with an obvious higher position and his court around him according to an iconography that will become established during the 15th century. The fact that he was a non-Christian sovereign does not diminish his kingly status. In fact already in Sacchetti's short stories the Saladin is described in the same manner as a knight or a king of the Frankish legends would have been. Less specifically, the light literature of the time did not tend to give prominence to the Christian world especially as Italy was open to trade with the Oriental world.
It is interesting to note here that the fact that Giotto was not capable of conceiving of Oriental architecture and therefore availed himself of the schemes of European Gothic was unimportant for the success of a representation. At the time the function of architecture in a painting was mainly symbolical of spatiality, with elements drawn from the surrounding and a view to create a sort of furnishing for a scene. If the opportunity of painting from life came up, then the artist would seize on that, but this was not considered logically necessary in those days though it gradually grew to be. For instance in the Prophecy of the Simple Man, the first fresco of the cycle, the representation of the square of Assisi is exteremely accurate, which suggests a later date for this panel which can be however supported also by other stylistic remarks.

TWELFTH EPISODE
(First of the Third Pair of the Second Series)

The Blessed Francis, while one day he was fervently praying, was seen by the friars lifted in the air, his arms held up and the body wrapped up by a most shining cloud.

LM 10,4- 2c95.

The figure of Saint Francis lifted up in the air and wrapped by a very bright small cloud and his arms stretched to form a cross is drawn from Legenda Maior, where the author also refers to the friars that saw him and adds that "he was revealed the hidden secrets of divine wisdom". This episode highlights the process of being uplifted towards Christ, which had been prophesied in the episode of San Damiano when the Saint had welcome the Passion of Christ. The Nativity Scene of Greccio and the Stigmatas will be the next two fundamental steps of this process.
According to Saint Bonaventura, the episode occurred in a solitary place in the woods, which causes a problem of interpretation of Giotto's fresco. Can the walls of the town be interpreted according to negative logic, i.e. to mean that the episode took place outside the town, as the trees sketched on the right part of the panel may also suggest ? It seems awkward, though, that the two settings should be regarded respectively as the place outside and within which the event is located. All the more so since in the Driving Out the Demons from Arezzo the walls denote that the episode takes place in front of those very walls. Another explanation could be that two different circumstances merge into one, the other being when the Saint went through the whole Borgo San Sepolcro in a state of ecstasy, unaware of what was happening.
The composition is divided into four by the figure of the Saint. This division is even more evident because of the color of the sky that has faded differently just following the line that joins the hands of the Saint, touches his head and ends on the cornice below the towers of the town. The vertical is signalled by the Saint himself, so as to have the towers and buildings of the town on the upper left, the four friars witnessing to the scene on the lower left, a blessing Christ on the upper right and a mountain covered with trees on the lower left.
The friars are four, the double of the number required for a legal act, which has already been considered for the episode of the Simple Man. Saint Francis'arms are stretched out in the shape of a cross, also suggesting an image of crucifixion and therefore reproposing the figure of the Alter Christus . The icon of the bright white cloud with four upward plumes is not clear. One idea is that the plumes stand for the Gospels that pushed the Saint to the imitation of Christ, but this is just a hypothesis. What is certain is their stylistic peculiar function of giving body and volume to the cloud.
The play with ideal lines is unequivocal: a diagonal joins Christ's, the Saint's and the closer friars' looks. The interpretation is the following: through the Saint's example, the Order can reach Christ, here partially hidden behind a bright shield, apparently revealing himself only to Francis who differently from the viewer can see beyond the shield. However this invitation to spatial and psychological participation innovates the role of the viewer.
This way of drawing the viewer into the picture, the cloud effect, the fact that the lines of the building tend to be converging rather than parallel, and a certain sculptural quality of the friars' clothes realized through shading, all these elements suggest a new study of depth. Nevertheless these elements are not part of a whole new way of conceiving of spatiality and are limited within their individual separate spaces, differently from other frescos of the cycle such as the Approval of the Rule where the effect is of spatial unity.
It must be borne in mind that the fresco technique often compelled the painters to strive to have parts worked on at the same time coincide, namely the blue sky and the yellow walls of this fresco. In fact the bits of the town that are visible behind the friars' heads are not detailed and the color is not varied whereas its upper part is more interesting.

THIRTEENTH EPISODE
(Second of the Third Pair of the Second Series)

As the Blessed Francis in memory of the Nativity of Christ, asked for a crèche to be prepared. He had hay brought and an ox and an ass, then he preached on the Nativity of the Poor King and as the Blessed man was praying, a knight saw the Christ Child in the place of that brought by the Saint.

LM 10,7- 1c 84,87.

The most significant divergence from the sources is the setting of the episode. Both Saint Bonaventura and Tommaso da Celano recount the fact as being occurred in a stable in the woods, whereas Giotto locates it in a Church. The difference is important: Saint Bonaventura reports that the Saint had asked the Pope (and not the Bishop) for permission to to say Mass outside a consecrated place, underlining that only the Pope is over the Order. But as the incident was rare, it is possible that a more traditional version was preferred here.
The manger is therefore changed into a storied coffer and the animals are smaller than they would be in reality almost as if they were dolls of a crèche. The reason for this change of the setting could be that Giotto did not want to show the Nativity of Christ as crudely as Saint Francis had done. Whereas the Saint's intention was to be realistic, Giotto's was to bring the representation back under the moral authority of the Church, closer to the habitual way of making crèches.
The scene takes place on the left side of an altar surmounted by a high ciborium, on the side of an Iconostasis where the believers would not normally stand. Beyond the iconostasis, where it is open, several women are visible, whereas on the side of the scene there are only men: lay men, clergy and friars, among whom Saint Francis in a deacon's clothes. The other officiant looks at him piously.
It is difficult to establish which church is described here since the features of the setting are not detailed. Some critics suggest it may be the Basilica of Assisi, but since the iconostasis was abolished from Italian churches after the unification of Rites of the Council of Trent, the hypothesis is not valid despite the suggestive resemblance between this setting and the Lower Basilica. Similarly we can only ascribe the Crucifix on the iconostasis to a certain cultural context, but not identify it. Also noteworthy are a large number of lit candles, some on the altar, others on the open codex, on the lectern, and some longer ones on the ambo visible on the left, recalling the joyous atmosphere and rites of that special night.
The fresco probably describes the moment when the gentleman who had prepared the crèche according to Saint Francis's indications saw him holding the Child, the "Puer valde formosus" of Tommaso da Celano's text. Most people are not watching Saint Francis and apart from the friars obviously singing with their mouths open wide, all appear to be in a moment of compunction, presumably the elevation, the priest holding a chalice in his hands. Only one character raises his hand whether in sign of amazement or participation we cannot guess- this could be the knight referred to in the sources.
An interesting detail is the sheet of paper sticked with seals on the wooden base of the support of the open codex, all lit with candles. Two columns of lines all beginning with a capital letter are visible and no more detailed reading is possible because of the state of preservation of the fresco. Whether the Rule or the papal dispensation, this paper shows a realistic intent which differentiates this panel from others, such as the Preaching in front of the Sultan, where a dramatic effect was sought. Some details are indeed excessively realistic in this fresco, for instance the series of hollows and pins that support the base of the codex allowing its orientation or the parqueting behind the Crucifix board.
There is a special study of the rules of perspective in these details: for instance the gradient of the Crucifix, or the upper part of the cornice of the Iconostasis whose little props are viewed from the right on the left and from the left on the right. It is also interesting to notice that the only prop viewed frontally with neither side visible is not exactly in the centre of the panel, but at the level of the two friars that sing on the left and more precisely of the upper left corner of the panel of the Iconostasis behind the friar standing more to the right. In this way the point of view is slightly shifted from the geometric centre to the group of people on the left so that, for instance, the staff of the Crucifix is seen at the right of the Crucifix itself.
It seems that here for the first time in the history of painting, the author sought to identify a vanishing point. This is placed rather high, on the bulge of the back wall, coinciding with the point that has been discussed above, or sligtly below that, in the area above the head of the character in a blue hat between the two standing friars. In fact the upper part of the women's veils is not visible, whereas it is possible to see the lower part of the base of the codex and the upper part of the horizontal hinge on it. Therefore the line of the horizontal plane where we can identify the vanishing point must be over the men's hair and just below the women's veil; for the vertical plane we already identified the bulge of the wall.
The scene does not bring to mind the images of poverty and simplicity that the Saint probably meant with his representation of the Nativity Scene. Besides the precious carpet in front of the altar, the clothes of the characters are typical of the upper class of the time and the clergy, including the Saint, are all dressed in ornated paraments. On this occasion the regular clergy and the members of the religious Order stand together, the friars a little higher so that their open mouths can be seen. The corners of a stall, probably of the choir are visible that elevate the friars both on the left and on the right of the scene. Still to the right there are two more laymen.
The composure of all these characters does not allow to identify them, but it now appears obvious that Giotto's intention was not the portrayal of the episode told in the literary sources, but the celebration of Saint Francis as the one who started the crèche tradition. This was now widespread through Italy and the message to the pilgrim was that it belonged in some ways to Franciscanism. In fact in Saint Bonaventura's days the custom had become popular and he therefore took care in referring to a papal permission whereas in other cases he found the origin of Francis's deeds in God only and directly.
On the other hand it had to be underlined that the Church Hierarchy accepted and supported the representation of the Nativity Scene, which also heightened its iconographic value. In fact many Franciscan representational ways had found opposition both in Italy and in Europe and finding a vast iconography that could respond to the new needs of the movement was an important issue of the movement. The Stigmatas were not the sole iconographic problem.
In conclusion, we can say that this is the first fresco of the series where a real unity of spatiality is achieved. In the others either each narrative element had its individual spatiality or when there was one space, the characters are in some way placed in opposing groups. Here the unity of perspective seems to allude to a unity of the Christian community, who as a whole attunes to the attitudes of Franciscanism, such as composure and humility. Moreover here the composition of the fresco and the architecture of the scene do not clash and the Iconostasis seems to serve the peculiar function of pushing the scene towards the viewer, which has a remarkable psychological result.

FOURTEENTH EPISODE
(First of the Fourth Pair of the Second Series)

As the Blessed Francis was riding up a mountain on a poor man's ass since this man was infirm and dying of thirst, by praying, he made water gush out of a rock where it had never been seen before nor was anymore since then.

LM 7,12 -2c46- 3c15.

The first meaning of this fresco is rather evident in its comparison with the Gospel image of the flowing water (John, 4,1: 7,38). An Alter Christus Saint Francis intercedes with God and saves the life of the poor peasant going with him. The message to the pilgrims is metaphorical and refers to the life of the soul, which is saved by following the Saint's preaching.
Saint Bonaventura stresses the element of intercession. The two previous episodes had showed the special favor of God enjoyed by the Saint. Here the writer stresses how important the Saint's prayer is, even more than his word, since the latter had an effect on the demons of Arezzo, but not on the Sultan's heart. The Saint asks for a Grace that God immediately grants him: for the first time the Saint is presented as one who obtains Graces thanks to the possibility of being heard by God or better to the favor that God grants him by hearing his prayers.
The image of a Saint granting himself Graces is popular in Italy as the ex-Voto custom proves. Therefore it is not surprising that Francis is here presented as a dispenser of Graces. However this faculty is ascribed to him when still alive, which underlines Francis's special status among all Saints, having he reached and gone beyond the point the others achieved only after death. The special favor enjoyed by the Saint is also confirmed by the parallel with the Bible narration of Moses making water gush out of a rock for his people.
The emphasis of all literary sources seems to be on the detail of the water disappearing soon after the peasant had quenched his thirst. A proof of the mentality of the people of those times who saw the most wondrous miracle in this, the episode also shows that the Franciscan message both in the literary and in the visual sources, highlighted the type of conduct that Francis led and preached rather than the miracle itself. Giotto obviously focusses on the central moment of the episode and portrays Francis praying and the peasant drinking. Two friars stand to witness to the fact and the indissoluble presence of the Order.
The structure of the composition is similar to that of the Gift of the Cloak. Two mountains, one on the left and one on the right, divide the upper part into two areas between which appears a V-shaped portion of sky, whose vertex is nearly coincident with Francis's figure. However, in this case, the Saint is not central between the two mountains, nor are these isolated from the foreground figures.
The mountain on the right slopes down along two curves that highlight the passage from the vertical to the horizontal plan and thhus give the impression of a uphill path. The upper curve, contributing to the sky outline, and covered only for a very short tract by the Saint's head, nearly joins the two mountains. The lower, starting on the right flank of the mountain, goes down behind the Saint and the friars. The edges of the rocks are all angular and sharp with the vertical parts darker than the horizontal ones as if the sun did not shine on them and to stress that the setting is all precipices and gorges.
The Saint is in the middle of the scene: he is kneeling, with his arms stretched up towards the sky in an act of prayer and following and repeating the upper curve of the mountain slope. The head is not in the centre of the area of the sky probably to avoid a sense of immobility that would have resulted of that composition. The elected composition, instead, highlights the upward tension of the figure and alludes to the journey towards perfection of the Saint.
The other characters are placed on different plans, a high step separating the path where the Saint is situated from a horizontal rocky strip where the two friars stand, which a bit further also appears vertical to show that there is still mountain below. The rocky step allows Giotto to place Francis on an upper location despite him being on his knees. Finally, the peasant is placed in a rocky triangle that covers an area between the path and the strip, below the Saint and a little upper the friars.
Summing up, the composition of this fresco is not unitary: even though the characters are not located in separate areas, with different points of view, still the narrative elements (the Saint, the friars, the peasant) all have their appointed place. These observations, together with the invaluable stylistic analysis, may help dating this fresco.

FIFTEENTH EPISODE
(Second of the Fourth Pair of the Second Series)

The Blessed Francis, as he was going to Bevagna, preached to many birds, which, excited with joy, stretched their necks, flapped their wings, opened their beaks and touched his cowl; and all these things were seen by his followers waiting on the way.

LM 12,3- 1c58-3c20- Fior 16.

As we consider the fourteen central frescos as seven groups of pairs, this episode is coupled with the Water Gushing out of the Rock. The two panels, placed on the sides of the portal midway of the whole cycle, show the Saint working wonders on Nature rather than Mankind. The special importance of Nature does not only mirror a new artistic feeling of Giotto's team; it had been a peculiar feature of Franciscanism for dozens of years. Another link is that in the previous panel the Saint heard the prayers of the one who was leading him on the wordly way whereas here he is heard by the birds-followers that are guided by him on the way to heavenly life. This play of parallel oppositions was typically medioeval and although historical remarks are beyond the scope of this work, the influence of this episode on the popular iconography of the Saint should be taken into consideration.
For a better understanding of this episode and its characters we should consider the literary sources: the episode follows the Saint's decision to devote himself to preaching, after he had been querying the Holy Spirit. Here the preaching is addressed to birds, that in allegorical form stand for the Saint's followers, as is clearly expressed in Saint Bonaventura's version but also in a later reference, the Little Flowers, whose earliest source in Latin , the Acta, is about thirty years later than Giotto's work. The Little Flowers mirror the popular worship of the Saint in the late 14th century; although there is no evidence of direct influence, both this episode and the previous have a particular relevance in the text. Number XVI is the one related to the fresco under exam: it ends with an open parallel between the Franciscan friars and the birds of the sky that with no wealth of their own only trust in Providence.
The scene focusses on the foreground image of the birds thronging round the Saint for protection: the Saint preaches to the birds in the ways described in the literary sources: he leans over them, and they gather in a group towards him. The visual effect is heightened by the tree bowing over them almost closing the space and pushing them towards the Saint. The background is deliberately distant and separated from the main scene, also owing to the choice of color: a prevailing blue contrasting with the warm colors of the earth.
The structure of the composition is such that the body of the Saint is placed on the left wheras his head appears almost in the middle of the panel thus separated from the leafy fronds of the tree behind him and from the friar going with him. A curve follows the Saint's back from the ground to the aureole, which also highlights the Saint's head. The figure of Saint Francis forms an arch with the tree on the right, almost a window of the Basilica, for the space inbetween is a wide open view in the distance. Contrasting with this image, the left part of the fresco is marked by the vertical figures of the friar and the trees behind him. Though part of the story, the friar is left isolated from the main structure of the fresco, him being a spectator and the Saint being the protagonist of the episode.
In sum, although there are supportive arguments for considering the birds a metaphor for the friars of the Order, I believe that for one thing no hint to indecisions appears in Giotto's frescos, which was part of Saint Bonaventura's narration and thesis. Secondly there is no reason why we cannot consider the followers a more general category: just like Christ's exhortation to be like birds of the sky, Francis's preaching can be addressed to everybody.

SIXTEENTH EPISODE
(First of the Fifth Pair of the Second Series)

When the Blessed Francis impetrated the salvation of a knight of Celano, who piously had invited him to lunch and after confessing himself and arranging things for his house, while the others were about to sit down for lunch, suddenly expired,God resting his soul.

LM 11,4- 3c41.

In Trattato dei Miracoli this episode follows another episode about a man who was raised from the dead so that he could confess himself and in both cases Tommaso da Celano, besides stressing the importance of confession and the special favor of God enjoyed by the Saint, aims at showing the blessing that people acquire when they welcome the Franciscan Friars.
Legenda Maior provides a different context, since the episode follows an example of the Prophetic Spirit of the Saint, which was unheard on the occasion of his journey to the Holy Land, with terrible consequences, which is underlined by Bonaventura. In both cases Saint Francis's carisma is exalted; however the writer still undelines the merits gained through offering hospitality to Franciscan friars. In fact the next episode in his book deals with the punishment of an ungrateful canon. Indeed these episodes all concern the attitude that people should have towards the Saint and the Order that he founded. They aim at educating the pilgrims about the values of benevolence and confidence.
This panel is subdivided into two parts. On the left there is the Saint and the friar that accompanied him (we have to bring in mind that Francis was not a priest and therefore he could not confess). On the right there is the dead man, surrounded by his friends and the women of the house. The two parts are subdivided by the lower part of one of the two pillars supporting a balcony jutting over the laid table, behind which the Saint and the friar are placed.
The pillars are curved forward forming a lobar arch in order to support the balcony more efficaciously. It should be noted that this part of the ceiling is curved as well, despite the fact of keeping the coffered decoration. The strangest thing is that the pillar on the left is not placed at the end of the balcony but shifted inward, which makes it jutting without having the lobar shape of the part of the ceiling between the two pillars. The part of the wall on the left has the same decorative pattern as the pillar on the upper and central part and is also ornated with a flowery pattern.
This would appear awkward if there was not a structural problem here: the privileged space assigned to the Saint and the friar behind the table, that is the space included between the two pillars, does not fully cover the space of the whole table and its footboard and the friar appears tangent to the left pillar. Why does not the pillar on the left close the space as it would be reasonable?.
Indeed all the other features appear regular: the Saint is standing to acquire importance and he is placed in the middle of the space between the left border of the whole frescoi and a semi-column protruding from the wall of the Basilica. This semi-column is painted with the same blue that covers the background of the fresco so as to disappear from the point of view of the image. Yet it preserves its structural importance, which explains the apparently illogical structure of the fresco: the priviliged space is not bound within the balcony, but it is marked by two external elements: the frame of the fresco and the semi-column of the Basilica.
The composition of the image is clear: the dead man is placed on the right and is surrounded by mournful men and women, the latter wearing their hair loose as a sign of mourning. Between this group and the friars on the left a man attests the miracle and by pointing to the Saint with one hand and to the dead man with the other lets the pilgrims connect the two parts of the scene. The left hand of this man, so close to the Saint's, is painted very similarly to it and they both suggest something like: "Here, look...!".
In this fresco the Saint shares his preminence with the dead man since, although not central, the latter is the focus of the looks of many characters, which creates ideal lines driving the viewers' looks to him. One of the highest moments of drama is reached through the image of the woman who holds the body and fixes her eyes on the dead man's eyes: the one-way dialogue with the dead!.
One last consideration about the figures of the image brings back the technical subject: while some characters appear under the semi-column, the man attesting the miracle is placed according to the pictorial subdivision of the fresco, that is not under the semi-column, but shifted to the left as if the space of the Saint was limited by the balcony, above and on the sides. In fact the balcony appears tangent to the semi-column, but the space thus limited is excessively shifted to the left. To reduce this effect and in order to place the Saint in the middle of the semi-column and the frame of the fresco, the pillar on the left is shifted inwards. The semi-column, though painted in blue, was still conspicuous because of ots tri-dimensional features. However the painter decided to place the group on the right as left as the pillar of the balcony, thus having some characters under the semi-column.
The impression one gets is that the painter did not manage to come to a full solution to this structural problem and the result appears a compromise. We do not know whether this fresco is the final result of many corrections or the initial intuitive but uncertain solution to the technical question that the presence of the semi-column raised; however this appears to be the least clear fresco of the cycle from the viewpoint of technical analysis.

SEVENTEENTH EPISODE
(Second of the Fifth Pair of the Second Series)

When the Blessed Francis in front of His Lordship the Pope and his Cardinals preached so piously and with such force that it became apparent that he was talking words of divine inspiration rather than of human wisdom.

LM 12,7 -1c73-2c25.

This episode, like the previous, is about the Saint's prophetic spirit. Besides the ability to foresee the future this also implies the fact of speaking inspired by the Holy Ghost.
Before we analyze the choice of the friars and the painters as regards the ways of this representation, we must take into account the fact that preaching in front of the Pope was an honor and a recognition of exceptional rhetorical and theological experience. In fact in those times there was a special charge at court for the purpose.
The main sources for the fresco are the two lives by Tommaso da Celano and Saint Bonaventura's Legenda Maior. Both authours refer to Francis's shyness and difficulty of speech that is overcome only invoking God's intervention. Tommaso da Celano, in particular, describes the Saint carried away by his preaching and restless, "almost jumping".
He then underlines the prophetic aspect of the incident and describes the Holy Spirit as blowing over the Saint inspiring him to ask the Pope, and the latter to give him Cardinal Ugolino as a patron for the Order.
The story then offers the opportunity to underline the loyalty of the Order to the Pope and at the same time the fact that its birth and constitution were wanted and arranged beforehand by God. Saint Bonaventura groups the episode with a series of wonders, and presents it in a short narration as a miracle of the Holy Spirit.
The fresco has a different standpoint: Saint Francis looks like a Doctor of the Church that could nearly teach the Pope who is portrayed in a very attentive attitude together with the Cardinals. Could this be a hint to a certain theological autonomy being expressed by the Order?
What is certain is the fact that the fresco includes a friar that does not appear in the sources in order to preserve the indissoluble link between the Saint and the order and that the Saint points to himself as to suggest that the topic of the sermon concerns him and/or his work, but in fact to signal to the viewer that the attention of the Pope and the Cardinals is directed to him.
This effect is also well realized through the composition of the fresco, which is clear and rational, the columns dividing the space and the ideal lines joining the looks of the Pope and of the Cardinals with the Saint's eyes.
The characters that cannot look straight at the Saint, do not either look at the Pope, but are portrayed absorbed in meditation probably aroused by the Saint's sermon. This attitude excludes the thesis that Saint Francis's gesture with the hand could be interpreted as a reply-question to the Pope's request to speak, going "Me?".
Considering this should be a consistory it appears strange that only one of the clergy is wearing a cardinal's hat. This character, the first on the right, must be Cardinal Ugolino, who had brought Saint Francis in front of the Pope and had become the patron of the Order at the Saint's request. He is sitting, of course, at a lower height than the Pope and Saint Francis, but he is the main character of the portion of space where he is placed.
In fact, the fresco is divided by the two front columns into three areas, one for each protagonist of the story and the cardinal is indeed one of the main characters of this episode.
A few final considerations follow from what has just been said: the notion of spatiality here is fundamentally unitary and apart from a slight incoherence in drawing the Pope's pedestal, this is one of the most accurate frescos as far as spatial and perspective construction are concerned. The characters are all placed within a space enclosed on three sides by a heavy draping - which was used as a non-conducting material at the time.
The fourth wall is open, of course, but also limited by the two front columns that separate the space assigned to the Saint from that assigned to the Pope and the Cardinals.
Differently from earlier frescos that also presented a division into three parts, this panel can be considered a triptych, whose unity is preserved by the composition. Francis is not in the middle of the semi-circle of cardinals as it could have more simply been, but on the left, maybe because it would have been rather unseemly to paint a member of the clergy in a concealed or not very visible position.
On the other hand, the Pope, though nearly central, addresses his looks and the viewer's to the Saint thus making him the protagonist of the episode.

EIGHTEENTH EPISODE
(First of the Sixth Pair of the Second Series)

As the Blessed Anthony (of Padua) was giving a sermon about the Crucifix in the Chapter of Arles, the Blessed Francis, physically absent, appeared and stretching out his arms blessed the friars, as witnessed by a certain Monaldo: and the others felt immense joy.

LM 4,10- 1c48-3c3.

In Vita Prima by Tommaso da Celano the emphasis is on the Cross: the Saint is portrayed on the threshold, as if he is about to enter, uplifted in the air with his arms stretched out with a blessing gesture in the shape of a cross. In Trattato dei Miracoli friar Monaldo, who sees him first, describes the Saint with his arms stretched out like a Crucifix and the episode is included in a group of stories all showing a relation between the Saint and the Crucifixion. As the description of Francis is also morphologically similar to the image of Christ Crucified, the episode can be read as an anticipation of the well-known miracle of the Stigmatas, a unique privilege of the Saint. Legenda Maior emphasizes the relation between the Saint and the friars of the Order as he highlights the spiritual presence at the Chapter as a statement of truth for Saint Anthony's words. This sort of warranty also applies to all friars of the Order when they preach- the episode could be related to the previous where the Saint proves his rhetorical ability and shows his prophetic spirit in front of the Pope.
The two possible readings are interconnected since both present the Saint as an alter Christus, who with his human limits imitates Christ on his way to perfection and when he gets close to it, he appears to his friars like Christ did to his disciples after the Resurrection, and continues Christ's work by supporting and repairing the Church of Rome through the Order he founds. The climax of the process will be the miracle of the Stigmatas, a prize never granted to any other Saint.
The structure of this fresco is provided by the two windows and the door behind them in the middle. Saint Francis stands at the level of the side wall by which, on a lower plane, Saint Anthony is preaching. The painter had to find a compromise solution to the fact that the two Saints were both acclaimed: Saint Francis is obviously in a central position for his order, but the Saint of Padua has a special position as well. The other friars whether sitting or crouching on the floor are all below the line of the window-sill either in meditation or attentive to the words of the Saint.
The friar that first has the vision raises his face and with his look addresses the viewers' looks to the Saint. The other friars are all looking at Saint Anthony, except for those who for their position would have been excessively twisted. Another exception is the realistic portrayal of a friar who sits showing his back to the Saint and talking to another friar. In any way all of them show at least part of their faces.
A curious detail of this picture concerns the ceiling whose section is decorated where the plane of the ceiling meets the plane of the fresco, as if it needed some sort of embellishment. The decoration cannot belong to a porch-roof outside the main scene since there is one whose pillars are visible beyond the windows. Its beams are drawn almost on a vertical line to show the considerable inclination.
The space of this interior is not limited to the right by any precise boundary but it is by the vertical plane that ideally touches the rigid geometrical structure of the friars' bench. Here Giotto does not appear to be capable of creating a unitary closed space as he does in the fresco of the preaching in front of the Pope.
Another feature of this particular fresco concerns the horizontal lines of the upper part (the beams of the ceiling) and of the lower part (the bench and the pedestal where Saint Anthony is standing). They converge towards a central horizon line which more or less coincides with the window-sill. The cord of Francis's cowl is just over it whereas Saint Anthony's arms are just below it in perfect accordance with the required hierarchy.

NINETEENTH EPISODE
(Second of the Sixth Pair of the Second Series)

As the Blessed Francis was praying on a ridge of Mount Verna, he saw the image of Christ Crucified in a Seraph's shape, marking his own hands and feet and the right region of the ribs with the stigmatas of the Crucifixion and of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

LM 13,3- 1c 94/95 -3Cp 69- AP 46-LEE 5- Cons. 4.

The main reference for this episode appears to be the Considerations about the Sacred Stigmatas, enclosed at the end of the Little Flowers of Saint Francis, which were written later than the time of the frescos in point of fact. They are rich with details over this miracle, such as the poor houses for the Saint and Friar Leon and the cleave of the mountain. The earlier sources do not indulge over details about the Saint's movements with his companions on Mount Verna. In fact there are very few hints to the circumstances of the miracle. One reason for this could be the Saint's reluctance to speak about or show those holy marks.
These details are not wanted to understand the fresco the panels always having tituli while other explanations were given by word of mouth to the pilgrims when they visited the Basilica. If the emphasis was on the miracle, it would suffice to merely picture Saint Francis receiving the Stigmatas the way the earlier sources narrate it, and the pilgrims would have related the scene to the whole story. Since nothing in the cycle is either left to chance or unwanted and since there was no reason to devise such details as setting and characters it is more likely that Giotto's choice mirrored specific time and place circumstances that were told in a possible oral tale or legend which isno longer available as a source and from which also the Flowers drew inspiration.
Moreover if we compare the fresco with the picture that is kept at the Louvre, we see that the two poor houses are still there in the scene, even though the figure of Friar Leon disappears- which most likely happens for reasons of space. Apart from the considerations about authorship, it is important here to observe that even in a process of simplification such as this one from the fresco to the painting, the two houses are not considered superfluous elements, which confirms the hypothesis of a lost source or of a legend.
About the figure of the friar, he can either be a witness to the episode like in many other cases or his presence is wanted to attest the presence of the Order on such an important occasion. The latter idea is supported by the elected attitude of the friar: he is reading and he does not look at the main scene. Indeed not one source refers to any witness to the miracle, whereas the fact that the Saint was always accompanied by his early mates was an established tradition. The Considerations mention the name of Friar Leon.
As for the two little houses, they are obviously attributed to the two characters, since the Seraph is here identified with Christ, like the voice in the episode of the dream of the Palace. However it must be remarked that their shape is made similar to that of a church, and inside the left one the frontal of an altar is discernible- the pilgrims would anyway consider the two houses as holy places. Finally I believe that it would have been very naive to paint two houses only to justify the presence of Friar Leon, also on consideration of the fact that he is represented isolated from the site of the miracle.
Summing up, the scene of the fresco is very similar to the story in the Considerations. Unless we consider the latter a derivation from the fresco, which is very unlikely, they must both refer to a lost tradition.
When it comes to the analysis of the structure, the first thing to be observed is that although this fresco is not symmetrical, the masses appear well-balanced also from a tonal standpoint. A vertical line starts at the top of the mountain, passing between the Saint and the house behind him, made noticeable thanks to the parallel lines of trees. The line ends where the edge of the precipice is made hollow on that part of the ridge where the Saint is kneeling. To the right and to the left of this nearly invisible line the mountain stretches its flanks according to a very simple sketch.
The figure of the Saint is drawn following the lines of the landscape: the back is vertical like the external wall of the little house behind him, but he appears slightly bent to the right like the profile of the mountain. The edge of his cowl follows the curve of the ridge, its folds multiple like the broken line of the rocks.
To the right, in a lower position and separated by the cleavage, sits the other friar reading in meditation in front of the other house. Up above, against the intense blue of the sky, there is the Seraph with a Christ-like face. This image shows up because of its bright and red hues, that allude to the building behind Saint Francis, with which it is in tone-balance. There is in this fresco a special play with colors, since the balance between the two friars also serves the purpose of including Friar Leon in a scene to which he would have been otherwise external.
The most striking feature of this fresco is the presence of very thin lines joining the Seraph's sores (hands, feet and ribs) and the relative parts of Francis's body. Since the Seraph-Christ is placed higher than the Saint, the lines cross and the one reaching Francis's left foot, passes behind his body. This is an exception to the strategy of the cycle which is usually based on links created by ideal lines joining the looks of the characters.
In point of fact this particular fresco is the climax of the cycle, showing the highest point of perfection reached by the Saint. Francis achieves the maximum state of sanctity for a man thanks to the miracle of the Stigmatas that proves his perfect imitation of Christ. As we know, this was the most discussed miracle at the time of his canonization and the very iconography was long debated. Thence the exceptionality of Giotto's representational strategy here.
This episode is of capital importance for the Order, that becomes the guardian of an authentic way to perfection and imitation of Christ, also acquiring a unique position in the history of human salvation. The iconography must be clear and unequivocable: the Saint's Stigmatas were to be the specular image to those of Christ and the presence of the Order had to be attested to grant the continuity between the founder and his followers, which becomes a common feature of the cycle from the moment of the Approval of the Rule onwards. Moreover, all that concerns Saint Francis and the Order is sacred, e.g. the poor houses resembling chapels in this fresco.
By now the Saint has reached the climax of his earthly journey. The Franciscan Order will have to carry on his work.

TWENTIETH EPISODE
(First of the Seventh Pair of the Second Series)

As a friar, at the time of the Blessed Francis's transit, saw his soul ascend into Heaven in the shape of a brighest star.

LM 14,6- 1c 110-2c217- 3Cp 68.

The literary sources describe the scene as it was seen by a friar, Francis' soul ascending " like a star, as big as the moon, and bright like the sun, brought on a snow-white cloud" (Vita Prima).
Giotto's interpretation focusses on the very moment of the transit which covers the upper part of the fresco. But the painter modifies the scene by adding a number of angels (six are symmetrical to the image of the Saint's soul and four actually support the moon-like disc which in its turn appears over a cloud). Within the disc the Saint's bust shows the Stigmatas. This image looks like a painted medallion that the angels exhibit to the pilgrims.
The lower part of the fresco illustrates the mourning for the Saint's death. The mortal remains are surrounded by eleven friars, who are depicted in various attitudes of sorrow and compuction. One kisses Francis's left foot, while another is holding a hand, in accordance with Tommaso da Celano's description. The Stigmatas of the right hand and of the feet are clearly observable; the ribs' are also visible through an oblong cut in the Saint's cowl.
The central band is the fullest, with a crowd of friars, among whom one is wearing priestly paraments.
The reason for this subdivision into zones is the preoccupation for conveying the message that there was no particular or exclusive heir to the Saint's mission. All the friars enjoy such inheritance, those who were with the Saint at the time of the Approval of the Rule and those who came later, respectively represented in the lower and central part of the fresco. And Tommaso da Celano is quite clear over this issue, when he describes the blessing act of the now blind Francis, before he dies.
The question arose because some people interpreted the blessing as a personal address to friar Elijah, who in fact receives it for the whole Order. No one among the early mates and no one after them could claim this special role- the same goes for the question of the blessing to Bernardo da Chiaravalle. In fact, after Elijah's excommunication, this incident disappears from the narrations that follow Vita Prima, though the rest of the episode is kept.
The structure of the composition is similar to that of a Church, with the three areas much more connected than they appear at a first sight. Up above there is the Saint, like in a gothic rosette; in the middle there are the friars and the whole Order, in a semicircle, like an apse; below there is the Saint's body and the group of the founders of the Order, like in a Cathedral's crypt where the martyrs' and the Saints' bodies represent the foundations and pillars of the Church as well as of the people's faith. Finally the light which shines in the upper part of the fresco reminds of the light that in cathedrals symbolizes the Divine Grace in which people hope.
Even if this idea were not planned by the friars of Assisi or Giotto, the effect would be the same. The characters concentrate on the sides of the three different levels, so that the figure of Saint Francis becomes central though in a low horizontal position. A sort of emptiness is made into the centre of the image, the most hollow part of the semicircle formed by the friars which has the Saint's figure projected forward in the most central and visible position, with the exception of one friar, who partly covers the Saint's legs, closing the space to the viewer. Perhaps this first image of the Saint's death was to be bound within the Order's context.
One final remark concerns the tones of the fresco, which become lighter as the viewers' looks move upward. From the warm brown color of the friars'cowls and of the ground to the alternation of white and black clothes of the friars ( those who are officiating and those who are not), to the cold and deep blue of the background sky and the shining white of the angels, the movement is suggestive of the passage from the earthly death to the heavenly life.

TWENTY-FIRST EPISODE
(Second of the Seventh Pair of the Second Series)

When Friar Augustin was a Minister in Terra di Lavoro, ill and close to the end of his life and having long lost the power of speech, he cried: " Wait for me, Father, I shall come with thee" and once dead, he followed the Saint.
Moreover, the Bishop of Assisi, on the mountain of San Michele Arcangelo, saw the Blessed Francis, who said to him: " Here I go to the Heavens".

M 14,6- 2c 218/220.

This fresco completes the last pair of episodes of the central series. It includes two different wonders which are described as contemporaneous to the Saint's death and ascension and repeat the model of the friar's vision of the Saint's soul. Differently from the other pairs- all showing distinct aspects of the Saint's life- this pair presents one moment (the vision of the Soul) in three different places, two of which are fused in one panel.
Giotto follows the literary sources which all agree about this episode being told in connection to the previous vision, including the reference to those who witnessed the Saint's ascension. Therefore Time is unitary and Space is differentiated into three scenes, and, needless to say, three is the number of perfection. The two spaces of this fresco appear divergent, which stresses their separate position, though the time of the action is supposed to be one. Time and Space are fundamental notions for the development of Western thought and art and Giotto for the first time in european painting emphasizes this relationship.
This is also the first fresco that does not portray the Saint's corporal body, although the ideal connection with the previous panel makes it less obvious to the viewer, who must have been considered positively to follow the planned circuit.
This pair means that the Saint's death was immediately acknowledged as a fundamental moment for the Church, since the Saint's legacy concerns the closer Order (including the early followers and all the other friars) and the farther Church Hierarchy. The viewer, then, first sees the panel devoted to the Order, which has a bigger space, and then the panel devoted to the Secular Clergy, in its two representatives, namely Friar Augustin and the Bishop of Assisi. The panels also make the Order and the Secular Clergy of Assisi witness to the Blessed status of the Saint that lived and died in that tow.
The role of the Order appears uppermost here, higher than the clerical hierarchy. In fact the Order was always respectful of the authorities, which suggests that the intention of this panel was mainly to create cohesion within the Order rather than address the people external to it. Alternatively the Bishop's role as a witness would have been greater.
The figure of the Bishop calls to mind other episodes of the cycle: it was the Bishop who first accepted Francis into the world of the clergy, even though in an informal way, at the moment of the Renunciation to the father's riches. And his position here recalls that of the sixth episode not to mention the fact that in both panels the Bishop is portrayed in his paraments and in a rich bedroom to make him easy to recognize.
The two episodes showed in the panel differ considerably. The Bishop is alone in a room of which we only see a corner, part of the ceiling, and the outer part of a garret; the furnishing fabric and the Oriental carpet on the floor look very valuable but the position of the Bishop in a corner of a room whose dimensions are not explicit diminish his importance. On the contrary Friar Augustin's bed is surrounded by many brothers who show care and preoccupation till the moment of death, a sign of the community feeling that characterizes the Franciscan Order. The space is larger and the architecture is better defined. The room shows two inner and one outer side to the viewer, thus allowing a sense of largeness and depth Moreover the room looks more like a church than a monk's cell. Indeed this shape recalls the scene of the Saint's death.
From a technical point of view the architecture of this fresco is very interesting. The upper part of the architecture is accurate, featuring a number of marble statues on top of the pillars (supposedly four, though only three are visible) and two flights of stairs leading from the roofs of the two aisles to that of the central nave. The bell-tower in the background and the cross-vault add to the church-like appearance of the setting.
The vertical dimension is emphasized by the high thin pillars that let the scene be seen. The friars are all standing: there are four on each side of the bed and two in the middle closer to Friar Augustin. On each side two characters stand outside the architecture, thus creating a linking element between the spatiality of the scene and that of the real Basilica. This is very likely the first attempt at such an effect in the history of painting.
This is evident because the space of the cloister (or of the church) must be limited by a front wall as well as by the upper architecture that has been described. Even though the wall is missing to let the scene visible, all the characters should have been within the spatial limits of the two front pillars. This also strengthens the assumption that in the previous episode the viewers have been deliberately left out.
Let us consider another element that in previous frescos had been definetely neglected- the feet. Here, the friar on the right has feet that point to the edge of the fresco, and imaginatively step out of it, projecting the scene to the inner part of the Basilica, the pilgrims being on a lower plane.
The figure of Friar Augustin covers part of the narrow space between the two front pillars which is characterized by other geometrical features than the vertical lines: the horizontal bed, the inclination of Augustin's body and the movement of the friars' arms. In particular the friar on the left seems to address the viewer in a gesture of invitation to observe the scene, thus adding to the sense of depth of the panel.
The other scene is not as well projected towards the pilgrims, both because there is no frontal architectural reference and because the upper part of it seems to be located on a plane that lies behind the bell-tower of the first scene. Moreover this part of the scene is decoratively empty as compared to the complex architecture of the other setting, with its statues, arches, and rich decoration of which the lily on the pinnacle is the most striking element.
All this confirms the hypothesis that the plan of the cycle aimed at respecting the clerical hierarchies, but leaving them figuratively aside, with a marginal role in this prevalently " inner matter" that is the works of the Basilica of Assisi.

TWENTY-SECOND EPISODE
(First of the Third Series)

When the body of the Blessed Francis lay at the Porziuncola Master Geronimo, an acclaimed doctor and man of letters, removed the nails and with his own hands inspected the Saint's hands, feet and ribs.

LM 15,4.

The third series of the plan is devoted to the burial and canonization of the Saint. It may appear excessive to give such an importance to events that follow the death of the Saint, but at the time ceremonies and miracles were of great consequence. Moreover this part of the cycle wants to affirm the work and role of the Order after the Saint's death, because the whole community pursues the founder's aims and identifies itself with him. The miracle of the Stigmatas covers therefore the whole Order with a special sanctity.Obviously enough, the first fresco of the series testifies to the miracle of the Stigmatas.
The titulus is explanatory enough in this case. As for the literary sources, the episode is mentioned only in Legenda Maior and in the later Considerations on the Holy Stigmatas included in The Little Flowers. The most obvious remark here is the parallel between Master Geronimo and Saint Thomas, since both want to search the Stigmatas, which reinforces in fact the parallel between Saint Francis and Jesus Christ.
This is the first and greatest of the Saint's miracles, though it would be more correct to say that this is a miracle concerning the Saint. In any case, what is relevant here is that this is not merely a witness' eye, but rather a medical report. Master Geronimo is both a man of science and a man of faith - he is compared with an apostle- , but his role here is to give evidence for himself and everybody else. Indeed the exceptionality of this miracle made it the most discussed case of canonization, since it appeared as an excessive honor for a human being, though a Saint, to be so close to the Grace of God as to suffer the same wondrous sores as Jesus Christ. In some ways, considering the popular feel of the cult of Saints, the Clergy could even expect a sort of envy for this outstanding Saint.
The composition of this fresco is not singular reminding in particular that of the Nativity Scene of Greccio, because of a beam supporting a central Crucifix and two side panels, representing the Virgin with the Child on the left and Saint Michael on the right. The main difference is that these images are seen from a frontal viewpoint and not from behind like in the other composition.
We suppose that this is the beam that also supports the Iconostasis, which in this case is not a series of wooden panels, but a heavy cloth that has been here removed for the sake of the blessing of the corpse. The body of the Saint must lie outside it, since from the viewpoint of the liturgy there are even today precise minimal distances between a corpse and the altar. A dead body would desecrate the altar that keeps the Eucharist, i.e. Eternal Life. The scene of Greccio, on the contrary, was set beyond the Iconostasis, because it concerned the moment of Consecration.
The beam cuts the panel into two areas horizontally and the action takes place in the lower area. Like in the episodes of the Saint's death and of Friar Augustin's vision, the figure of the Saint catches the eye because of the horizontal position. All the other characters- here are men only, differently from the scene at Greccio- are standing, except for Master Gerolamo who is kneeling and indeed forms one shape with the body of the Saint, breaking its line in the middle of it.
Gerolamo's looks are obviously directed to the Saint's chest, which he searches with one hand while the other unfastens the cloth. Following his looks, the viewer's too are directed there. The isolation of this scene is highlighted by the apparent distraction of the other characters, who are all intent on carrying out the funeral service. This fresco presents a real crowd, with their typical attitudes, a series of different looks and postures that eventually do not make a significant difference or distinction.
There is, though, one character that stands out- the gentleman on the left, whose body bends smartly in the opposite direction to that of the rigid staffs held by the clergymen in front of him. His fluttering cloth seen from the back and the position of the feet drawn according to perspective laws suggest the supposition that this character was drawn later, or painted on a previous drawing about a hundred years later. This is also likely for the Archangel Michael's face, since traces of a previous drawing are visible.

TWENTY-THIRD EPISODE
(Second of the Third Series)

The crowds that had gathered to carry the sacred body adorned with celestial gems to the town of Assisi, holding dry branches and a large number of lit candles, show it to the Blessed Clare and the other Holy Virgins.

LM 15,5- 1c 116/117.

The literary sources for this episode are Vita Prima and Legenda Maior. Tommaso da Celano sets the scene inside a church, whereas Giotto locates it outside it. One reason may be that he associates the event of the funeral procession with the episode of the mourning of the Poor Clares. This is also the only fresco that portrays the Sisters of the second Franciscan Order. It was only rightful to do that at least once, all the more because the event was exceptional: the nuns only broke their enclosure on that momentuous occurrence. Tommaso da Celano underlines this factor.
The scene is situated in front of a Gothic church reminiscent of the Arnolfian architecture. An imaginary cross divides the fresco: the upper horizontal line joining the heads of the crowd with the architrave of the central door, the lower joining those of the side doors. The left corner is the vertical line that divides the scene into two: the mourning sisters (the word was used by Saint Clare herself) stand on the right, just coming out of the church, with bent heads and looks directed to the Saint's face; the crowd stands on the left.
There is here the now well-known play of looks between the nuns'eyes and the dead eyes of the Saint. Normally this device was used to indicate- especially to those who could not read- the subjects of the dialogue of the episode. But here there is no dialogue, the Saint is dead and his eyes are closed. A similar artifice had been employed in the episode of the Death of the Knight of Celano.
There is no deeper sense of death than this representation of sorrow. Within the general structure of the composition, a priviliged mute dialogue is constructed between Saint Clare and the dead eyes of Francis. She stoops towards him nearly embracing and shaking his body as if it was alive, but her gesture cannot but be without reply. The intense moment is heightened by the closeness of the faces and the specular profiles of the cowls, especially on the heads and necks. A triangle is formed that expresses the special relationship that existed between the two Saints.
At a distance the other nuns repeat Clare's inclination of the bodies and faces, with a particular emphasis on the looks. One of them is bent over the body and kisses the Holy Stigmatas, thus filling a compositive void between Clare and her nuns. In fact the bent profiles are connected to the rest of the standing group thanks to the folds of the drapery of another nun who is standing behind them.
The area properly concerning Saint Francis is characterized by the horizontal lines of the body made stiff by death and of the litter covered with a cloth hanging heavily on the front plane, thus making a compact bulky mass strike the eyes of the viewers.
The left part of the scene is filled with a crowd that presents more variety, though the general attitude is one of compunction. Their looks are mostly directed to the Saint, and the attention is drawn to the Saint's body by the presence of three characters that are bent towards his head. One of them is seen from the back and seems to be calling someone standing farther. An ermine on his shoulders indicates him as a Magistrate; other men of Justice are discernible among the crowd.
Giotto's intention was to portray the notables of the town leading the crowd. The friars here play a lesser role and are only noticeable thanks to the long candles that they hold. Their attitude is not desperate since from a Christian standpoint the Saint's death inaugurates hig Glory in the Heavens. The palms some of them hold symbolize that Glory.
The candles and the palms also have a compositive purpose. The former carry on the vertical orientation of the spires of the church. The latter fill in a void over the crowd: that space would have been excessively empty in comparison to the rich decoration of the building. There is also a big tree with a child climbing on it, a classic "topos" . This part of the fresco calls to mind Jesus Christ's thiumphal entrance of Jerusalem, with another parallel between the Saint and Jesus. The fresco represents the tribute of the town of Assisi to the Glory of the Saint.

TWENTY-FOURTH EPISODE
(Third of the Third Series)

When the Holy Father (Pope Gregory IX) personally visited the town of Assisi and having carefully examined the miracles and with the friars' witnesses, he canonized the Blessed Francis and registered him in the Saints' roll.

LM 15,7 - 1c 123/126- 3Cp71- AP 46/47.

This is the solemn canonization of Saint Francis that occurred on the 16th of July 1228. The very titulus emphasizes the importance of the friars' witnesses, which we have noted as a constant element of the frescos of the first and especially the second series.
The literary sources do not indulge on the description of the ceremony, except for the first, i.e. Vita Prima. Tommaso da Celano writes a whole section on behalf of the Pope. It seems that the canonization took on importance because of the historical context. Facts such as the uprising stirred by Frederic the Suevian that very year, the Pope's frequent journeys to Perugia for political reasons suggest that the Pope might have thought of the occasion to strengthen his power. The Franciscan Order was a firm support for the Church of the time.
The fresco does not refer to those events in any way, which is not difficult to understand: about seventyfive years had passed between those difficult times and the making of the cycle. Saint Bonaventura himself in his Legenda Maior deals with the canonization as an obvious matter.
The composition of the fresco is centred on a large elevated covered baldachin, which is empty. Its function is to separate the various groups of people attending the ceremony. The right corner (the farthest from the viewer) cuts the panel into two areas with an imaginary vertical line. The central line that represents the floor of the baldachin is drawn outside this on the same axis as the heads of the characters sitting beside the Pope, but the crowd of notables at the back estranges from this effect and expands with no reference to the compositive structure.
The crowds end up being cut off the structure, almost as if the painter wanted to include more characters than he possibly could, with the result that the structural function of the baldachin gets lost. The overall impression is that the geometrical plan of the fresco was not respected. This panel might be the first to be abandoned by Giotto and continued by some other painter unable to understand the indications of the magister.
Below, between the two staffs that support the baldachin, stand the friars behind an altar. The Pope, a Cardinal, a Bishop and a friar stand opposite; in front of them in a lower position there is a crowd of women with several children whereas behind them there is a crowd of notables- women were always segregated in official rites.
The positioning must have been drawn from Tommaso da Celano's text that mentions a Cardinal, a Bishop and an Abbot standing beside the Pope in a hierarchical order. However, the impression that one gets from this composition is one of "horror vacui" which never occurs elsewhere in the cycle.

TWENTY-FIFTH EPISODE
(Fourth of the Third Series)

Since Pope Gregory rather doubted the Stigmatas of the Chest, the Blessed Francis appeared in a dream and said to Him : "Give me an empty phial" and once he had it, it was visibly filled with the blood of his chest.

LM 1M, 2.

The obvious function of this fresco is to close the series devoted to the death and canonization of the Saint by an indisputable wondrous fact. Once the truthfulness of the Stigmatas is acclaimed by the Pope himself, the eminence of the Saint and the rightfulness of the honors tributed to him are ratified.
In addition the exceptionality of the miracle, and consequently the special status of the Saint also serve to justify the spreading iconography of the Saint. The earlier panels were dominated by the indissoluble presence of the friars: his image was that of the founder of the Franciscan Order. At this stage he becomes a reference point for the Order and his power as a Saint becomes the subject-matter of the cycle.
The following three frescos show the miracles that he makes after his death and from this standpoint we can say that this twenty-fifth panel links the three preceding frescos with the three that follow. Legenda Maior, the only literary source reporting the episode, also gives it a connecting function placing it soon after the magnification of the miracle of the Stigmatas and before the list of the following miracles.
By quoting this legend Saint Bonaventura shows his preoccupation to prove the conformity between the Order and the Church Hierarchy. However the way the Pope becomes convinced thanks to celestial intervention seems to underline the idea that the Franciscan Order takes its origin in the Divine Will rather than in human will.
The scene is located in a well-defined space, with regular and precise lines, including geometrical proportions. The coffered ceiling is made of squares whose dimensions create a width-depth ratio of 8:2. Spatiality here priviliges height, which is about twice an average man's, if we make a rough estimate referring to the Saint's height.
The space does not appear deep enough for the scene (the panel of the Approval of the Rule, for instance, was much more verisimilar in its proportions). Yet almost all historians of art agree that at least the plan of the fresco is to be attributed to Giotto. In fact the depth compression could be a deliberate artifice to push the image towards the viewers, adding to the visual impact of the fresco.
Besides this, there are a few more structural features to be examined: first of all, the whole appears to be constructed on two basic lines- one is horizontal, the other is vertical. The former is marked by the edge of the bed and the heads of the characters couched on the floor; the latter is indicated by the Saint and by the second character from the right. Fairly enough, this line is central. A number of parallels to the two main lines develop within the picture, among which the one created by the tonal contrast of blue and pink of the bed.
The bed where the Pope is sleeping is the focus of the scene though decentred on the right of the fresco. It is located on a higher level than the other characters except for the Saint who is central. However the heart of the fresco is the communication between Francis and the Pope, which is symbolized by the proximity of the hands. They nearly touch on a diagonal line, thus leaving the Pope's right arm on the right and a certain emptiness on the left of the Saint.
The suspended baldachin is probably an artifice to focus the attention on the main scene. It is, though, a beautiful and brave solution: it is an aerial structure supported by taut ropes, and the perspective lets both sides of the cloth visible. This is a new technique that Giotto adopts here for the first time.
Finally, the patterns of the decoration of the floor and the ceiling as well as the cloths covering the walls and of the bed are all similar which both reduces the compositive void by narrowing the space and creates a homogeneous setting.

TWENTY-SIXTH EPISODE
(Fifth of the Third Series)

The Blessed Francis, being invoked by Giovanni da Ylerda, for whom the doctors had given up all hope restored him to health by touching and melting his wounds.

LM 1M,5- 3c 11/13.

This is the first of the three miracles- that close the cycle of Assisi- the purpose of which is to give evidence of the power of the Saint after his corporal death. In fact three miracles are wanted in a process of canonization.
This episode is reported only in Legenda Maior: a knight, after being wounded mortally invokes the Saint and cured by his prodigious faculties. The miracle is ascribed to the power of the Holy Stigmatas, since it is the touch of the Saint's sore hands that heals the Catalan knight.
The spatiality of this fresco is unitary and rather peculiar within the cycle. This is one of the reasons why historians attribute it to a different magister. Space is not allocated according to narration. Giotto placed each element of narration in a separate area, constructing space differently for each narrative section. Here, the story has two moments (the physician, the wife and a relative on one side and the Saint with two angels and the knight on the other), but the scene is tripartite.
The room is symmetrically cut by two thin columns, so that there forms a central section on a square basis, and two side sections, as deep as the central but less wide. Moreover the central area appears on a higher level, with two windows on top. This difference is highlighted by the curtains of the bed and two parapets that fill in the void of the empty lateral sections.
The two columns cut the scene irrespective of what is behind, namely the Saint. Thus the two delicate angels end up being the prominent figures of the picture, though absent in the literary source. On the left the two men are also partially hidden by the refined drapery of the curtains.
The stylistic difference in drawing the figures, which appear more delicate, and the lesser narrative intuition of this second magister, suggest that he must have not appreciated neither the significance of Giotto's accurate sense of spatiality nor the value of his drawing style as his imposing figures seem to make a statement of their historical importance out of their mass.
Notwithstanding these considerations, it still appears that this fresco is an organic part of the cycle, whose plan goes back to Giotto even if the structure or the making of some parts of it belong to different minds and hands. Here the plan wanted the exhaltation of the power of the Stigmatas, an eternal source of Grace, and the fresco carries it out.

TWENTY-SEVENTH EPISODE
(Sixfth of the Third Series)

The Blessed Francis raised this woman from the dead and after she confessed at the presence of some clergy and other people a sin she had not confessed before , she died again and rested in the peace of God and the devil fled in confusion.

LM 2M, 1 - 3C 40.

The episode is told in Trattato dei Miracoli by Tommaso da Celano and in Legenda Maior with no substantial differences. It is the first of a series of miracles where the Saint intercedes with God and raises people from the dead. The confessor of the fresco is fairly enough a Franciscan friar, a detail that is not reported in the sources, although it only seems obvious for a devotee of Saint Francis.
Another difference from the sources is the addition of the representation of the dispute between an Angel and a Devil of the dead woman's soul. It symbolizes the fate of man after death- either Heaven or Hell. This image belongs to the popular imagination and therefore was included in the panel with no literary reference.
The structure of the composition is easy and not very accurate: a pillar cuts the image into two parts that are neither equal nor symmetrical. A certain sense of symmetry is appreciable only as far as the two groups of people are concerned that stand by the woman's bed, the fleeing devil being on the left of the pillar and the driving angel on its right.
Although this fresco is dominated by a narrative principle and a popular feel, which suggest that the autor be the same as of the previous panel, it still fully adheres to the propositions of the whole cycle. Like for the previous panel, our remarks concerning the author of the work do not imply a judgment on the plan of the cycle.

TWENTY-EIGHTH EPISODE
(Seventh of the Third Series)

The Blessed Francis freed this man who had been accused of heresy and, by the Pope's decree, sent under an episcopate to the Bishop of Tivoli. This occurred on Saint Francis's Day on the Eve of which the man had fasted according to Church observance.

LM 5M,4 - 3c 93.

The literary sources for this episode are Tommaso da Celano's and Saint Bonaventura's. The earlier source is richer in details than the later. Legenda Maior eludes all the contextual elements that Tommaso da Celano narrates that could throw an embarassing light over the Church. Although the latter himself shows an initially benevolent Bishop, he shows an innocent ill-treated in prison. Saint Bonaventura on the contrary does away with such incidents as the prisoner's attempt to flee from custody and the political implications of the Bishop of Tivoli, whose relationship with the notables of the town were problematical. Most significantly he omits the innocence from the accusation of heresy. In fact he implicitly suggests the contrary as he propounds that the man had gone back to his true faith during the period of custody. Finally he omits the Bishop's emotional reaction to the news of the prisoner's freedom.
The scene represented in the fresco is commom to both sources: the guards show the prisoner with the broken blocks and chains to the Bishop that kneels down thanking the Lord while his retinue look in wonder. The composition roughly reminds of the Renounciation to the Father's Goods, but its structure is less precise since the action of the two characters is not well connected: the prisoner is showing the chains while the Bishop is already kneeling in prayer.
Spatiality is subdivided thanks to the presence of two buildings, the typology of which is highly imaginative, although the one on the left recalls the architecture of Pisa. Both present a massive body and a central tower-like part that goes into a spin towards the sky. The one on the right, presumably the prison, has a spiral column that elevates the building while its gravity is preserved. The building on the left is presumably the Bishop's palace, but there is no evidence to it.
The towers address the viewers' looks to the sky where Saint Francis intercedes with God, or, like the sources say, where he returns after personally freeing the prisoner. The aim of this fresco, like the two preceding ones is to provide a pattern for the ex-voto reverence, which has always been a relevant part of a Saint' s devotion. The fact that the episode occurs on Saint Francis's Day is not accidenrtal.
Finally a remark about the figures: they are more elegant than Giotto's and add to the hypothesis that the three last frescos of the cycle belong to a different hand.

APPENDIX

I include here the conclusions of a short essay of mine on Dante and the figurative arts entitled La Pittura di Dante and a number of considerations on Giotto's fame. I recommend the reading of the whole essay for a full account of the subject whereas for the sake of the present work the conclusions suffice to clarify the thesis propounded here.
The english text of Dante Alighieri is the classic translation by Wadsworth Longfellow.

DANTE AND GIOTTO

Dante's view of art is definitively clarified apertis verbis in the last cantos of Paradiso, where the art of painting appears to be the most apt means to express what is Beautiful and Good. Dante declares himself incapable of describing things and thoughts that are too strong for the human mind (a tint too glaring) so as to overcome his creative ability (my fantasy).

From that one which I noted of most beauty
Beheld I issue forth a fire so happy
That none it left there of a greater brightness.

And around Beatrice three several times
It whirled itself with so divine a song,
My fantasy repeats it not to me;

Therefore the pen skips, and I write it not,
Since our imagination for such folds,
Much more our speech, is a tint too glaring.
(Par. XXIV, 19-27)

He recurs to parallels with painting and in particular he hints to the question of the shading of folds in a cloth. This was a difficult problem to which Giotto gradually found different solutions. As his mastery of the art progressed the solutions became more skillful. Giotto was aware of problems of tridimensionality and adjusted elements in space and modified techniques accordingly. When the color was too glaring (troppo vivo), i.e. too vivid, he lightened it and in Padua he even modified its tone, which usually becomes colder. The shade was shifted to blue tones that did not alter the original color, but apparently made it less vivid. The cycle of Padua must have been known by Dante when he composed these lines.
We want to consider the issue of the influence of Dante's work on the cycle of Padua or alternatively, the evolution of Dante's idea of painting after the acquaintance with the Giottesque renovation. The feeling of humanity of Inferno reveals through the paintings of Padua, yet the publication of the first seven cantos of Inferno before the exile years is very unlikely, while it is certain that the two first books were widely known from 1312 on, when the Scrovegni Chapel had come to completion. On the other hand Dante must have had a certain knowledge of the cycle of Assisi and it is more likely that it was him who drew inspiration from the other's work.
If we read the history of art, we see that cycles of painting tend to replace cycles of sculpture. The art of Giotto contributed to this phenomenon and we only have to observe that Dante himself drew inspiration from the art of sculpture for his Purgatorio only to come to different conclusions in the last Book of the Comedy. As we have seen, he refers to the art of painting as the one possessing the most communicative qualities, especially in the realm of feelings.
The beauty of painting is compared with that of Nature for its power on Man and it cannot be diminished but in Heaven:

My mind enamoured, wich is dallying
At all times with my Lady, to bring back
To her mine eyes was more than ever ardent.

And if Art or Nature has made bait
To catch the eyes and si posses the mind,
In human flesh or in its portraiture.

All joined together would appear as nought
To the divine delight which shone upon me
When to her smiling face I turned me round.
(Par. XXVII, 88-96)

To paint, to make poetry and follow Beauty is the aim of Art:

From the first day that I beheld her face
In this life, to the moment of this look,
The sequence of my song has ne'er been severed,

But now perforce this sequence must desist
From following her beauty with my verse,
As every artist at his uttermost.
(Par. XXX, 28-33)

I do not believe that Dante had such a convinced and clear idea of art before writing the Comedy nor that the above lines could have been composed at the time of Vita Nova. They are the result of a years' long process that may have been accelerated and perfected by the contemplation of Giotto's work. Another factor was the poet's disappointment and disillusionment in life with the consequent need of a hope in a future life. These elements find a shape in the images of the last Book and contribute to the poet's new sensibility for art, which eventually becomes his only life-reason on earth. The after-life was the other higher objective.
Saint Thomas's theory of cognition propounds the impression of reality on the human mind. This theory is compared- in the poetic interpretation of Dolce Stil Novo- with the trasmigration of sprites from the person generating Love, the loved one, to the lover's soul, where they eventually find shelter. The realm of Rationality is governed by the faculties of the Intellect that thus learn to comprehend the world. The realm of Poetry is governed by other faculties of the human mind, which are trained by the "courtly" education- in fact we should speak of a whole way of life, with a style of its own, rather than of proper education. This all-encompassing view of the human being together with the idea of progress that Dante theorizes in the lines about Giotto's superiority are the germs of the yet-to-be-born Humanism.
The last cantos of Paradiso tend to lose the excessively rational approach and are diffused with a more generic mystical feeling which is perfectly in tune with the subject-matter of the poetry. In stead of Saint Thomas's Summa Teologica, the reference text seems to be Itinerarium mentis in Deum by Saint Bonaventura. The poet appears to be preoccupied with poetry and art as the only means to express such spiritual need. This ideas cannot originate from conscious choices and seem the result of a spontaneous process ignited by the very poetical activity.
The real novelty and progress of the artistic conception that Dante develops throughout the Comedy consists in going beyond the idea of painting as a matter of technique and manual skill. The poet amd the painter have something in common, as his own early education to drawing shows. Both arts are dignified by this conception in a way unknown for centuries.
The new global notion of life as the education of the mind and spirit is a sort of itinerarium animi towards perfection. While theoretically the only perfection lies in God, in fact man can strive for it through the love that the contemplation of Beauty generates. In the Comedy Dante performs his personal itinerarium mentis in Deum led by Beatrice. In the last Book, after purifying himself from his sins, and realizing he is still attached to earthly things, he decides to sing Beauty declaring this as the final aim and objective of every artist.
In the course of writing his masterpiece, the poet acquired the capability of expressing himself spontaneuosly and straightforwardly. He exploits the possibilities of the language that he prodigiously masters and translates feelings directly into poetry thus paving the way for the artists of the younger generations as well as even surpassing the ancient models.
Likewise it was for Giotto and the art of painting. This indicates that new ways of art were coming into being. Both artists changed themselves and their art as they experimented and refined their expressive ways. It was not just a natural evolution of the artist due to personal inner growth, it was a prolonged research into style grounded on conscious and deliberate autocorrection. This process is so evident that its tracks can be followed, as they were, by historians and later artists.
When we speak of modernity or of revolution we mean this act of conceiving of the work before doing it. Even though Dante did not speculate over the matter, I believe that his search for making sense in life through love first and truth and salvation later runs parallel to the search for an objective in art, which is in fact stated in the lines quoted above. As for Giotto there is no written text to prove the thesis, but his works appear fair evidence to me.
A series of questions follows here that will remain unanswered: if the great fame of these artists in their own days was due to the highest quality of their works, was this quality understood thoroughly? Was it for both? Did the contemporaries easily perceive the relationship between the two personalities and their modes of working like we do? And finally how could those people feel that cultural unity and excite that we associate to the Italian artists of those times?
The heart of the matter concerns the fullness of the success of these two artists. Dante wrote works that tuned in with the medioeval mind, especially as far as aims and structure were concerned: this helped his immediate fame. But was the new important role of the artist understood and/or accepted?
Giotto's technical innovations were obviously accepted with enthusiasm since they improved the ways of representation of painting, but didn't his humanizing the sacred yeld fierce reaction against him? Some historians believe so, but this might have been only the appearance.
Sociological and political observations should be taken into account for a balanced answer to the last question. The reactions to the excessive realism of Giotto's art were embodied in cultural refinements that restablished the traditional divide between the educated and the unlearned. But, differently from previous centuries this "culture" belonged to those who could manage and articulate it and not to those who simply covered offices and had charges, namely the clergy. Significantly Petrarca, the other great poet of the time and a different personality to Dante, never compares the expressive capacity of poetry to that of painting despite the high consideration of both. It would also be of interest to examine the relationship between Petrarca and Simone Martini, but these issues are outside the scope of this work.

GIOTTO' S FAME

All we have said must be related to the widespread opinion of Giotto's art of painting as a revolution in the history of art and of visual communication. But what was the reaction of his contemporaries? Beyond the positive appreciation, did they see him as an innovator or simply as a superior, maybe far superior magister?.
A posteriori evaluation is easily supported by undisputable arguments but the contemporary eye is not provided with the interpretative key that is very often correct, but none the less added. The reading of history itself implies an ideological frame of mind.
The notion of revolution was unknown at the time and all appreciative remarks ignore the newness of the manner and only concern the quality of the works. Let us consider the words that Franco Sacchetti has Taddeo Gaddi utter:
" & among other issues one Orcagna, magister of the noble oratory of Nostra Donna d'Orto San Michele, raised this: who was the major master of painting beside Giotto? Some replied Cimabue, others Stefano, others Bernardo, and some said Buffalmacco, amd others suggested one or the other. Taddeo Gaddi, who was among the companions, said: 'Certainly they were skilled painters who painted according to form, which is impossible for the human nature, but this art has been disappearing&".
This quotation shows that the superiority of Giotto's art was acknowledged also by those who in different ways reacted to its excessive materialism, like Orcagna. Incidentally it should be noted that Sacchetti gives information about Orcagna but does it through Taddeo Gaddi, who had worked with Giotto, as if his fame did not need any notes.
I do not really know how far we can trust a dialogue reported later than the year 1390 that should have occurred about 40 years earlier. It was also objected in the proem to Trecentonovelle and it is cetain that Cennini ignored the position held by Sacchetti. Before that, Benvenuto da Imola, an annotator of Dante's Comedy comments the two famous terzinas about the fact that fame lives on until a new figure obscures the previous:

O thou vain glory of the human powers,
How little green upon thy summit lingers,
If't be not followed by an age of grossness!

In painting Cimabue thoght that he
Should hold the field, now Giotto has the cry,
So that other's fame is growing dim.
(Purg. , XI 91-96)

with these words :"Giottus adhuc tenet campum, quia nondum venit alius eo subtilor, cum tamen fecerit aliquando magnos errores in picturis suis, ut audivi a magnis ingeniis".

On consideration of the admitted incompetence of the author of this statement, who recurs to other experts' opinion, I believe that what really matters here is the proposition to prove Dante's thoughts rather than to find faults in Giotto's work. Fairly enough, nobody would argue for Giotto's perfection and therefore it only seems obvious that art made progress even soon after Giotto's own achievement. Any consideration on this line of thought does not represent an anti-Giottesque statement.
Such an anti-materialistic poet as Petrarca praises Giotto in his testament of 1370, where he mentions a Virgin cuius pulchritudinem ignorantes non intelligunt, magistri autem artis stupent. No wonder in the fact that the poet was more preoccupied with beauty than with any possible faults (From this standpoint the spiritualist currents of art that meet in the school of Simone Martini in Siena were capable of much better paintings as far as realism and perspective are concerned. But the fact that he mentions unlearned people not wondering means that his technical and expressive innovations had become accepted.
The quotation echoes Quintiliano's Docti rationem artes intelligunt, indocti voluptatem, and reminds us of Petrarca's reading of Institutiones Oratoriae, which he had discovered in one of the earliest conscious acts of Humanism. Despite Petrarca's reference to ignorant people in a technical sense where Quintiliano's assumption was more general, both imply a feeling of superiority towards them. The cultural superiority of the mind for Quintiliano and of the spirit for Petrarca over the instinctual part of man adjusted the excessive realism of the two beginners of modern art of the thirteenth century, namely Dante and Giotto.
Summing up, we have seen that Dante had a rather lucid idea about the painter's importance, which he relates to the general renewal of the arts of which he considered himself an actor. Dante's fame assumed huge proportions during their lifetime.
We believe that the negative reaction to Giotto's innovation was due to the contemporary and immediately following generation's ignorance of any theory about perspective, which is only obvious since the latter was a consequence and not a cause of the Giottesque revolution. Therefore the contemporaries could only intuitively grasp his greatness, which was as a matter of fact universally acknowledged in all sources despite a lack of analysis and definition. Indeed is not this capability of communicating without the understanding of the ways a feature of

art ?

UMBERTO MARIA MILIZIA.

STRUTTURA
DI UNA
LEGGENDA

LA VITA DI SAN FRANCESCO DIPINTA DA GIOTTO AD ASSISI.

Copyright.
Umberto Maria Milizia

Translated into English from Italian
by
Angela Andolfi

FONTI LETTERARIE.

1) Lettera Enciclica di frate Elia a tutte le provincie dell'ordine, sulla morte di San Francesco, inviata subito dopo la morte del santo il 3 ottobre 1226 = LEE;.
2) Vita Prima di Tommaso da Celano, 1228/29 = 1c;.
3) Vita Seconda di Tommaso da Celano, 1246/47 = 2c;.
4) Trattato dei Miracoli di san Francesco di Tommaso da Celano, 1252/53 = 3c;.
6) Leggenda Maggiore di san Bonaventura da Bagnoregio, 1263 = LM;.
7) Leggenda dell'anonimo perugino, tra il 1266 e il 1279 = AP;.
8) Leggenda dei tre compagni, posteriore alla Leggenda dell'Anonimo Perugino = 3Cp;.
9) Leggenda Perugina, fine XIII inizio XIV secolo = LP;.
10) Specchio di perfezione dello stato di frate minore, circa 1318 = SP;.
11) I fioretti di san Francesco, composti probabilmente da Ugolino da Montegiorgio, circa 1327/1340 = Fior;.
12) Delle sacre istimate di santo Francesco e delle loro considerazioni, in appendice ai Fioretti = Cons.

A METHODOLOGICAL INTRODUCTION

A Proposal for the Reading of the Cycle of Assisi

The frescos of Assisi are apparently connected by a guiding thread. They make up a whole like the threads of a cloth whose pattern has been deviced beforehand. The idea underlying this study is that the work was conceived of as a whole by the distinct communities of the friars of the Franciscan Order and the painters that worked with Giotto. Since each individual fresco is logically connected to the rest of the cycle the reading of each piece will be dependent on the logic of the whole plan. If we give the frescos a name and an order we will get an index of the story we are telling.
For the sake of a new reading of the cycle I will suggest to see it as the expression of the will of two distinct communities, that of the friars and that of the painters. Because I feel strongly that the whole work of art was planned before its realization I will argue against any speculation about chronology. The fact of working on one part of the whole project before another could be accidental and caused by restoration works in an area of the church or by financial circumstances, such as lack of oblations. Nowadays we would speak of work done on a time and material basis).
An obvious clue to the unity of the work is the painted architecture above the frescos that also contributes to the unity on the architecture of the basilica. The long frame painted in a perspective that holds the cycle together calls the attention to the existence of one previous original plan. To examine the frescos according to a chronological order would simply divert them from the original plan, i.e. to tell a story.
We do not want to say that this is the only possible way to observe the frescos. Those who happen to look at them as they are placed on the walls of the Church without specific knowledge of the Art of the 14th century will still appreciate their historic value. Starting with the earliest will help understanding Giotto's art of painting and his personality, as well as the evolution of the Art of the 14th century. Yet it will not illuminate our comprehension of Franciscanism or of the project of the Basilica of Assisi.
To start with let us consider the way the frescos are placed in relation to the entrance of the Basilica. They are a continuous line from left to right that starts on the right wall and includes the entrance. Those who have entered the basilica -whether pilgrims or visitors it does not make any difference- had to search for the way of viewing the cycle. The frescos would speak of the Order and Franciscanism, as the story of its Founder's life was being displayed before their eyes. The question was not one of crossing the basilica to get to the first fresco. Order and rationality were to be the criteria for those who planned, those who worked on and those who viewed the frescos. The idea was simple: just like linear writing, onwards from left to right.
For a full understanding of the cycle we will look at the author and the client of the work. So far research has indulged on the individuation of what was original and what was not, i.e. what was Giotto's work and what was done by his assistants. In fact bearing in mind that in those times the magister was the main actor of a whole corporative organization, it would be rather appropriate to argue that the author of the cycle was a group of painters led by a certain Giotto.
Let us consider the distribution of the work itself: some people would see to the preparation of paint, others would lay it out, some others would render the plaster while a sort of stage was being made for the magister or some other experienced assistant to start the painting on those parts of the wall which were ready & that is what we call team work! Indeed a feature of team work is that everything is planned well in advance. In this case, for example, the structure of the image must have been conceived of with a view to allow an easy but invisible joint of the colored areas, which also had to respect the idea of the distribution of the parts that was to be expressed.
The argument here is that a large mural fresco cannot but be a joint work where it is up to the magister, Giotto for these circumstances, to set the mode and the degree of the assistance. If that is the case, to make an effort to establish what was done by Giotto and what was not is pointless. In other words, the object of our research here is one work of art, created by Giotto and his collaborators (who were not merely assistants), and not a series of individual pieces to be appreciated in relation to the artistic personality of the author.
As for the client of this collective work of art, this must have been collective as well: the Franciscan Order, in point of fact. The matter must have been discussed in a larger context than Assisi, and it would be incorrect to speak of dealings between the General Minister of the Order and some assistant-friars and Giotto.
After these preliminary statements, the most relevant issue remains to be discussed : who conceived of the work? In the hope to find an answer to this question we will examine each individual fresco in order to reveal the apparent and hidden meanings and will compare them with their literary sources.
I believe that the sequence of the frescos depends on the theme of the story that was to be told, i.e. the history of Franciscanism. Therefore comparing these stories with the literary examples of the same stories -whether they be earlier or contemporary to the realization of the frescos- turns up to be a critical issue. The fact that the frescos become themselves sources for other literature on the subject is not accidental in my view. Another step will be to analyze the structure of the plan, as one would do to understand the grammar of a sentence. The ideas expressed through that grammar will lead us to the people who felt the urgence of planning the work.
As long as we do not have a certain answer, the argument is the following: the idea of the subject is likely to have originated in the Franciscan community, with the General Minister as their spokesman, and the form and the structure of the frescos is likely to have been fruit of the art of the "group" of painters led by Giotto. The meeting of the minds of the two communities produced the cycle. As for the relevance of the figure of Giotto, the fact that researchers have proved occasional absence of the magister from the worksite supports the argument in favor of the collaborative character of the work, where the ultimate control of the magister, not his constant presence, is fundamental.
In a preliminary stage of interpretation it does not really matter to ascertain which parts of this or that fresco was painted by Giotto himself or by any of his assistants, despite the fact that recurrence of traits does help identification. Here it seems more relevant to investigate the relationship between the magister and the community of friars, which helps appreciating the spiritual and cultural charge they passed on to the artist. This element cannot be disregarded: the Order was not any common client. We ought to read the frescos in relation to the various sources which are available, including biographies. We should learn to appreciate the life of Giotto- the name here also includes the people involved in the project- as a process of his art as well as of his understanding of the figure of Francis. Giotto's knowledge of the life of the Saint has erroneously been taken for granted by most Art Historians.
Historians also frequently write that Giotto's art is "bourgeois". This interpretation conceals the religious character that affects the work, which in fact becomes apparent as the work and the study progress. I argue that we get to know Giotto's spiritual interest through the realization of the work itself. And then we can look better at the frescos which are in their turn illuminated by this new light. The importance of what is being said is not absolute. It is specially relevant to the emphasis that should be given in research on the subject of the collective, or better collegiate character of this particular work of art. The same observation is however appliable to other contemporary works, as this was common in the Middle Ages. Critical studies often exalt Giotto's personality and the fact that Giotto was the first modern artist, which is to a certain extent true. However Giotto was also the last great artist of the Middle ages and it would not be correct to do away with the conservative character of his art with respect to the evolution of the style and the role of religion in the arts. This is mirrored in the complexity the history of art and accounts for the involutions and revivals of the art of the following century.
Appreciating the past in relation to the present is indeed a common mistake. There it is, then, Giotto - the forerunner of a Florentine middle-class spirit that he could never get to experience, the spirit that gave rise to new ideas in the world of the arts and the economy. Even if we accept the assumption that Giotto was a "forerunner" nevertheless we must take into account that there were other artists who considered Giotto's experiments too advanced and unsuited to express an inner spirituality. It is an erroneous assumption that Giotto's art was accepted by the artists of his time. In the 14th century, during and after the Black Death in Florence the prevailing culture was closer to the people and though this did not necessarily mean a return to the past, we cannot call this the age of "the bourgeois". (In effect the conception of spatiality of the cycle of The Life of Christ in Padova was very distant from that of the previous generation of painters, which goes to support the view of an "innovative" Giotto. On the other hand the favorite argument of those who underline that Giotto stands out of his time is the quality of his works, and not merely the innovation of technique and composition).
-With reference to the evaluation of artistic quality I suggest a wider angle for the reserch, that takes into account the literary, musical, and artistic ferment that characterizes the Italy of the late 13th and early14th century. There was a tension towards quality that allowed the acceptance of the new forms of art which would not have been possible had the quality been lower.-.
Besides illuminating some aspects of the art of Giotto, this brief study wants to contribute to the research on the Culture of the 14th century and Franciscanism in particular, the latter being a key element of the European thought and spirituality of the time. The language of this work will not always be correct from the point of view of Art Criticism. This is to make the gist of the argument more clear- in jocund words we could say that there is nothing more obscure, undefinable and undefining, than the language of Art Criticism.
While other studies may follow that will ascertain the chronology and the attribution of the frescos, the present work will focus on the study and reading of the structure of the images. I also believe that it can reveal the evolution of the compositive art of the painters- since it is impossible to argue that Giotto and his collaborators had one way of painting that was not affected by change.
Establishing dates is meaningful for didactic purposes when we want to be accurate as we deal with issues such as influence and originality with respect to the past. To what extent, for instance, can we say that Giotto was a forerunner of Humanism and that he started a new age in the figurative arts that will yeld the phenomenon we call Humanism?.
Giotto was one of the major artists in the history of Italian Art, and his art was very distinctive for sure. His personality was powerful and his contribution to the creation of a new figurative language was great. He could profit from the experience of past generations for the sake of a new vision. It is possible that the evolution of painting was to happen anyway, but I doubt it would have been under that great impulse without Giotto's presence.
With reference to what has been said before about the relevance of establishing the originality of Giotto's frescos, the statement should be read in the context of the interpretation of the cycle of Assisi. On the contrary for what concerns the study of the evolution of the Italian Arts, the inquire about originality is fundamental for the evaluation of the development of visual communication and aesthetics. Needless to say, from whatever viewpoint the study be done, the frescos where Giotto himself intervenes are always aesthetically superior and more pleasant to look at.
One last introducing remark about the present work concerns the name I will use to refer to the author of the cycle of Assisi. Despite what has been said about the collective nature of the work the fact of the matter is that Giotto was the man who urged and guided the group. He was the magister and let me say, the manager in the hierarchy of the project, which for the Middle Ages was of no little value.

The Disposition of the Frescos

Before we examine the criteria of arrangement of the frescos it is worth considering two facts. The first is that the choice of arranging the sequence according to the chronology of the Saint's life is not obvious. It would be interesting to confirm it was the will of the Order. Any decision about it must have followed the internal life of the Order. The second is that any considerable work of art of that age could be read at more than one level, each bringing its input of meaning. These levels concerned the subject, the order, and the number of the differents parts that composed the work. We will try to face interpretation taking into account as many factors as possible.
To start with, we can observe that the culture of the time was not a historicist one. No scholar of the time takes particular pain for establishing exact chronologies, not even Dante. In the Late Middle Ages time is an obvious datum, with no special value of its own, unless the topic be very practical or very speculative. The great works of the age follow other criteria, such as symbols or numbers. These elements, together with the subject of the work make up a whole, as the case is with Dante's Divina Commedia.
Therefore we can argue that Giotto's cycle of Assisi, because of its cultural relevance, must have followed other criteria than the mere chronology of the Saint's life. Most probably theological and rhetorical consideration guided the plan of the frescos, as regards the number, the disposition and the symbolic value that was to be given to the whole and to its parts. Support for this argument can also be found in the main literary source for Giotto's work, i.e. Saint Bonaventura's Legenda Maior.
In the light of what has been said we want to articulate the possibility to subdivide the cycle into groups of frescos and see the logic of it. The first idea that comes to the mind is that the total number of 28 frescos could be subdivided into four groups of seven or seven groups of four- both numbers being charged with symbolic and allegorical value. This hypothesis cannot be proved . A third will be considered: the cycle of Assisi can be subdivided into three distinctive groups: the first and the last of seven pictures each, and the central of fourteen, that is seven pairs. The combination of three and seven should not puzzle: it was common in the organization of contemporary texts, three being the figure for pefection (the Trinity) and seven being the figure for the completed work (the Seven Days of Creation). The fact that the central group is made up of two pairs can be explained by the consideration that that phase was the most important in the Saint's life, i. e. when he acted with and for the Order, which by then had become a reality of great relevance.
The first seven episodes represent the iter of Saint Francis's conversion until the approval of the Rule. The last seven represent the exequies and the canonization of the Saint, including the post mortem miracles necessary for the process of canonization . The central group, the most important one, shows the development of the Order during the life of the Saint. As a matter of fact the idea of the first and the last group is pretty intuitive whereas to establish links between the central seven pairs of frescos which are oredered by theme and not chronology was a cogitative matter.
In short, in the first group the Saint is not in the Order yet, in the second he is with the Order, in the third it is the Order that continues the work of the Saint. The protagonists of the groups are in the numbers of 1,2,1, (Saint Francis, Saint Francis and the Order, the Order): when the protagonists are two the pictures are double.
The Divine Comedy has a similar precision in its structure. I like referring to Dante's work because it gave birth to the Italian literary language as well as Giotto's painting gave birth to the Italian language of painting. What is more, both the Italian vernacular of the Comedy and the frescos were made to be read by the people. And in those times the images in Churches were the only source of education for the people.
With reference to the scheme that we suggested above, we can sum up as follows:.
- the first episode is a prophecy of the future vocation;.
-the second is the inner conversion, the choice, with the gift of the cloak, as a symbol for a new path;.
- the third, the dream of the palace, shows the road to perfection;.
-the fourth is the open exhortation to restore the Church expressed through the image of Saint Damian praying Christ Crucified;.
-the fifth is the renunciation to the father's possessions, the first act of a new life and the Bishop's acceptance of Francis among the clergy;.
-the sixth is the manifestation of the Divine Will to the Pope in the dream of the falling of the Basilica Lateranense.
-the seventh is the confirmation of the first rule of the Order which closes this first part of the cycle.
All this is aimed at showing that the birth of the Franciscan Order was part of a Divine Plan to restore the Church that arises from the choice of one man, Saint Francis, and produces the creation of an early community thanks to a process of conversion that is described in the various episodes.
The following fourteen frescos are more difficult to read. They present common themes in pairs:.
-the eighth and the ninth are obvious prophecies of the future glory of the Saint: here Saint Francis stands together with the great prophets (Isaia) and the angels (Lucifer's throne is for him). These episodes are placed at the initial phase of the Saint's action as the Founder of the Order;.
-the tenth and the eleventh witness to the power of the Saint's Word even where he is not acting personally (the expulsion of the demons from Arezzo) or is not successful (the meeting with the Sultan);.
-the twelfth and the thirteenth show the Saint's closeness to Christ; thence the possibility to follow His example. The first of the pair, that showing the Saint's ecstasy, is medieval in the portrayal of sanctity. The second, which shows the Nativity Scene of Greccio, is particularly important for the study of Italian folk traditrion.
-the fourteenth and the fifteenth which are placed on the sides of the portal are at the centre of the cycle. They show the Saint's power on nature and also bring in allegorical meanings (the miracle of the sprng-water and the sermon to the birds).
-the sixteenth and the seventeenth emphasize the prophetic spirit in its proper sense: it is the Holy Spirit speaking through the Saint when he foresees the Knight of Celano's death and when he preaches in front of the Pope;.
-the eighteenth and the nineteenth underline the likeness between the Saint's life at the end of his journey in the footsteps of Christ (the gift of ubiquity in the case of Assisi and Arles and, most importantly, the stigmatas)and Christ himself. Independently from the time when these episodes occurred, they are placed before the corporal death to mean that Saint Francis reached his perfection on this Earth;.
-the twentieth and the twenty-first show the Saint's corporal death together with his ascension to the Heavens . In the twenty-first, in particular, two scenes are represented but the episode is one: the Saint's death. It was apparently necessary to picture both as they were both decisive at the moment of canonization. On the other hand if the two episodes had been separated to cover two frescos, the planned symmetry of the cycle would have been broken.
The last series of seven frescos describes episodes occurred after the Saint's corporal death and is aimed at proving the continuity of the Saint's work:.
-the twenty-second is about the attestation of the stigmatas;.
-the twenty-third shows the funeral;.
-the twenty-fourth describes the solemnity of the canonization as if to prove that Saint Francis was the greatest of all Saints;.
-the twenty-fifth is connected to the preceding ones and confirms the truth of the Holy Stigmatas, through the Pope's prophethic dream. This miracle was indeed the most difficult to prove and yet the most valuable.
- the last three frescos are miracles after invocation that prove the Saint's power post mortem.
It must be acknowleged that the close analysis of the pairs or individual frescos is definitely richer in meaning than the overall picture we tried to present here above. This study will be faced below. However to end this chapter it might be worth recalling that the frescos are not placed in relation to the entrance of the basilica, but winding from left to right and including the portal. The pilgrim would go through the whole cycle, learn about the Order and the Life of the Saint and no attempt was made to exploit the fact that the vistor should walk along the whole church before facing the first fresco of the cycle.

The Structure of the Picture

After the analysis of the overall structure, the next step in our study is dealing with the structure of the individual frescos. We do not want to go on with the idea that Giotto variously attempted to work out ideas of space through perspective, as this is not the case here. He had not yet started research on perspective since he had not an idea of perspective as a mathematical representation of space. However, at the time he was certainly making efforts to clear up his doubts about space, which eventually refined his way of thinking of the structure where he composed the picture.
What he did was something more than simply letting spatiality be determined by the position of characters and objects. Here part of the play is done by invisible agents, such as the lines that our eyes draw when they follow the characters' looks, or the inclination of the figures or the heads of a crowd. These elements create links between things and people and , adding to the lines of the architecture and the landscapes, form the structure of the picture. The latter is not pre-existant and it will be correct to say that all the elements of a picture, the visible and the invisible ones, make it up.
In later days the structure of the image will become an independent feature and will have a name- Perspective. It will be endowed with a life and a history of its own, independent and prior to the objects that will be inserted into it, even though the picture will need elements and clues to its invisible presence. This is not the case with Giotto's frescos; here it is impossible to distinguish between the arrangement in space and the structure. However this does not mean that the destination of space is either casual or intuitive of a sense of perspective. It is rather conceived of rationally, or I prefer to say.. structured. Incidentally, I apologize for the repeated use of a certain terminology, which I think necessary for the sake of clarity. When a word is chosen for its proper meaning, it is indeed hard job to replace it successfully.
To bring it home, those elements that in the past were functional to the narrative of a picture (e.g. the direction of a look, a simplified architecture or a gesture) are now deliberately co-ordinated in a rational whole, that is in a spatial and temporal structure. The image is framed and in effect the progressive refinement of the technique used in the cycle induces to think of the perspective net as the next step to be made. These observations do not apply to the frescos where Giotto did not contribute his control. In these cases the ability to calculate spatiality is lacking.
The last three frescos, for instance, where Giotto did not have a part are set in the atemporal space of popular tales.
With regard to the lines formed by the looks of the faces, I want to argue against those who have observed a lack of feeling in Giotto's characters. In fact Giotto tended to express individual feelings in relation to a more general reality, which has a collective character. The looks, such a distinctive feature of a face, are always set in a context, in a structure in point of fact. Giotto uses the lines that the observer mentally forms to follow the looks of his characters to give clues, meaning and sometimes Pathos to the picture.
Another feature related to overall aspects of the cycle is the delineation of interiors: in general terms it is rather precise and solid. With a wider background scenery farther details lose precision and the landscapes are delineated only through few elements of set purpose that cannot be considered for that symbolical. Very often a more limited space within the wider scene frames one or more characters as if the painter needs more controllable boundaries for the main episode.
The tendency is to give each element of the narration its space as as The Death of the Knight of Celano, or The Miracle of the Spring, or The Miracle of the Stigmatas and finally in Vision of the Thrones in Glory and The Chariot of Fire. In these cases the presence of architectural elements rather distinguishes priviliged spaces than delineates a proper architecture.
We can also consider the spatial coherence of the area of the confirmation of the Rule and the effect of unity of the two groups of characters. The same coherence is to be found in the symmetries of The Gift of the Cloak, or of The Renouncing to the Father's goods, or The Preaching to the Birds, or The Preaching in front of Onofrio III. In all these cases even if the spatiality of the picture is not always conceived of as a whole, the structure of the fresco is.
It is worth noting that in the frescos realized when the magister was absent, his instructions were often misunderstood by his collaborators who either placed the characters irrespectively of the limits thought for them or filled up the various spatial areas of the frescos or alternatively did not fill them enough. Cases of excess are The Death of the Saint, The Nativity Scene of Greccio, The Canonization and The Lament of the Clarisses. On other occasions, such as The Vision of Saint Augustin, and the last three frescos of the cycle, which Giotto certainly did not supervise, the characters are forcedly placed in the panel. For a better understanding and more evidence of what has been said, please refer to the analysis of the individual episodes.

The New Art of Franciscanism

In the context of the culture of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Franciscan world appeared to be the most fertile in ideas and spirit. As we know, humanism connects the historicist view of the world to solidity and unity at the level of architectural spatiality, which is one the many mirrors of a whole reality conceived of in those terms. This will be theorized by the great architects of the following centuries with particular concern for the notion of perspective construction of spatiality as a mental construction of reality. The Franciscan Order was ahead in time in applying these ideas to its relationship with the world.
The Churches of the Franciscan Order tend to do away with aisles, spires, and excessive stained-glass windows in order to keep a basic unity and a spatial solidity despite the fact that the Franciscans looked to Gothic architecture because they wanted to adopt forms of expression which had become common in the whole of Europe and that were the expression of a collective mind and the realization of a collective action ( let us think of the architecture of the Romanic and Gothic churches of the age preceding Giotto's times).
In fact the Franciscan churches were not Gothic in structure not at least in the ways that Gothic was thought of in the North of Europe. The proper Gothic involves a type of linear and spatial tension that does not derive from or get to a global vision of spatiality. Furthermore the collective consciousness that produced it did not acknowledge a global vision of the world in Time and never made that fundamental step from the collective to the universal while continuously wanting to transcend to the atemporal and eternal, that is God. On the contrary the Franciscan order sets itself down as the Order that lives in the reality of history and operates the mystery of Salvation on this earthly world. Saint Francis is an alter Christus not only for his imitation of Christ at the limits of human nature, but also for the fact that his action is addressed to this world just like Christ's was. In effect many scholars have also read the Saint and his followers' attitude to Nature as an anticipated sign of the Renaissance.
The newly acquired purity of spatiality also involved the knowledge of new criteria of representation, which complicated the acquisition of meaning of the image in spite of its increased realism of the image. In order to appreciate this, let us consider the case of the position of the main character in a painting or a mosaic. Before Giotto this was generally central, and its size was usually bigger which also guided the interpretation of the subject. From now on these standards disappear and other information is needed for a full understanding of the work of art, which then eventually becomes much clearer and detailed than in the past.
My idea is that Giotto and his collaborators did not apply modern composition schemes to given subjects: they perfected or invented those schemes in order to represent the novelty that was being proposed by the friars. Part of the novelty was the expression of new notions of nature and spatiality, which was not open in the literary sources, but yet clear enough to be analyzed both in written and in visual sources.
When Giotto represents nature in a way that seems conspicuous for the age, the novelty lies more in the new attitude of the Order than in the artist's originality. In fact the episodes witnessing to the Saint's love and respect for nature in its various manifestations are already described in the early literary sources and Giotto does not add any new element in the narration. In other words, working on this cycle Giotto is complying with a tendency which arose originally in the religious movement and only later florished as part of the aesthetic criteria of humanism.
On the other hand the way for the imitation of Christ that was being suggested rested on values such as work and its fruit rather than mortification and ascesis. Wasn't this a response to the society of the time which tended towards earthly matters and needed positive examples of poverty? This is the new consciousness of Franciscanism that operates in the world- and this is why those internal currents that still stood on late-medioeval principles of poverty and abstinence were less fortunate.
Bearing all this in mind we want to inquire about the structure of the picture as well as consider the intended audience of the frescos, since participation has always been particularly important for religious art. A factor that has been considered by scholars is that for some time Art had been the repetition of an established iconography, which made the artists feel mere executors of pre-constituted forms. I believe that this factor did not affect the pilgrims that visited the Saint's tomb or the crowds that looked at the images that after the Assisi model decorated the monasteries and churches of all Europe with the new iconography.
The degree to what Giotto was independent of the clergy is an issue that concerned him at the time and relatively affects our studies today. The main question was indeed creating an iconology for the founder of the Order and an iconography that was innovative and therefore might risk rejection: an innovative painter was called for the task. One problem was the representation of the Holy Stigmatas, which placed Saint Francis in a special position as compared to other saints. In point of fact Giotto's frescos were nothing but the perfection of a process already started in the iconography that other artists had started in the lower basilica.
At the time of the decoration of the Basilica the Order was going through internal debate that started around the question of the interpretation of the Rule but in fact ended with the formation of currents, if not factions that questioned the very role of the Order within the Church bringing it on the verge of a Reformation. In this context Giotto's frescos appear as the "official" position of the Order.
The fact that the frescos were addressed to travelling pilgrims is at one with the peculiar action of evangelization which was being done in accordance with the ways and times of the Rule. It is worth recalling that except for Germany, the Franciscan Order was the most powerful, most complex and most popular of all religious organizations of the time- its influence was in fact comparable with that of Rome.
It was not by coincidence that the frescos were started not long before the first Holy Year, which Bonifacio VIII proclaimed in 1300. One obvious reason was the expectation of large numbers of pilgrims crossing Italy all the way from Europe to Rome. The enthusiasm and zeal of the Order for the realization and decoration of the two churches must have been impressive, worthy of the greatest architectural and artistic undertaking of the time.
The frescos of the Basilica can be compared to the Aperta, those books which were addressed to the laymen and the common people as opposed to the Arcana or Profunda, which were only accessible to the clergy (the words aperta and arcana refer to the Holy Scriptures). The Franciscan friars preached by way of example- the 28 episodes- apparently abandoning the complexity of rhetoric, although in point of fact the very structure of the cycle is complex and rhetorical.
It seems important that the common people, which are addressed by the frescos, are present in the scenes so that they can easily identify with the message. This also explains the fact that the spatiality of the panels is often distributed in a similar way to that of sacred representations. Moreover, the image of Christ that is most adopted in the cycle, a suffering Christ, is very significant for an evangelization work that addresses the destitute and the suffering.
One last consideration about the Tituli at the bottom of the frescos. Various medioeval sources state that the figurative language is regarded as a necessary makeshift for the written word, but of a lower value. Thence the necessity of the Tituli in verse or prose form to explain the images. The medioeval art therefore struggled for a precise iconography that as time passed could become established in the popular culture and do away with the Tituli. The question of religious figurative art was how to create a new iconography and not have to call for participation in the event, or how to propose models and not exploit the power of wonder at miracles.
Let's make a step back in time. In the Libri Carolini the authors want to prove that the images of religious art are admired for their beauty and not because they possess something divine in them. This was a response to the iconoclast decrees of Constantinople that denounced the worship of images. One argument of the book is that the same image can convey different meanings, and therefore sacredness could not be inherent in the image but originated from faith. Another argument is that the artist's own devotion is not sufficient to draw the believers' worship, whereas the aesthetic qualities can do that, which implies that the more beautiful the images, the more they attract. This may sound too mundane to our religious spirit, but it was an effective argument against the accusation of idolatry.
In effect the need grew to embelish churches with images that were as direct as possible in order to educate the believers that walked in. Abstractions and allegories gave way to simplicity and contact with reality for better communication with the world.
Giotto was the painter who could combine the portrait of spirituality and the narration of a new action in the world, that was the calling of the Franciscan Order. The Franciscan Order was the most obvious agent of this change as their vocation was to be close to common people and, when it came to helping the destitute, their action was very practical both in understanding and in comforting those who needed aid. He had to face the challenge of the time: devicing a new manner of representing and understanding reality that satisfied the needs of the new ideology while effectively creating the iconography of the Saint of Assisi. The process was inevitable in the History of Italian Art and the fact that Giotto initiates it throws light on the appreciation of the artist. Giotto has for long been considered the painter of the arising middle-class interpreting the religious feeling in a bourgeois manner. This kind of criticism in fact neglects the importance and the quality of the religious spirit of the age, which I tried to convey above.

Giotto as a Source

The main source for the stories of the cycle of Assisi was Legenda Maior by Saint Bonaventura from Bagnoregio. All of the 29 episodes of the frescos (one panel has two) are contained in the book, which was in fact the official biography of the Saint, the only that might be credited. When Saint Bonaventura became General Minister of the Order he even ordered to burn other existing Legendae, according to what was decided in the General Chapter of Paris in 1266 to put an end to the internal debate that often recurred for support to other sources, ascribed to Francis's early mates.
The scenes of the cycle are not always faithful to the Legenda Maior and very often diverge from it significantly, with occasional inspiration from other sources, and more frequent original innovations. I believe that these differences can be considered telling clues of the attitudes and regulations of the Franciscan Order at the end of the 13th century rather than new possible sources about the Saint's life. An example is provided by the two frescos dealing with the climax of the saint's perfection on Earth, one of the key moments of the cycle, where Saint Francis is considered a Christ-like figure in body as well as in spirit. This pair of rescos (the 18th and 19th) diverges from Saint Bonaventura's text.
Just like any literary text, the cycle of Assisi has both universal value and historic interest. Since it was at the heart of the cultural activity of the Order it bears significant witness to their vision. We will have to see into the images and interpret them in the light of the cultural context so as to identify also the ways and reasons that influenced Giotto's own vision and art. It is worth recalling here the hypothesis of this research, that is to say, the belief that the cycle was planned before its realization and that nothing was left to improvisation but decided and organized by two distinct communities, the friars' and the painters', of which the most important figures were Giotto from Bondone and Giovanni della Marca.
There are many issues at stake here that can be studied more profitably by historians than by critics of art: the references to the Saint as an alter Christ, the question of how having the stigmatas accepted in popular iconography, the preoccupation for a balance between the necessity to show the decisive moments of the Saint's life as a events of the divine Will rather than consequences of the clergy's decision and the equally important necessity to underline the submission to the Order.
These cases also show the influence of other legends than the official source and older traditions: scholars of other fields than mine may deal with these topics better than I could, but I strongly feel the importance of a couple of remarks here.
At the time of the works on the Basilica one of the contemporary sources of the cycle, the so-called Leggenda Antica Perugina or Old Legend of Saint Francis, was being collected out of various material that could reconstruct the oldest memories of the Saint's early followers. When it came to the frescos devoted to the Saint's death Giotto placed these characters close to the body mourning apart from the rest of the clergy. This was an acknowledgment of a certain privilege of the originary members of the Order, but at the same time it was a statement about their role, bound to the presence of their spiritual Guide.
Thus when the Order was fixing once and for all the official life and iconography of the Saint, they also took care of according a special role for his early followers, even though limited in time and space to the Saint's life on earth. In this way, the Order could get rid of the extreme fringes of the Order, who wanted a stricter respect of the Rule.

New Attributions?

About the possibility of new attributions of the frescos of the Upper Basilica some methodological remarks should be done as far the specific case is concerned and in general terms.
At the time of the recent restoration of the cycle the earlier attribution to Pietro Cavallini has been reconsidered in consideration of formal similarities which have been observed in the coloring technique of a number of faces. These similarities are real, but so is the argument that any painter of the age could have used that technique of laying color in respect of the specific inclination and direction of the brushes.
However I would rather face the matter from the point of view of history and methodology rather than style. In fact nothing is incontrovertible unless supported by positive sources, which are rarely direct in this case. In fact it is true that little documentation exists but it should be kept in mind that as long as he did not possess the juridical status of magister Giotto was not allowed a real artistic or managing autonomy that could be attested.
I believe that the big mistake is insisting on wanting to indentify one name in a case where the nature of the work requires the co-operation of many. This was even more frequent for bigger companies that were involved in more than one concerns at the time and had to share the tasks of the works, so that some people would do the more simple or humble jobs and others would be involved in the more artistic tasks.
Moreover I believe that the great fame that Dante associates with Giotto in the year 1300 - the year of the first Jubilee derived from the fact that the painter was sent for by Pope Bonifacio VIII on that occasion, which also explains his having to leave the cycle to a group of painters of his workshop different from the one that had started the work.
Another argument against Giotto's attribution was his young age for such an important task. The issue needs some historic remarks: in those centuries people were considered old at the age of 50. Therefore whatever date we decide to assume for the beginning of the works, Giotto could have been in his late twenties at the time, which means that he was definitely a grown-up. To prove what I am saying suffice the literature of the time or the very iconography of Saint Francis, who is portrayed as a beardless youth when an adoloscent or just older than that and as an old canute man in his last days, that is when he was about 44 or 45!.
In conclusion, at least three hands must be admitted to have been working on the Upper Basilica. For chronological reasons the young Giotto is likely to have worked on the last two episodes only of the stories of the Old Testament. This is common knowledge and there is no reason at all to present it as a sensational outcome of research. As far as the Lower cycle is concerned there are many more than three hands that can be recognized and the last six or seven episodes appear to have been done by different painters from those who worked on the others. Yet, at the cost of being repetitive, I want to underline that the plan of the cycle remains one regardless of the hands that may appear or disappear on the individual panels. This plan is referable in style and meanings to one organizing mind, Giotto's in fact.
There remain many doubts about the attribution of the frescos of the Lower Basilica. Here the name of Giotto has always been associated to that of Cimabue, and maybe, Cavallini, on account of the archaic character of the iconography.
However there is very little documentation available on the subject, if any at all and no hypothesis is presently possible. That is why I argued above - almost provocatively, that it does not really matter to establish which parts were done by Giotto himself and which not.
But indeed this statement did not want to open up the subject to further speculation, like that around such a vague artist as Cavallini, whose presence is unattested in Assisi, differently from Giotto's, whose movements are all recorded even though not precisely.
To put it very simply, what is the point of replacing the documented presence of Giotto in Assisi with that unattested of Cavallini ? More importantly I believe that the Cavallini of Saint Cecily's was still very much attached to tradition to be entrusted such iconographic and stylistic novelties as the frescos of Assisi.
On the contrary, Giotto derived a new way of seeing things in space and time from Cimabue's ability to get close to human feelings, which expressed the change in the medioeval society of the time and will later yeld his studies on perspective. In a few words the two might have spoken the same language but said different words: how could we mistake one for the other?.
Cavallini was distant from Cimabue and Giotto as regards both technique and mentality, even though his collaborators were probably more aware of the changes than he was. In fact it is more likely that one of his assistants was employed by Giotto who was sent for to work in Rome, where Cavallini had already been working. This either means that Giotto was the painter à la mode at the time or that the Pope decided to deprive the Franciscan Order of their best artist, a political choice then to reduce the power of the ever more independent friars of Assisi.
One last supportive argument is Dante's reference to Giotto as an example of clara fama at the time of his voyage to Hell, that is in the year 1300, which could have not been made if the painter had not been invested with such an important task as Assisi's frescos.
Finally it might not be worth replying to Zeri's observation the Giotto of Assisi would be too different from the Giotto of Padova to be credited for attribution. In fact Lionello Venturi already found a linking moment in the Christ of Rimini and, apart from that we could remind the eminent scholar of the many great painters in the history of art that evolved their style gradually or suddenly even in the span of relatively short lives- Raffaello and Picasso to name but the most famous.

AN ANALYSIS OF THE FRESCOS.

The analysis of the frescos will be grounded as follows. In the first place I will have recourse to the vernacular reconstruction that Father Bonaventura Marinangeli did of the titulus.Then I will make reference to the literary sources where the episode is narrated and finally I will examine the fresco in connection to the group where it belongs. Observations which are valid for more than one fresco will not be repeated to avoid loading the discourse with useless information.

FIRST EPISODE
(The First of the First Group)

When a simple man of Assisi lays out his clothes on the ground before the blessed Francis and pays homage to his passage also declaring, inspired by God, as it is believed, that Francis is worth every reverence, because he is to do great things soon and therefore must be honored by everyone.

LM 1,1.

As for many other frescos of the cycle, the perspective keeps all lines parallel whether they be frontal or lateral always showing the viewer the right side of the buildings. Saint Francis and the simple man form a right-angle triangle where the figure of Francis is one cathetus, the line formed by the edges of the man's cloak and clothes is the other cathetus, and the ideal line linking Francis's and the man's looks and going down to the latter's feet forms the hypotenuse.
All the figures are enclosed in the line that the color of the clothes forms and the composition is symmetrical with respect to the church in the background. The latter is an obvious reference to the Roman temple of Minerva, the present-day church of St Mary's in Assisi, a prison at the time. Here the portal is missing and the diameter of the columns is reduced in order to show the rear wall. The most important part of the composition is hardly contained in the hemycicle that is formed by the four figures placed at the side, according to a a scheme which will be very successful in the 15th century.
In this composition the figure of Saint Francis is not yet central as if the Saint were not ready yet to become the protagonist of his own mission. The simple man of Assisi laying the cloak at the center of the composition is inviting the Saint to take the place that is for him. Francis seems to be questioning the man or maybe himself as he looks down to him, and even if with hesitation, he obviously accepts the offer and makes the first step on the cloak. Matching the simple man ( "a very simple man, for certain" in the Legenda Maior) there stand the learned and rich men framing the scene. The four figures are placed on lines converging towards the centre of the composition while Saint Francis and the simple man are located more to the centre and in the foreground, the background being constructed in a viewpoint of its own, which is not in perspective yet.
This composition, albeit naive, allows Giotto to distinguish the various moments of the Legenda Maior: the town, the Saint and the simple man, and the men who are "not simple". Each moment possesses its exact logical place. The emphasis on the contrast between simple and learned that was expressed in the literary sources was in relation to the social hierarchy of the time, when the idea of education was associated with the upper classes. In the fresco another meaning is added: simple here means "immediate", ready to follow God's command. The fresco here expresses the exhortation to Francis not to hesitate and be immediate to follow Christ's example.
There is a contrast in the attitude of the characters portrayed in the fresco. The four beholders in front a place where justice was administered can be considered witnesses of the event, - they are four as in legal cases or marriages. They do not show any sign of comprehension of the divine aspect of the episode, the two on the left seemingly indifferent while one of the two on the right points to the scene as to question the other who slightly raises a hand to mean "Don't worry about that!". On the contrary, the simple man addresses Francis in a very clear and direct way as if God on giving him the impetus to act also provided him with the awareness of the "justness" or better "righteousness" of the action.
The gesture, consequently, rather than "strange" in itself is "stranger" to the people of the town, since they cannot respond spontaneously, being their hearts closed to any divine message. Other is the reaction of Francis who agrees to walk on the cloak even if still unaware of the reasons or implications of the act. We should here recall the many invitations to follow the ways of the Lord without questioning that recur in both books of the Bible. An example is Luca 19, 36 where Jesus enters Jerusalem. Francis is indeed portrayed as an alter Christus.
A more significant reference is Giobbe: "Francis did not yet have a knowledge of the Lord's designs over him". This quotation accounts for his inquisitive air, but does not explain the attitude of the beholders. The fact that they are four witnesses like in a legal matter may want to underline the factuality of the episode, which had been mentioned only in San Bonaventura's text. While an accepted reading of this fresco sees it as a reminder of the necessity to be or become "simple" in order to follow the Lord's ways, and the current formula Homage of the Town to the Saint will not add more to that, I believe that it plays down the memory of the misunderstanding that the Saint had to endure and that there could be a more extreme interpretation : the temple is deprived of its portal as a sign of the decadence of the Church, which living only on appearances, lost the true way to Christ.
Let us consider the image of the temple on the fresco: as it has been mentioned above, the present Tempio di Minerva was the prison of the municipality in Giotto's times. Yet, on drawing the shape of that ancient Roman temple, the painter includes a rosette supported by two angels, as in suggestion of a church. Still, this remains a church with no entrance: in stead there is a column in the middle of it, that is a place where nobody would have imagined one, neither in the classic age nor in Giotto's times not to hide the rear door or hinder the passage. On the other hand there is neither evidence nor reference to explain why the columns that in the Tempio di Minerva are in the number of six are only five on the fresco. Was it mere inaccuracy or was there any idea behind it? We have had no means to find out.

SECOND EPISODE
(Second of the First Series)

When the Blessed Francis meets a noble and poorly dressed knight and moved and respectful of his poverty immediately takes off his cloak and covers him.

LM 1,2- 2c5- 3cp 6.

Although there is nothing of a miracle about this episode, it is presented as a miracle because it represents the moment of Saint Francis's conversion. The sources date it differently: in the first biography by Tommaso da Celano and Saint Bonaventura the dream that announces God's call occurs after Francis has opened his heart by making a choice with this act; in Leggenda dei Tre Compagni first there is the call and then the conversion and the miraculuous call is emphasized by a parallel with Saint Paul's falling off his horse when he hears a mysterious voice.
This memory is absent in earlier biographies and the very episode is minimized. Tommaso da Celano sees it as the homologous inverse of Saint Martin's gift to the poor man. But Saint Martin's deed occurs at the end of a life of perfection whereas Saint Francis's rejection of the superfluous befalls him at the beginning of his life, so as to suggest that his road wiil lead much farther that Saint Martin's. However this parallel leaves no trace in Giotto's fresco (some indirect reference can be found in the later frescos by Simone Martini in the Lower Basilica).
Both Giotto and Simone Martini picture the Saint leaving the town, but Martini's town in the Lower Basilica is just the setting for the episode- people would wear a cloak only when they set for a journey. For Giotto, who is apparently highlighting this episode as the climax of Saint Francis's life, the setting is extremely important. He represents the old and the new life - the town and the Church- on two mountains, so as to emphasize the gap between them. Differently from Martini's picture, the town is deliberately far and indefinite. It is certainly an opulent view and even if it does not belong totally to the rich, it appears as a mundane world that the friars abandon in order to live in the Church of God, in poverty. It is not coincidental, then, that the mountain where Giotto places the Church rises in the area of spatiality assigned to the poor knight. That is the direction that needs taking.
The Saint is portrayed in the middle of the scene, at the road-fork, as he chooses to change his way. His posture is firm in contrast with the previous scene where the Saint seemed to question the poor man that lay the cloak on the ground for him. The line that ideally joins the Saint's and the knight's looks makes a quadrangolar mass, higher than the other quadrangolar mass formed by the figure of the horse dismounted by the Saint. Accepting the new life, Francis humbles himself and by stooping he rises.
Saint Francis decides to do without the cloak, an essential piece of cloth for the upper- class of that age and an expensive one because of the quantity of wool employed and of the close weave of the warp. He is not giving up what he does not need, as Saint Martin does when he gives half of his cloak. Francis gives up the whole of his properties, including his horse - another symbol of the powerful and the rich- , which Giotto portrays left alone on the old way.
Another significant reference for the interpretation of this fresco is the fact that Francis would have liked to go to Gualtiero di Brienne for a knigthood, a title that for instance Saint Martin never gave up. With this episode we can say that he is taking another road from the one that he wished to take: the road of religious conversion. However it might be noteworthy the fact that the religious Order founded by him will be often compared to a chilvary order.
As far as spatiality is concerned, Giotto portrays Francis standing and the knight slightly bent, the Saint now at the centre as the main actor of the story, above the others. The various moments have each its own place, with a special interest in things and the nature, which is also so peculiar of Saint Francis' preaching.
The horse bends his head with the same curve that the poor knight's back makes as he receives the gift from Saint Francis and an ideal line connects the looks of the two characters. The actor of this episode is evidently the Saint, who invites the poor knight, consciously depriving himself of what is now worthless for him. The conversion here is action and initiative rather than repentance.
As far as color is concerned, the Saint and the sky over his head behind the aureole are in cold tones, whereas the poor knight and the horse are painted in warmer tones. The mountains, the buildings of the town and the church have a thicker color in neutral tints. The color and the line that encloses a color delineate the mass of the image: for instance, the volume of the horse is given by its color (the body) but is also enclosed by the lines of the neck, of the legs and the tail. Another example is the way the feet are painted. Apparently out of the border of the mass, they are askew and nearly independent.
The mountains present two different landscapes. The one where the town rises is rocky and indented and complex in its construction like the town is. The one where the church rises is gentle and simple and the church itself forms a compact and well-defined mass.
There is here an initial idea of a central point, like a vanishing point from which two lines depart as in a very primitive perspective. The image is constructed along these two diagonals: one runs along Saint Francis's arm and upper edge of the cloak up to the mountain where the town rises, the other runs along the opposite mountainside and the line of shade that delineates the dark side of the mountain of the town.
The structure of the image has more unity than in the previous fresco where the action and the setting were allocated two different areas. Here there is no intermediate element connecting the main characters and the mountains, because they would have been logically useless. Among the characters we include the horse, although the animal is not yet at the same level of the protagonist as, about three hundred years later, one will be in Saint Paul's Conversion by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome.
As we have said, Giotto tends to show the right side of things portrayed in his frescos. Right is also the side from which the pilgrims walk in the Basilica when they see the frescos, which seems to suggest that Saint Francis gets on the road of perfection at the point where the others have stopped. This idea may also be referred to Tommaso da Celano's declaration that no founder of religious orders was as perfet as Saint Francis. Taking everything into account we can say that this episode is initial and essential to the Saint's spiritual iter.

THIRD EPISODE
(Third of the First Series)

The Blessed Francis, as he had fallen asleep the following night, saw a wonderful and sumptuous palace and arms with the insignia of Christ and as he asked whom they belonged to, a voice from above answered they would be for him and his knights'.

LM 1,3- 1c6- 2c6- 3Cp5-AP 5.

Before this dream, Saint Francis had already made the decisive act of his conversion. The dream continues the idea of the parallel between the Franciscan Order and a chivalry order and in point of fact emphasizes it. But there are significant variations in the sources.
The Vita Seconda by Tommaso da Celano also includes a beautiful bride together with the arms and the suits of armour. This figure, obviously representing poverty, does not appear in Giotto's fresco, who follows the "official" biography by Saint Bonaventura. On the other hand this turns to be in accordance with the painter's style of this period when he chooses to reduce the number of characters in order to simplify the action and contain it into few distinct spaces, easily identifiable, each with a different "view".
Other differences concern the figure of Christ and the voice that the Saint hears. For Tommaso da Celano Christ appears to Saint Francis as well as to Saint Martin to praise them. For Saint Bonaventura there is no relationship between the voice that Francis hears and Christ and the voice mentions, together with the master and the servant, the rich and the poor- obviously in spiritual riches- in order to indicate what shoud be the true wealth of the Order . Bonaventura believed that the connection between the Order and the Knights was too mundane and that the other with Saint Martin was pointless as the figure of Saint Francis had now dimmed that of Saint Martin even in popular culture. Finally in the text by the Anonimo Perugino Christ is not mentioned, nor is the voice, but an undescribed companion is.
In Giotto's fresco the bride is missing, the arms do not bear the Cross but Christ appears beside Saint Francis. This synthesis shows Giotto's wide knowledge of sources. I will now analyze the fresco as far as its structure is concerned.
There are two viewpoints of the palace, which is divided into two parts: the lower is massive, with a porch downstairs and an open gallery above it; the upper part is smaller, like a large tower, with a terrace and two storeys with windows so close as to form three-light windows. The palace is viewed from the front and the right side, but the lower part is viewed from above and the upper part from below. A very different view (I deliberately avoid the phrase "point of view", which pertains to the study of perspective) is assigned to the two characters in the foreground, Christ and the sleeping Francis. Dream and reality are reported with adequate distance.
The shape of the bed repeats the lines of the open gallery of the palace, with two lateral avant-corps and one central recess. Both the bed and the tester are viewed from the right side but its feet and the tops of the staffs that support it seem to be on two straight lines converging towards a point back in space, very similarly to a real perspective.
Giotto exploits the tester to build the main image in spatiality or to build spatiality through it. This image is a parallelepipedom where the two main characters are seen frontally and form an independent figure. The main axis runs along Saint Francis's body. Giotto makes it visible creating a deep fold in the blanket that reveals the hip and the leg of the character. This line is one side of a triangle, whose other sides are one of the staffs of the tester and Christ's arm, the latter being highlighted by the shape of the gown.
Saint Francis's head is laid upon the Saint's hand instead of upon a pillow, as to suggest the idea that the Saint was half-asleep rather than dreaming, which in fact follows the Leggenda dei Tre Compagni.
The front curtain is rolled up around the pier of the tester to fill in a void in the composition of the image. The latter is given unity in spite of the ignorance of perspective thanks to a way of viewing objects in the lower part of the fresco from above and objects in the upper part from below. This is definitely true for the bed, the open gallery, the door of the tester and the palace. The Saint is also approximately seen from above, probably also to emphasize the curve of the leg under the blanket. Christ is seen frontally thus acquiring a centrality that does not depend on the vertical line that cuts the image into two parts separating the tester-space-parallelepipedom from the palace. However Christ's arm indicates the vertex of the group, Saint Francis. In fact, as it has already been said, Christ and Saint Francis form a triangle, that is a symbol of perfection. Here Giotto emphasizes the most important character (generally Saint Francis, Christ here), showing Christ standing and the Saint lying. The painter does not need to resort to differences of size to suggest hierarchy, as painters had always done in cases like this.
One last remark is about the comparison between the composition of spatiality in this fresco and that of the others that have been analyzed above. As I have said, Christ and Saint Francis here make up a triangle that fits perfectly the whole composition. It is not so for the triangle that the figures of the episode of the simple man form, and on the other hand the whole fresco keeps a distance between the episode and the setting, the town, where it takes place. The second episode, that of the cloak, shows more resemblance: it is constructed on diagonals tracing a cross in the centre of the image. In point of fact in these cases we could speak of four ideal triangles constructing spatiality, which is a combination that was particularly considered at the time, especially for buildings of importance and cathedrals.

FOURTH EPISODE
(Fouth of the First Series)

As the Blessed Francis is praying in front of an image of Christ Crucified, a voice from the Crucifix said these words three times:" Francis, you will go and restore my house falling to ruins" thus meaning the Church of Rome.

LM 2,1 - 2c10- 3Cp 13- 3c2.

The episode is reported in Legenda Maior with an emphasis on the factuality of the miracle since the voice is said to be heard by the Saint's "corporal hears". The text also explains that in the beginning the Saint thought he had to restore a physical church made of material walls rather than the Church that Christ gained by his own blood, as it was written in The Acts of the Apostles (20,28).
Saint Bonaventura's source is Vita Seconda by Tommaso da Celano where in fact the conversion is more sudden and Francis understands the meaning of the utterance, which is pronounced just once. For Tommaso da Celano Francis intentionally does not want to accomplish his task preferring to "gradually move from the flesh to the soul". On the other hand, it has already been said that the writer considers the episode of the cloak- the point of arrival of other Saints, such as Martin- the starting point of Francis's conversion.
Both Leggenda dei Tre Compagni and Vita Seconda explain the episode as Francis's reception of Christ's passion into his soul- the first step towards the Holy Stigmatas. The moment when he hears the voice in San Damiano's does not represent a miracle, but a step forward a new path in life: Francis, the man, will start living and acting as God's poor servant or mad man as one prefers to say.. in any case a life based on poverty and renounce to worldly riches. In fact the sale of the riches in Foligno, the proceeds of which he will use to restore San Damiano's, is another event in the process which has been related to this episode alternatively being set just before or after it.
Back to the question of the reality of the voice speaking to Francis, the earliest sources, and the very first, in particular, the Vita Prima by Tommaso da Celano do not mention a physical voice, and also the Vita Seconda leaves some doubt. But Saint Bonaventura is positive about it and Giotto's image- the Saint on his knees, his hands opened as if they had just been held in an act of praying, and a look of wonder in his eyes towards the crucifix seemingly slightly bent towards him- seems to suggest that the painter is following the official biography.
About the iconography of the Saint, this fresco shows an unusual image of Francis, not wearing a tonsure or a habit, but some head-gear, which would suggest that the iconography became established as the works of the cycle progressed. This would not surprise the modern mind but in the past a fixed image was essential for recognition of a character or Saint. However the aureole and the described image cannot leave doubts about the Saint's piousness. One final remark about Francis's image here is that even though this is not a strict profile, only one foot is visible - - another clue to Giotto's disregard for this feature of the human body.
About the structure of this fresco, there is a lot to be said. Giotto depicts the moment when the Saint is astonished on hearing the words from the Crucifix that tell him to restore the Church. Therefore the elements he has to represent are Saint Francis, the crucifix, and the Church of Saint Damiano in ruins.
For the purpose he decides to split the panel into four parts by an ideal cross and assign each element a part. The Saint is on the left and Christ Crucified is on the right; the third element, which is necessary for the individuation of the miracle, i.e. the church, is the place where the two elements are inserted. Not wanting the building in the background with its proper dimensions as he had done for the other frescos, and considering that the dimensions of the protagonist of the cycle could not be reduced to make him proportionate to an element which is fundamental, yet subordinate to the overall image Giotto resorts to stratagems.
He subdivides the space of the church into a number of areas and assigns the characters separate, autonomous spaces, which partially solves the problem of the impossibility of likely proportions for the three elements. In fact Saint Francis still appears extremely big in relation to the aisles of the Church, reaching the height of the columns even though on his knees whereas the crucifix is proportional to the building in one dimension only, the height . Yet there is some imagination working here: the Saint becomes visible only if the external wall of the church were missing or better as if its lower part were transparent up to the architrave whereas the upper part on the left is closed by the external wall and by the roof. The Saint thus occupies one of the four parts in which the image is divided, the lower left, and this space is autonomous, encircled by four columns, two pairs in fact, one behind him and one in front of him. Moreover, of the two pairs, one is closer and one is farther to the viewer since the church is viewed from a side. The farther pair is the inner, nearly placed according to the schemes of a perspective with a central vanishing point in relation to the space assigned to Saint Francis. However, irrespective of perspective laws, the columns all have the same diameter and height.
This composition seems to suggest a first break of the rule according to which things within a spatial unit are always seen from the same side and the lines along which the image is constructed are always parallel. Only one area is divided in such a way as to create distinct, even though not separate, spaces: one for each element to be represented. Only the roof of the closer aisle is panelled along parallel lines sidelong leftwards, thus repeating the usual scheme.
The right half of the fresco is structured so that the space where the crucifix is placed appears as a whole. The cross that cuts the panel into four can be worked out by intuition through the projections of the architrave which appears broken because of the fall. To the extreme right there is a column signalling that the lower part of this half of the panel can be seen in consideration of an imagined transparent or missing wall like in the area where Francis is located. Only here the wall is totally missing as the imagined fall includes the architrave and the upper part of the church which on the left have been kept in order to divide the space. Here the space is kept one and the view opens up from the altar to the apsidal vault and up to the sky since the very roof is broken.
The reasons for this are in the already mentioned play with proportions and space in order to keep hierarchies: as the Saint is already too big for the architecture of the church, the crucifix cannot possibly be bigger. Therefore Giotto places the crucifix in an area which has a double height compared to the other, with the result that the Saint is the protagonist according to dimension and Christ is according to spatiality. The space assigned to Him includes the altar where He is made flesh, the Crucifix, His image, the bowl-shaped vault representing the heavens where He dwells, and the very Heavens, the sky. Nothing is casual in Giotto's frescos, which on the other hand was expected of any artist of his time.
To create the effect of a closeness between Christ Crucified and Saint Francis, Giotto has the space spin around an imaginary axis on the right corner of the apse, which is for this reason viewed almost frontally not concealing any part of it to the viewer. Moreover the shorter sides of the altar are not parallel (which is very unusual for Giotto who always keeps the parallelism of lines) as if they were rays from the front column of the space assigned to Saint Francis. This second anti-clock rotation shifts the altar leftwards, that is towards the Saint. The step of the altar also appears funnily twisted to reach a harmonious perspective result with the space around it. In fact when one object is given more than one angle of inclination in the same image the result is apparent rotation- Guido Reni will exploit this effect for his crucifixes in later times.
Finally because the external wall and the architrave mark off the front plane, the elements painted in that space - the crucifix, the altar and the apsidal vault- must be all contained within it, thus causing an apparent movement of the crucifix, which on the other hand is a bi-dimensional object, a painted board, as it was commom in those times, along whose longer arm some pious women are represented.
The complexity of this artifice is justified by the seriousness of the matter. Although the image of Christ is quite damaged, Giotto's intention to emphasize the communication between Him and the Saint is clear. Looking at the crucifix, the viewer's look immediately turns to Saint Francis and viceversa. It is not so much a question of gestures or poses as it is of ideal lines that represent the characters' looks and create links within the image. In this spiritual dialogue Saint Francis becomes converted and accepts Christ, but his attitude here is rather passive as it is the Divine Will to be operating on the fertile land of the Saint's soul which is undergoing its process of conversion and devotion.

FIFTH EPISODE
(Fifth of the First Series)

When he returns everything to his father and, taking off his clothes, he gives up his father's riches saying to him: "From now on may I say with absolute certainty: Our Father that dwells in the Heavens, since Pietro di Bernadone has repudiated me".

LM 2,4- 1c15-2c12-3Cp19-AP8.

This episode is one of the most important steps in the process of the Saint's conversion and for the foundation of the Franciscan Order. The first four panels have already showed the first urge to conversion through a presage (the episode of the simple man), the inner conversion manifesting itself in a gesture (the gift of the cloak), a second presage, this time coming from Christ himself (the dream of the palace) and finally the open exhortation to start a new path (the episode of San Damiano's).
These episodes can be subdivided into two groups: the first relating to the achievement of an old form of perfection (Saint Francis equalling Saint Martin) and the second to the preparation to a new form of sanctity through the direct intervention of Jesus Christ speaking to him first obscurely and then openly. The scenes that come after these episodes will therefore depict the beginning of this new phase: the renunciation to the riches, together with the dream of the Lateran and the approval of the Rule make up a trilogy related to the birth of the Franciscan Order.
In the course of time this fifth episode was deprived of its dramatic character and the symbolic and legal sense were emphasized. In Vita Prima by Tommaso da Celano the renunciation to the riches and the restituition of the bag with the money are one episode which causes Francis's father to lose his temper. In Vita Seconda the scene is played down: Francis is not taken by his father in front of the bishop, but it is the latter to advice him to return the money. At this point Francis returns his clothes together with the bag and shows he is wearing a hair-shirt. Saint Bonaventura in Legenda Maior adopts the earlier scheme but includes the idea of the hair-shirt, a detail that emphasizes the idea of the religious mortification of flesh. Giotto's interpretation emphasizes the notion of poverty rather than that of the mortification: the reason might be that the hair-shirt was later abolished by Saint Francis for his Order. What is important here is that Pietro holds his son's clothes, including the underpants, showing that Francis had turned himself into a totally naked poor man.
We should here remark the absence of women in the painting, which cannot be justified by the fact that the subject of the painting has legal implications and that women were not full legal subjects at the time. Neither children were, but they are present among the crowd that witness to the episode. The reason for the exclusion must then be the nakedness of Saint Francis: the episode should not be an example of scandalous behaviour for the pilgrims and visitors of the Basilica.
Leggenda dei Tre Compagni provides a different version : Francis's decision is taken after reflection in a room where his father also comes to know about it and loses his temper. Moreover Francis's choice is offered a sort of justification in spite of any possible reaction by his father through the introduction of the figure of the consul. Leggenda dei Tre Compagni refers to a summons to appear that Francis receives, according to the law, to which he replies that he has devoted himself to God. At this point the consuls openly invite Francis to see the Bishop because according to ecclesiastical law an individual could not enter the clergy - and therefore pass from civil to ecclesiastical jurisdiction - simply by an act of will, but had to accomplish formal procedures that required the approval of the Church. As these procedures were common knowledge, the reference in Leggenda dei Tre Compagni seems to emphasize the fact that Francis has belonged to the Church since the revelation of San Damiano's and because of a direct call by God. The formal admission will then become obvious here with the Bishop's protection and later with the approval of the Rule.
Giotto's fresco is generic as for its reference to sources: the Saint returns his clothes to his father and the Bishop covers him by his mantle while the clergymen stay behind. On the left stand the people of the town, Pietro Bernadone among them wheras Saint Francis is placed more to the right with his hands joined in an act of prayer. An ideal line joins the Saint's hands with another hand that appears from the Heavens with the typical gesture of the Christ Pantocrator of Byzantine art. The forefinger points to the group on the right part of the panel, in sign of command over the Church, even if the hand is perpendicular to the figure of Pietro Bernadone. The hand obviously represents the Divine Will that with the gesture commands the clergy, including the Saint, who is therefore called on directly by God and not by the representatives of the hierarchy of the Church. Pietro Bernadone's reaction, which is justifiable in terms of him being Pater Familias, is in fact hindered by a man wearing a gown and a cloak, most probably a magistrate.
The scene can be interpreted as follows: Giotto places the two groups of people facing each other in a sort of opposition, but when the Saint is called on by God and receives official protection by the Church, the lay world also has to acknowledge the new choice. We can say that the fresco represents the moment when Saint Francis is freed from his father's control by the Divine Will even though he does not belong to any religious order or to the regular clergy yet. The Bishop of Assisi, covering Francis's naked body and looking away in sign of chastity, acknowledges the act that comes from God.
The Bishop also seems to be speaking to a clergyman: Legenda Maior refers that the Bishop tells the clergymen to give Francis something to put on while he himself is covering his nakedness out of pity. Vita Seconda by Tommaso da Celano seems to suggest that the Bishop has got a feeling of the divine intervention. Giotto includes both details: the hand and the dialogue, which confirm that he made use of various sources for his frescos.
Like the other frescos already examined, this panel is subdivided into very distinct areas: Giotto places the people of the town on the left and the Bishop, the clergymen and Saint Francis on the right. The separation between the City of God, the Church, and the City of the people, which was clear in the episode of the cloak, is less obvious here. The background here is formed by generic town buildings that are not in a continuous line but cannot possibly form a circle or a square. As it was typical of Giotto's way of painting buildings, they are higher on the exterior side of the panel taking up the upper part of it, which also concides with the sky, wheras the lower part is filled in with living figures.
In this case the buidings show the corners and not the front side, thus making two sides visible instead of one. Moreover, although the parallel lines are kept parallel , the perspective is rather diverging than converging. This is especially apparent in the building at the back of the group including Saint Francis and the Bishop.
Saint Francis's looks are parallel to his arms and directed to God's hand: this ideal diagonal cuts the large blue empty sky that overlooks the scene. In fact from a structural point of view this emptiness is thus filled making a difference with the cold sky of the episode of the gift of the cloak, where a sense of depth was produced in the painting, thanks to the total absence of relation with the main scene.

SIXTH EPISODE
(Sixth of the First Series)

As the Pope sees the Basilica Lateranense almost in ruins and a poor fellow, namely the Blessed Francis, supports it on his back to prevent the fall.

LM 3,10- 2c17-3Cp51.

Also this panel can be divided into two areas, as many as the elements of the story: the Pope who is asleep and Francis that supports the church.
Differently from its sources, which described Francis as a ragged fellow, the fresco portrays the Saint in religious clothes. This is actually the first fresco where Francis is wearing a friar's habit, a tonsure and a beard, i.e. the iconography that will become established for the Franciscan order. But if we think that the preceding panel had showed him among the clergymen it is not surprising now to see him in religious clothes.
Here the motives of iconography take priority over the didactic intent which urged the representation of the Saint's humility as the real strength of the Order as well as of the whole Church. It is also for reasons of established iconography that the Pope is portrayed with his mantle and tiara on and with two attendants sitting at the feet of his rich bed, as the dignity and high rank required.
A number of stylistic remarks can be made about this fresco. In the first place Giotto is here more careful about the inner perspective of buildings Both the tester and the porch of the Basilica appear more accurate than, for example, the Palace with the arms. In the second place there is here extraordinary attention for the portrayal of characters, which makes Giotto stand out as a painter of his age. With this fresco each character seems to be enclosed in the formal perfection of its drawing and receives more attention, with the exception of the Pope that is awkwardly laid on his bed to be seen frontally as if he were sleeping on a side in spite of the posture of the body, which is typical of one sleeping on his back.
As we have said, the figure of the Saint is not at all mean, nor does he look small or low as the sources would have him. On the contrary he has a rather strong appearance even in comparison to other episodes of the cycle. It is a fact that Saint Francis is the protagonist of the cycle and that therefore his dimensions must be proportionate to the role. On the other hand when Giotto wants to underline the humility of the figure he prefers to study a posture that may reveal modesty rather than play with dimensions. Apart from these remarks about proportions, there is here the usual inaccuracy concerning the position of feet that in this case implies an inconsistency in the composition of the fresco since the Saint's foot is placed somewhere illogical, i.e. on the very porch he is supporting. However there is skill in the way the painter expresses the tension of the Saint's left leg and the graded effort of the body, which are shown through the accuracy of the draping and shading of the cowl. An intense look and a firm posture add to the accurate depiction of the Saint.
There is remarkable care also in the portrayal of the servants whose figure might correspond to the reference that was added by Father General Gerolamo d'Ascoli to Legenda Maior about some attendants of the Pope who, on his awakening, were sent to invite Saint Francis into His presence. Their existence had been precisely described in the sources thus causing a special importance for their figure as the first witness to the miraculuous dream. Both characters nobly wear a beard, which is perhaps a detail conceived of in order to distinguish these figures from the clergymen, and both appear natural. Giotto must have devoted some attention to their portrayal, which indicates a new pictorial interest in minor characters- let us notice, for example, the contrast of light and shade between the dark mantle of the servant on the left and the light clothes with effects of shading and chiaroscuro of the one on the right.
I will conclude the analysis of this fresco with some considerations about spatiality. First of all the sky is filled with complex architecture instead of being clear and empty like in the previous frescos. Secondly, if we wanted to subdivide the fresco into four areas by a cross like we did for the previous panels, it would be impossible to tell which pillar is the vertical of the cross or which staff of the tester is the horizontal. Even more apparently, the crooked roof of the church makes the whole composition much less precise than that of the other frescos.
Indeed the space assigned to Saint Francis supporting the Basilica interferes on that assigned to the Pope, nearly falling on it. The pillars of the bed that stand between the two areas are not a well-defined border and even though the figure of Saint Francis is tangent to them and does not go beyond the first pillar, the idea that the painter conveys is very close to what should have been the Pope's dream: the Basilica seems to be falling over him and the Saint is stopping the fall by supporting it.
In conclusion we can say that in spite of the existence of two areas assigned to the two main characters, the Pope and Saint Francis, these portions of the panel are neither well-defined nor symmetrical to each other. This is not a sign of regression in my opinion because it suggests that the painter is on a new way of painting heading for the.
unity of the scene.

SEVENTH EPISODE
(Seventh of the First Series)

When the Pope approves the Rule and assigns the mission to preach penance allowing the tonsure for the friars that went with the Saint so that they would spread the Word of God.

LM 3,10- 1c33- 2c17- 3Cp51- AP 36.

This is one of the most important episodes in the history of Franciscanism. The Pope makes the movement lawful, which may also mean that he simply acknowledges its existence: from a formal point of view authorities give permission or recognition even when they merely acquiesce or let be. In this case the sources refer to a permission by word of mouth, nearly a period of trial which is possible on consideration of the fact that the Rule was written and discussed at large only later on.
Tommaso da Celano does not mention the Rule in either biography, whereas Saint Bonaventura has the Pope "approve" the Rule since Saint Francis "wrote in simple words a formula of life for himself and his friars". Both Vita Prima and Leggenda dei Tre Compagni record the attendance of the whole Order. Giotto paints twelve, including Saint Francis following the Anonimo Perugino and possibly alluding to Christ and the Apostles.
The most conspicuous image of this fresco is the Pope's, who is portrayed in a blessing posture with his right hand over Saint Francis while his left is handing a parchment to him, apparently the approved Rule of the Order. Giotto must be following here the official biography, since the friars are also wearing the tonsure mentioned by Saint Bonaventura as a sign of not belonging to the lay jurisdiction anylonger. This also suggests that since the earliest contacts were established with the authorities, the Order had possessed a constitutional form which was not very dissimilar to the definitive Rule. This is obviously a defense against those who, in Giotto's times, invoked better accordance with the original rule. How could it have been otherwise in the main see of the now established Order?.
The analysis of this episode is complex. To start with, there are two distinct groups even if they are not viewed separately: on the left Francis and his friars and on the right the Pope and the prelates. Among these stand the two servants of the previous episode, which suggests that Giotto follows the narration that had the Saint brought in front of the Pope after the latter's premonitory dream- since the Pope himself had firstly rejected him. In fact the two servants only represent two witnesses to the dream or executors of the Pope's decrees, but in the context of the cycle their presence underlines a more important interposition in the history of the Order: the Divine will.
Since the Consistory must have been public- for no sources refer to secrecy- we can suppose that the prelate sitting next to the Pope and wearing a red mantle can be Santa Sabina's Cardinal and that the character standing right of the Pope could be the Bishop of Assisi. The sources refer to them as intermediaries that introduced Francis to the Pope, but here they appear within the group of the papal court.
The structure of the fresco clearly shows a separation between the newly born Order (on being accepted the Rule, the movement becomes an Order by right) and the prelates of the traditional hierarchy, their only bond being their subordination to the Pope. The image is clear: the Pope stands higher but the central figure is that of Saint Francis, to whom all looks are directed. The Saint is slightly separated from his own group, so that a series of converging lines may fall on him, from the right and from the left of the picture. The play with the looks is such that a bundle of beams departs from the friars to the Saint and from there it is directed to the Pope, which at the same time highlights the unity of the Order and the centrality of the Saint.
Fom the point of view of perspective the composition of this fresco presents a novelty: the space is unitary. Even if groups of characters are still obviously discernible, there is a larger unit that includes all of them. The three walls that surround the scene and the arcade supporting a hypothetical coffer ceiling mark the bounds of this space.
The perspective makes the side walls converge towards the back wall and shows the inner part of the three little arches farther and adherent to it, wheras the outward part of the arcade is closer and larger. Thus the three arches form a series of barrel vaults whose surface is all visible. Moreover if the horizontal lines of the two side walls had not been kept parallel the perspective would have been very similar to a Renaissance central perspective. But this is not the case yet and there is only one viewpoint for the two sidewalls and two different directrixes diverging with a rather wide angle.
The ceiling, which could have been theoretically visible, is missing and therefore there is no element of convergence for the lines with respect to a central line, perpendicular to the back wall in perspective and vertical in the execution of the drawing. But it is too early for such an advanced step and the new unity of spatiality is already a leap forward.
A final remark is about a detail: the decoration of the upper arches is of the mosaic sort and the walls are covered with heavy oriental curtains, which were used in rich houses also for thermic reasons, that is for their non-conductivity.

EIGHTH EPISODE
(First of the First Pair of the Second Series)

As the Blessed Francis was praying in a hovel (by the Bishop's seat in Assisi) and being physically away from his friars at the hovel outside the town (at Rivotorto),he was seen on a chariot of fire brightly wander about the house round midnight and the hovel lit up as it were day for which reason those who were awake were amazed and those who were asleep woke up and were frightened.

LM 4,4- 1c 47.

The sources refer to this episode as a reward (Tommaso da Celano), or as a sign of the Divine Will (Saint Bonaventura) which chose Francis as a new Elijiah, the "chariot and charioteer" of the spiritual men. In the original version the chariot brings an igneous globe and Saint Bonaventura adds that the spiritual light coming from the soul of the Blessed Francis allows the friars to see into each other's mind, thus causing a premonition of Paradise and a better confidence among the members of the community.
Giotto alters several elements of the episode, the most important being the portrayal of the Saint, specially bright on this occasion, on the chariot instead of the globe so that the image could be clearer to the pilgrims. Also the chariot does not wander about the house, but over it making the friars witnesses to the miracle rather than co-protagonists of the episode and as a consequence the setting must be modified. The house, one closed space in the sources, is turned here into a small porch within which some friars sleep while others call them from the outside to watch the prodigy.
Since the analysis of the previous fresco has proved the conspicuous progress achieved by the painter as far as perspective drawing, we have to assume that there are other reasons for setting the scene in an open space than wanting to avoid the trouble of painting interiors. Nor does Giotto recur to stratagems like the break in the wall of San Damiano's. It then appears that Giotto chose to show the episode as a miraculous premonition of the role of the Saint as the new Elijiah and of his ascent to the Heavens in the Glory of God.
There are a number of technichal remarks that can be made about this fresco. The image is no longer divided into four and the chariot of fire is not placed symmetrically to the friars standing on the right and those sleeping on the left. Now when painting in fresco each layer of plaster dries very quickly and certainly Giotto's complex composition and outspread figures could not possibly be painted in one session.
There is a technique that exploits four different cartoons for the pouncing, which could explain the fact that the previous frescos were divided into four panels. Supposing the technique was practised at the time, the sinopites would coincide very skillfully on this fresco, allowing to paint figures closer. Alternatively, and more likely, supposing it unknown, and even admitting the usage of dry retouching for correction and addition, the ability at having parts painted at different times coincide is even greater.
There is definitely a new effort and skill in the arrangement of the work. The narrative elements are placed each in its own area for other reasons than technical. An important feature of the composition is the play of looks. Here, like in other panels, Giotto has the looks fix on each other: the viewer realizes that by following ideal lines and also thanks to the inclination of the heads.
One of this lines joins the friar in the middle of the sleeping group with the other inviting him out by his left arm. In addition, his right arm is in accordance with the left arm of the friar that is pointing to the chariot and both are ideally joined by a parallel to the line of the looks mentioned above. Thus the looks of those watching the fresco must eventually focus on the Saint, the ultimate object of the whole composition.
One final remark here about the way of exploiting spatiality concerns the shape of the front part of the chariot, which in a sort of V , results slightly bent outward. The figure of the Saint, nevertheless, is still utterly a profile.

NINTH EPISODE
(Second of the First Pair of the Second Series)

When a vision from the Heavens showed a friar many seats amongst which one higher in dignity and shining in every Glory and a voice said to him: "This seat belonged to a fallen angel and is now kept for humble Francis".

LM 6,6- 2c122,3- LP 23- sp60.

The episode is set by Giotto at the time of prayer when a friar, not daring disturb Francis, stays behind and sees the Thrones of Glory. An angel addresses him pointing to the magnificent central Throne with his left and to Saint Francis with his right.
In fact the sources never mention an angel, and two of them (Legenda Perusina and Speculum Perfectionis) emphasize the spiritual character of the vision by adding a quotation from Saint Paul: "whether within the body or outside it only God knows".
Giotto embodies the voice in an angel just like he had done with Christ in the episode of the Dream of the Palace so that people could understand that the relationship between the Saint and the Throne was God's decree and not an arbitrary inference of the painter or of the friars.
Like for other frescos where the sense becomes clear thanks to the relations that the lines ideally joining looks and arms create between characters, this fresco can thus be interpreted without further information.
Differently from the sources, Giotto's fresco does not portray the church where the vision takes place. Its prodigious character is thus stressed and the composition focusses on the triangle that the threee figures form.
The characters are set against a uniform light blue background where the five thrones float in a space where geometrical distances do not matter (Noteworthy for specialists of the field are the wooden fabric of the thrones and the special padding of the seats).
The only hint to the church is an altar with a canopy over it in the shape of a small apse.But it does not strike the imagination and its function is to highlight by contrasts of color -white and blue- the value of the dominating sky.
The altar is laid on steps, on the lower of which the Saint is kneeling. This is the bare minimum to suggest that the episode occurred in a church. Simplifying and saving work seem to be the rules of this fresco.
The upper part of the altar is viewed from below and is drawn on parallel lines leftwards, wheras the thrones are drawn rightwards, which indicates a deliberate separation of the two images.
The altar itself is viewed from above; its sides converging towards the front as well as the steps and the wooden predella.
The whole altar is drawn in a way that seems to open the space from the back to the foreground to include the three main figures. Its right side is viisible whereas of the thrones we see the left side. In conclusion the setting seems to be drawn on a series of visual and perspective differences, that someway make sense.
The three figures are more detailed and the friar's and the Saint's in particular are endowed with a certain elegance, their countour suggesting those of miniated figures- another evidence of the well-known relations between the painting and the miniature of this age. The friar's and the Saint's figures possess movement and draping, the faces are not mere profiles and respect proportions- the Saint is here painted as a small man like in written descriptions, but of course Giotto underlines the importance by placing him on a slightly higher level and in a central position.
The angel, that cannot be less fundamental than the Saint from the standpoint of iconology, is isolated and placed in the middle of the blue background, against which he stands out but also blurs with his white and bluish wings.
This episode like the previous is a prophecy, this time involving the Saint in the first place and the Order in the second. The history of the Order lives through the Saint and its future depends on the special position that its founder has in the history of Salvation.
The message directed to the pilgrims of the Jubilee of 1300 was that Saint Francis was the greatest of all Saints, worth replacing Lucifer on the nearest Throne to perfection.
Thanks to this unique blessing, Francis achieves a special authority over the Order which is emphasized in this image.
Differently from the Approval of the Rule, where the collective moment was the subject of the fresco, here the focus is on the Saint's Glory in the Heavens (which on the other hand had already been promised in the episode of the Palace with the arms).
Summing up, this first pair of frescos establishes the principles of the new iconography: the glory of Saint Francis is the Glory of the Order and the friars, ever present in the scenes, represent the body of which the Saint is the head.

TENTH EPISODE
(First of the Second Pair of the Second Series)

When the Blessed Francis saw a multitude of rejoicing demons over the town of Arezzo and said to his follower Silvester ( who was a priest) : " Go, and in the name of God, shouting by the walls, drive out the demons" and as in obedience he shouted, the demons fled and suddenly there was peace.

LM 6,9- 2c 108- LP 81.

This episode is a glorification of obedience, a virtue that Saint Francis considered the best proof of humility. Here obedience is expressed through the relationship between Saint Francis's command and Friar Silvester's execution. There are, however, different readings of the episode in the sources and the structural and iconological study that follows will ultimately not provide any decisive element to ascertain which influenced the painter most beside the official Legenda Maior.
Saint Bonaventura underlines that obedience is absolute, admitting no questions whatsoever: Silvester is "simple as a dove", showing "true obedience" when "executing orders". In Legenda Perusina too Friar Silvester is "a man of great Faith, extraordinary simplicity and purity" but he drives out the demons with the words " From God the Almighty and by virtue of the Saint Obedience of Francis' s order.." instead of "from God the Almighty and by order of our Father Francis" ( in Legenda Maior). In Legenda Perusina the notion of obedience as a virtue originated by the Saint is more similar to that of loyalty rather than of hierarchical authority.
There are obviously issues at stake within the Order as for these differences of interpretations and in fact only Tommaso da Celano, who wrote when the Order was still young, seems to highlight another aspect of the matter, namely the power of the Saint through his followers. Finally we will see that Giotto's fresco, though placing Francis in a corner, emphasizes the centrality of the Saint's figure.
The fresco repeats a scheme that has already been seen (in the Renunciation to the father's wealth): the picture is divided into two by a vertical slice of blue sky that here goes down to the ground while a horizontal line forms a cross at the height of the town walls and of the upper part of the first order of the church. This line is also marked by the height of Friar Silvester, whose hand is directed to the sky thus creating a connection with the supernatural, just like in the Renunciation.
The cross appears to be in the background -also figurately- since it takes shape behind the main characters. A diagonal that starts with the Saint's back and head, touches the friar's arms and ends over the roofs of the buildings the town, appears more in the foreground. As it finally directs the powerful looks of the Saint to the devils it eventually brings the message of power of the Saint's will through his friars.
The representation of the demons is interesting and telling about the composition of the work: there must have been different hands working on this panel, probably assistants, who lacking Giotto's direction applied outworn schemes to unfinished parts. This is likely to have happened for the shape of the demons, for the drawing of the houses with figures at the windows as witnesses to the episode and for the the fur (or feathers) covering the monstruous bodies. This image reminds of the bizantine draping of clothes that was common throughout the Middle Ages up to Cimabue's times. The magister, undoubtedly Giotto, must have taken care over details probably knowing these would impress the most. He may threfore be the author of the demons' wings and paws which are innovatively modelled on bats and hens in a naturalistic manner, let alone of their attitudes and faces which possess a peculiar "feel", and suggest the touch of genius.
As far as the town is concerned, this is conceived of in a medieval manner, the buildings being seen one over the other leaving no space in between. The curved walls are not a solved matter in Giotto's style yet, but they are somewhat relevant to the perspective of the whole image. A more effective role of perspective is played by the church on the left whereas none is done by the roofs of the buildings. Here the usual front-one side view is reduced to a two sides- no front view (with the corner close to the viewer). Up to this fresco the parallel sides of buildings had always been kept parallel. In this case, apart from the parallel lines of the roofing-tiles, the lines diverging from the corners highlight the spatial dimension. The fact that only the upper part of the town is painted also affects the illusion of depth.

ELEVENTH EPISODE
(Second of the Second Pair of the Second Series)

As the Blessed Francis, in order to testify to the faith of Christ, wanted to go into a big fire with the priests of the Sultan of Babylon ,but none of them wanted to go with him and fled away from the Saint's and the Sultan's presence.

LM 9,8- 1c57- Fior 24.

The episode is mainly drawn from Saint Bonaventura's Legenda Maior that highlights the priests' withdrawal from the test.
The structure of the fresco is given here as in other cases by the lines connecting looks and gestures. A triangle is formed by the lines joining the Sultan's open hand, inviting his priests to the test, their looks and the fire, which are the three vertexes. The Saint, in the middle of the image intercepts the Sultan's gesture and points to the fire and himself with his hands. The facial expression of the friar behind him shifts the viewer's looks back to the priests, thus closing the lines of relationships between the characters, whichever the starting point.
The composition of these ideal lines is almost on one plan which has little depth and is divided into areas by the three groups of characters: the priests on the left, the friars in the centre, and the Sultan with his court on the right. The space behind them does not follow the tripartition. There is actually coincidence between the friars and the priests and the pillars of the tribune behind them and similarly between the Sultan and the baldachin. However, in general terms, we can say that two architecture units correspond to three groups of people and that the empty cesure is not in the centre.
Moreover, the two buildings are not oriented in the same way, which is evident if we watch the lacunars. The tribune is viewed from the left and its upper part, which is open at the back, wide and deep, projects over the Saint. The baldachin is viewed from the right jutting over the Sultan , but this space is smaller, narrow, and rather inclined and decentred.
The two characters are treated differently and the Sultan is belittled by Giotto's composition. In addition, the priests are placed in a corner, which seems to emphasize their gesture of fleeing: they vanish from the story just like their position- a sort of vanishing point- suggests.
This episode stresses the "power" of the Saint's word and shows that the unwillingness or rejection to opening one's heart can cause its inefficacy. This relatively unsuccessful episode is represented with no fear it could be interpreted as a failure. Miracles and extraordinary facts are not necessary elements of Franciscanism, whose strength lies in the Word, that is the Word of Christ, and in the example that the truth must always be proclaimed even in difficult situations.
Later, however, in the Little Flowers, it is suggested that the Saint could have gone through the fire and that the Sultan was secretely converted to Christianism.
A few words should be spent about the representation of the Sultan: his dignity is adequately respected with an obvious higher position and his court around him according to an iconography that will become established during the 15th century. The fact that he was a non-Christian sovereign does not diminish his kingly status. In fact already in Sacchetti's short stories the Saladin is described in the same manner as a knight or a king of the Frankish legends would have been. Less specifically, the light literature of the time did not tend to give prominence to the Christian world especially as Italy was open to trade with the Oriental world.
It is interesting to note here that the fact that Giotto was not capable of conceiving of Oriental architecture and therefore availed himself of the schemes of European Gothic was unimportant for the success of a representation. At the time the function of architecture in a painting was mainly symbolical of spatiality, with elements drawn from the surrounding and a view to create a sort of furnishing for a scene. If the opportunity of painting from life came up, then the artist would seize on that, but this was not considered logically necessary in those days though it gradually grew to be. For instance in the Prophecy of the Simple Man, the first fresco of the cycle, the representation of the square of Assisi is exteremely accurate, which suggests a later date for this panel which can be however supported also by other stylistic remarks.

TWELFTH EPISODE
(First of the Third Pair of the Second Series)

The Blessed Francis, while one day he was fervently praying, was seen by the friars lifted in the air, his arms held up and the body wrapped up by a most shining cloud.

LM 10,4- 2c95.

The figure of Saint Francis lifted up in the air and wrapped by a very bright small cloud and his arms stretched to form a cross is drawn from Legenda Maior, where the author also refers to the friars that saw him and adds that "he was revealed the hidden secrets of divine wisdom". This episode highlights the process of being uplifted towards Christ, which had been prophesied in the episode of San Damiano when the Saint had welcome the Passion of Christ. The Nativity Scene of Greccio and the Stigmatas will be the next two fundamental steps of this process.
According to Saint Bonaventura, the episode occurred in a solitary place in the woods, which causes a problem of interpretation of Giotto's fresco. Can the walls of the town be interpreted according to negative logic, i.e. to mean that the episode took place outside the town, as the trees sketched on the right part of the panel may also suggest ? It seems awkward, though, that the two settings should be regarded respectively as the place outside and within which the event is located. All the more so since in the Driving Out the Demons from Arezzo the walls denote that the episode takes place in front of those very walls. Another explanation could be that two different circumstances merge into one, the other being when the Saint went through the whole Borgo San Sepolcro in a state of ecstasy, unaware of what was happening.
The composition is divided into four by the figure of the Saint. This division is even more evident because of the color of the sky that has faded differently just following the line that joins the hands of the Saint, touches his head and ends on the cornice below the towers of the town. The vertical is signalled by the Saint himself, so as to have the towers and buildings of the town on the upper left, the four friars witnessing to the scene on the lower left, a blessing Christ on the upper right and a mountain covered with trees on the lower left.
The friars are four, the double of the number required for a legal act, which has already been considered for the episode of the Simple Man. Saint Francis'arms are stretched out in the shape of a cross, also suggesting an image of crucifixion and therefore reproposing the figure of the Alter Christus . The icon of the bright white cloud with four upward plumes is not clear. One idea is that the plumes stand for the Gospels that pushed the Saint to the imitation of Christ, but this is just a hypothesis. What is certain is their stylistic peculiar function of giving body and volume to the cloud.
The play with ideal lines is unequivocal: a diagonal joins Christ's, the Saint's and the closer friars' looks. The interpretation is the following: through the Saint's example, the Order can reach Christ, here partially hidden behind a bright shield, apparently revealing himself only to Francis who differently from the viewer can see beyond the shield. However this invitation to spatial and psychological participation innovates the role of the viewer.
This way of drawing the viewer into the picture, the cloud effect, the fact that the lines of the building tend to be converging rather than parallel, and a certain sculptural quality of the friars' clothes realized through shading, all these elements suggest a new study of depth. Nevertheless these elements are not part of a whole new way of conceiving of spatiality and are limited within their individual separate spaces, differently from other frescos of the cycle such as the Approval of the Rule where the effect is of spatial unity.
It must be borne in mind that the fresco technique often compelled the painters to strive to have parts worked on at the same time coincide, namely the blue sky and the yellow walls of this fresco. In fact the bits of the town that are visible behind the friars' heads are not detailed and the color is not varied whereas its upper part is more interesting.

THIRTEENTH EPISODE
(Second of the Third Pair of the Second Series)

As the Blessed Francis in memory of the Nativity of Christ, asked for a crèche to be prepared. He had hay brought and an ox and an ass, then he preached on the Nativity of the Poor King and as the Blessed man was praying, a knight saw the Christ Child in the place of that brought by the Saint.

LM 10,7- 1c 84,87.

The most significant divergence from the sources is the setting of the episode. Both Saint Bonaventura and Tommaso da Celano recount the fact as being occurred in a stable in the woods, whereas Giotto locates it in a Church. The difference is important: Saint Bonaventura reports that the Saint had asked the Pope (and not the Bishop) for permission to to say Mass outside a consecrated place, underlining that only the Pope is over the Order. But as the incident was rare, it is possible that a more traditional version was preferred here.
The manger is therefore changed into a storied coffer and the animals are smaller than they would be in reality almost as if they were dolls of a crèche. The reason for this change of the setting could be that Giotto did not want to show the Nativity of Christ as crudely as Saint Francis had done. Whereas the Saint's intention was to be realistic, Giotto's was to bring the representation back under the moral authority of the Church, closer to the habitual way of making crèches.
The scene takes place on the left side of an altar surmounted by a high ciborium, on the side of an Iconostasis where the believers would not normally stand. Beyond the iconostasis, where it is open, several women are visible, whereas on the side of the scene there are only men: lay men, clergy and friars, among whom Saint Francis in a deacon's clothes. The other officiant looks at him piously.
It is difficult to establish which church is described here since the features of the setting are not detailed. Some critics suggest it may be the Basilica of Assisi, but since the iconostasis was abolished from Italian churches after the unification of Rites of the Council of Trent, the hypothesis is not valid despite the suggestive resemblance between this setting and the Lower Basilica. Similarly we can only ascribe the Crucifix on the iconostasis to a certain cultural context, but not identify it. Also noteworthy are a large number of lit candles, some on the altar, others on the open codex, on the lectern, and some longer ones on the ambo visible on the left, recalling the joyous atmosphere and rites of that special night.
The fresco probably describes the moment when the gentleman who had prepared the crèche according to Saint Francis's indications saw him holding the Child, the "Puer valde formosus" of Tommaso da Celano's text. Most people are not watching Saint Francis and apart from the friars obviously singing with their mouths open wide, all appear to be in a moment of compunction, presumably the elevation, the priest holding a chalice in his hands. Only one character raises his hand whether in sign of amazement or participation we cannot guess- this could be the knight referred to in the sources.
An interesting detail is the sheet of paper sticked with seals on the wooden base of the support of the open codex, all lit with candles. Two columns of lines all beginning with a capital letter are visible and no more detailed reading is possible because of the state of preservation of the fresco. Whether the Rule or the papal dispensation, this paper shows a realistic intent which differentiates this panel from others, such as the Preaching in front of the Sultan, where a dramatic effect was sought. Some details are indeed excessively realistic in this fresco, for instance the series of hollows and pins that support the base of the codex allowing its orientation or the parqueting behind the Crucifix board.
There is a special study of the rules of perspective in these details: for instance the gradient of the Crucifix, or the upper part of the cornice of the Iconostasis whose little props are viewed from the right on the left and from the left on the right. It is also interesting to notice that the only prop viewed frontally with neither side visible is not exactly in the centre of the panel, but at the level of the two friars that sing on the left and more precisely of the upper left corner of the panel of the Iconostasis behind the friar standing more to the right. In this way the point of view is slightly shifted from the geometric centre to the group of people on the left so that, for instance, the staff of the Crucifix is seen at the right of the Crucifix itself.
It seems that here for the first time in the history of painting, the author sought to identify a vanishing point. This is placed rather high, on the bulge of the back wall, coinciding with the point that has been discussed above, or sligtly below that, in the area above the head of the character in a blue hat between the two standing friars. In fact the upper part of the women's veils is not visible, whereas it is possible to see the lower part of the base of the codex and the upper part of the horizontal hinge on it. Therefore the line of the horizontal plane where we can identify the vanishing point must be over the men's hair and just below the women's veil; for the vertical plane we already identified the bulge of the wall.
The scene does not bring to mind the images of poverty and simplicity that the Saint probably meant with his representation of the Nativity Scene. Besides the precious carpet in front of the altar, the clothes of the characters are typical of the upper class of the time and the clergy, including the Saint, are all dressed in ornated paraments. On this occasion the regular clergy and the members of the religious Order stand together, the friars a little higher so that their open mouths can be seen. The corners of a stall, probably of the choir are visible that elevate the friars both on the left and on the right of the scene. Still to the right there are two more laymen.
The composure of all these characters does not allow to identify them, but it now appears obvious that Giotto's intention was not the portrayal of the episode told in the literary sources, but the celebration of Saint Francis as the one who started the crèche tradition. This was now widespread through Italy and the message to the pilgrim was that it belonged in some ways to Franciscanism. In fact in Saint Bonaventura's days the custom had become popular and he therefore took care in referring to a papal permission whereas in other cases he found the origin of Francis's deeds in God only and directly.
On the other hand it had to be underlined that the Church Hierarchy accepted and supported the representation of the Nativity Scene, which also heightened its iconographic value. In fact many Franciscan representational ways had found opposition both in Italy and in Europe and finding a vast iconography that could respond to the new needs of the movement was an important issue of the movement. The Stigmatas were not the sole iconographic problem.
In conclusion, we can say that this is the first fresco of the series where a real unity of spatiality is achieved. In the others either each narrative element had its individual spatiality or when there was one space, the characters are in some way placed in opposing groups. Here the unity of perspective seems to allude to a unity of the Christian community, who as a whole attunes to the attitudes of Franciscanism, such as composure and humility. Moreover here the composition of the fresco and the architecture of the scene do not clash and the Iconostasis seems to serve the peculiar function of pushing the scene towards the viewer, which has a remarkable psychological result.

FOURTEENTH EPISODE
(First of the Fourth Pair of the Second Series)

As the Blessed Francis was riding up a mountain on a poor man's ass since this man was infirm and dying of thirst, by praying, he made water gush out of a rock where it had never been seen before nor was anymore since then.

LM 7,12 -2c46- 3c15.

The first meaning of this fresco is rather evident in its comparison with the Gospel image of the flowing water (John, 4,1: 7,38). An Alter Christus Saint Francis intercedes with God and saves the life of the poor peasant going with him. The message to the pilgrims is metaphorical and refers to the life of the soul, which is saved by following the Saint's preaching.
Saint Bonaventura stresses the element of intercession. The two previous episodes had showed the special favor of God enjoyed by the Saint. Here the writer stresses how important the Saint's prayer is, even more than his word, since the latter had an effect on the demons of Arezzo, but not on the Sultan's heart. The Saint asks for a Grace that God immediately grants him: for the first time the Saint is presented as one who obtains Graces thanks to the possibility of being heard by God or better to the favor that God grants him by hearing his prayers.
The image of a Saint granting himself Graces is popular in Italy as the ex-Voto custom proves. Therefore it is not surprising that Francis is here presented as a dispenser of Graces. However this faculty is ascribed to him when still alive, which underlines Francis's special status among all Saints, having he reached and gone beyond the point the others achieved only after death. The special favor enjoyed by the Saint is also confirmed by the parallel with the Bible narration of Moses making water gush out of a rock for his people.
The emphasis of all literary sources seems to be on the detail of the water disappearing soon after the peasant had quenched his thirst. A proof of the mentality of the people of those times who saw the most wondrous miracle in this, the episode also shows that the Franciscan message both in the literary and in the visual sources, highlighted the type of conduct that Francis led and preached rather than the miracle itself. Giotto obviously focusses on the central moment of the episode and portrays Francis praying and the peasant drinking. Two friars stand to witness to the fact and the indissoluble presence of the Order.
The structure of the composition is similar to that of the Gift of the Cloak. Two mountains, one on the left and one on the right, divide the upper part into two areas between which appears a V-shaped portion of sky, whose vertex is nearly coincident with Francis's figure. However, in this case, the Saint is not central between the two mountains, nor are these isolated from the foreground figures.
The mountain on the right slopes down along two curves that highlight the passage from the vertical to the horizontal plan and thhus give the impression of a uphill path. The upper curve, contributing to the sky outline, and covered only for a very short tract by the Saint's head, nearly joins the two mountains. The lower, starting on the right flank of the mountain, goes down behind the Saint and the friars. The edges of the rocks are all angular and sharp with the vertical parts darker than the horizontal ones as if the sun did not shine on them and to stress that the setting is all precipices and gorges.
The Saint is in the middle of the scene: he is kneeling, with his arms stretched up towards the sky in an act of prayer and following and repeating the upper curve of the mountain slope. The head is not in the centre of the area of the sky probably to avoid a sense of immobility that would have resulted of that composition. The elected composition, instead, highlights the upward tension of the figure and alludes to the journey towards perfection of the Saint.
The other characters are placed on different plans, a high step separating the path where the Saint is situated from a horizontal rocky strip where the two friars stand, which a bit further also appears vertical to show that there is still mountain below. The rocky step allows Giotto to place Francis on an upper location despite him being on his knees. Finally, the peasant is placed in a rocky triangle that covers an area between the path and the strip, below the Saint and a little upper the friars.
Summing up, the composition of this fresco is not unitary: even though the characters are not located in separate areas, with different points of view, still the narrative elements (the Saint, the friars, the peasant) all have their appointed place. These observations, together with the invaluable stylistic analysis, may help dating this fresco.

FIFTEENTH EPISODE
(Second of the Fourth Pair of the Second Series)

The Blessed Francis, as he was going to Bevagna, preached to many birds, which, excited with joy, stretched their necks, flapped their wings, opened their beaks and touched his cowl; and all these things were seen by his followers waiting on the way.

LM 12,3- 1c58-3c20- Fior 16.

As we consider the fourteen central frescos as seven groups of pairs, this episode is coupled with the Water Gushing out of the Rock. The two panels, placed on the sides of the portal midway of the whole cycle, show the Saint working wonders on Nature rather than Mankind. The special importance of Nature does not only mirror a new artistic feeling of Giotto's team; it had been a peculiar feature of Franciscanism for dozens of years. Another link is that in the previous panel the Saint heard the prayers of the one who was leading him on the wordly way whereas here he is heard by the birds-followers that are guided by him on the way to heavenly life. This play of parallel oppositions was typically medioeval and although historical remarks are beyond the scope of this work, the influence of this episode on the popular iconography of the Saint should be taken into consideration.
For a better understanding of this episode and its characters we should consider the literary sources: the episode follows the Saint's decision to devote himself to preaching, after he had been querying the Holy Spirit. Here the preaching is addressed to birds, that in allegorical form stand for the Saint's followers, as is clearly expressed in Saint Bonaventura's version but also in a later reference, the Little Flowers, whose earliest source in Latin , the Acta, is about thirty years later than Giotto's work. The Little Flowers mirror the popular worship of the Saint in the late 14th century; although there is no evidence of direct influence, both this episode and the previous have a particular relevance in the text. Number XVI is the one related to the fresco under exam: it ends with an open parallel between the Franciscan friars and the birds of the sky that with no wealth of their own only trust in Providence.
The scene focusses on the foreground image of the birds thronging round the Saint for protection: the Saint preaches to the birds in the ways described in the literary sources: he leans over them, and they gather in a group towards him. The visual effect is heightened by the tree bowing over them almost closing the space and pushing them towards the Saint. The background is deliberately distant and separated from the main scene, also owing to the choice of color: a prevailing blue contrasting with the warm colors of the earth.
The structure of the composition is such that the body of the Saint is placed on the left wheras his head appears almost in the middle of the panel thus separated from the leafy fronds of the tree behind him and from the friar going with him. A curve follows the Saint's back from the ground to the aureole, which also highlights the Saint's head. The figure of Saint Francis forms an arch with the tree on the right, almost a window of the Basilica, for the space inbetween is a wide open view in the distance. Contrasting with this image, the left part of the fresco is marked by the vertical figures of the friar and the trees behind him. Though part of the story, the friar is left isolated from the main structure of the fresco, him being a spectator and the Saint being the protagonist of the episode.
In sum, although there are supportive arguments for considering the birds a metaphor for the friars of the Order, I believe that for one thing no hint to indecisions appears in Giotto's frescos, which was part of Saint Bonaventura's narration and thesis. Secondly there is no reason why we cannot consider the followers a more general category: just like Christ's exhortation to be like birds of the sky, Francis's preaching can be addressed to everybody.

SIXTEENTH EPISODE
(First of the Fifth Pair of the Second Series)

When the Blessed Francis impetrated the salvation of a knight of Celano, who piously had invited him to lunch and after confessing himself and arranging things for his house, while the others were about to sit down for lunch, suddenly expired,God resting his soul.

LM 11,4- 3c41.

In Trattato dei Miracoli this episode follows another episode about a man who was raised from the dead so that he could confess himself and in both cases Tommaso da Celano, besides stressing the importance of confession and the special favor of God enjoyed by the Saint, aims at showing the blessing that people acquire when they welcome the Franciscan Friars.
Legenda Maior provides a different context, since the episode follows an example of the Prophetic Spirit of the Saint, which was unheard on the occasion of his journey to the Holy Land, with terrible consequences, which is underlined by Bonaventura. In both cases Saint Francis's carisma is exalted; however the writer still undelines the merits gained through offering hospitality to Franciscan friars. In fact the next episode in his book deals with the punishment of an ungrateful canon. Indeed these episodes all concern the attitude that people should have towards the Saint and the Order that he founded. They aim at educating the pilgrims about the values of benevolence and confidence.
This panel is subdivided into two parts. On the left there is the Saint and the friar that accompanied him (we have to bring in mind that Francis was not a priest and therefore he could not confess). On the right there is the dead man, surrounded by his friends and the women of the house. The two parts are subdivided by the lower part of one of the two pillars supporting a balcony jutting over the laid table, behind which the Saint and the friar are placed.
The pillars are curved forward forming a lobar arch in order to support the balcony more efficaciously. It should be noted that this part of the ceiling is curved as well, despite the fact of keeping the coffered decoration. The strangest thing is that the pillar on the left is not placed at the end of the balcony but shifted inward, which makes it jutting without having the lobar shape of the part of the ceiling between the two pillars. The part of the wall on the left has the same decorative pattern as the pillar on the upper and central part and is also ornated with a flowery pattern.
This would appear awkward if there was not a structural problem here: the privileged space assigned to the Saint and the friar behind the table, that is the space included between the two pillars, does not fully cover the space of the whole table and its footboard and the friar appears tangent to the left pillar. Why does not the pillar on the left close the space as it would be reasonable?.
Indeed all the other features appear regular: the Saint is standing to acquire importance and he is placed in the middle of the space between the left border of the whole frescoi and a semi-column protruding from the wall of the Basilica. This semi-column is painted with the same blue that covers the background of the fresco so as to disappear from the point of view of the image. Yet it preserves its structural importance, which explains the apparently illogical structure of the fresco: the priviliged space is not bound within the balcony, but it is marked by two external elements: the frame of the fresco and the semi-column of the Basilica.
The composition of the image is clear: the dead man is placed on the right and is surrounded by mournful men and women, the latter wearing their hair loose as a sign of mourning. Between this group and the friars on the left a man attests the miracle and by pointing to the Saint with one hand and to the dead man with the other lets the pilgrims connect the two parts of the scene. The left hand of this man, so close to the Saint's, is painted very similarly to it and they both suggest something like: "Here, look...!".
In this fresco the Saint shares his preminence with the dead man since, although not central, the latter is the focus of the looks of many characters, which creates ideal lines driving the viewers' looks to him. One of the highest moments of drama is reached through the image of the woman who holds the body and fixes her eyes on the dead man's eyes: the one-way dialogue with the dead!.
One last consideration about the figures of the image brings back the technical subject: while some characters appear under the semi-column, the man attesting the miracle is placed according to the pictorial subdivision of the fresco, that is not under the semi-column, but shifted to the left as if the space of the Saint was limited by the balcony, above and on the sides. In fact the balcony appears tangent to the semi-column, but the space thus limited is excessively shifted to the left. To reduce this effect and in order to place the Saint in the middle of the semi-column and the frame of the fresco, the pillar on the left is shifted inwards. The semi-column, though painted in blue, was still conspicuous because of ots tri-dimensional features. However the painter decided to place the group on the right as left as the pillar of the balcony, thus having some characters under the semi-column.
The impression one gets is that the painter did not manage to come to a full solution to this structural problem and the result appears a compromise. We do not know whether this fresco is the final result of many corrections or the initial intuitive but uncertain solution to the technical question that the presence of the semi-column raised; however this appears to be the least clear fresco of the cycle from the viewpoint of technical analysis.

SEVENTEENTH EPISODE
(Second of the Fifth Pair of the Second Series)

When the Blessed Francis in front of His Lordship the Pope and his Cardinals preached so piously and with such force that it became apparent that he was talking words of divine inspiration rather than of human wisdom.

LM 12,7 -1c73-2c25.

This episode, like the previous, is about the Saint's prophetic spirit. Besides the ability to foresee the future this also implies the fact of speaking inspired by the Holy Ghost.
Before we analyze the choice of the friars and the painters as regards the ways of this representation, we must take into account the fact that preaching in front of the Pope was an honor and a recognition of exceptional rhetorical and theological experience. In fact in those times there was a special charge at court for the purpose.
The main sources for the fresco are the two lives by Tommaso da Celano and Saint Bonaventura's Legenda Maior. Both authours refer to Francis's shyness and difficulty of speech that is overcome only invoking God's intervention. Tommaso da Celano, in particular, describes the Saint carried away by his preaching and restless, "almost jumping".
He then underlines the prophetic aspect of the incident and describes the Holy Spirit as blowing over the Saint inspiring him to ask the Pope, and the latter to give him Cardinal Ugolino as a patron for the Order.
The story then offers the opportunity to underline the loyalty of the Order to the Pope and at the same time the fact that its birth and constitution were wanted and arranged beforehand by God. Saint Bonaventura groups the episode with a series of wonders, and presents it in a short narration as a miracle of the Holy Spirit.
The fresco has a different standpoint: Saint Francis looks like a Doctor of the Church that could nearly teach the Pope who is portrayed in a very attentive attitude together with the Cardinals. Could this be a hint to a certain theological autonomy being expressed by the Order?
What is certain is the fact that the fresco includes a friar that does not appear in the sources in order to preserve the indissoluble link between the Saint and the order and that the Saint points to himself as to suggest that the topic of the sermon concerns him and/or his work, but in fact to signal to the viewer that the attention of the Pope and the Cardinals is directed to him.
This effect is also well realized through the composition of the fresco, which is clear and rational, the columns dividing the space and the ideal lines joining the looks of the Pope and of the Cardinals with the Saint's eyes.
The characters that cannot look straight at the Saint, do not either look at the Pope, but are portrayed absorbed in meditation probably aroused by the Saint's sermon. This attitude excludes the thesis that Saint Francis's gesture with the hand could be interpreted as a reply-question to the Pope's request to speak, going "Me?".
Considering this should be a consistory it appears strange that only one of the clergy is wearing a cardinal's hat. This character, the first on the right, must be Cardinal Ugolino, who had brought Saint Francis in front of the Pope and had become the patron of the Order at the Saint's request. He is sitting, of course, at a lower height than the Pope and Saint Francis, but he is the main character of the portion of space where he is placed.
In fact, the fresco is divided by the two front columns into three areas, one for each protagonist of the story and the cardinal is indeed one of the main characters of this episode.
A few final considerations follow from what has just been said: the notion of spatiality here is fundamentally unitary and apart from a slight incoherence in drawing the Pope's pedestal, this is one of the most accurate frescos as far as spatial and perspective construction are concerned. The characters are all placed within a space enclosed on three sides by a heavy draping - which was used as a non-conducting material at the time.
The fourth wall is open, of course, but also limited by the two front columns that separate the space assigned to the Saint from that assigned to the Pope and the Cardinals.
Differently from earlier frescos that also presented a division into three parts, this panel can be considered a triptych, whose unity is preserved by the composition. Francis is not in the middle of the semi-circle of cardinals as it could have more simply been, but on the left, maybe because it would have been rather unseemly to paint a member of the clergy in a concealed or not very visible position.
On the other hand, the Pope, though nearly central, addresses his looks and the viewer's to the Saint thus making him the protagonist of the episode.

EIGHTEENTH EPISODE
(First of the Sixth Pair of the Second Series)

As the Blessed Anthony (of Padua) was giving a sermon about the Crucifix in the Chapter of Arles, the Blessed Francis, physically absent, appeared and stretching out his arms blessed the friars, as witnessed by a certain Monaldo: and the others felt immense joy.

LM 4,10- 1c48-3c3.

In Vita Prima by Tommaso da Celano the emphasis is on the Cross: the Saint is portrayed on the threshold, as if he is about to enter, uplifted in the air with his arms stretched out with a blessing gesture in the shape of a cross. In Trattato dei Miracoli friar Monaldo, who sees him first, describes the Saint with his arms stretched out like a Crucifix and the episode is included in a group of stories all showing a relation between the Saint and the Crucifixion. As the description of Francis is also morphologically similar to the image of Christ Crucified, the episode can be read as an anticipation of the well-known miracle of the Stigmatas, a unique privilege of the Saint. Legenda Maior emphasizes the relation between the Saint and the friars of the Order as he highlights the spiritual presence at the Chapter as a statement of truth for Saint Anthony's words. This sort of warranty also applies to all friars of the Order when they preach- the episode could be related to the previous where the Saint proves his rhetorical ability and shows his prophetic spirit in front of the Pope.
The two possible readings are interconnected since both present the Saint as an alter Christus, who with his human limits imitates Christ on his way to perfection and when he gets close to it, he appears to his friars like Christ did to his disciples after the Resurrection, and continues Christ's work by supporting and repairing the Church of Rome through the Order he founds. The climax of the process will be the miracle of the Stigmatas, a prize never granted to any other Saint.
The structure of this fresco is provided by the two windows and the door behind them in the middle. Saint Francis stands at the level of the side wall by which, on a lower plane, Saint Anthony is preaching. The painter had to find a compromise solution to the fact that the two Saints were both acclaimed: Saint Francis is obviously in a central position for his order, but the Saint of Padua has a special position as well. The other friars whether sitting or crouching on the floor are all below the line of the window-sill either in meditation or attentive to the words of the Saint.
The friar that first has the vision raises his face and with his look addresses the viewers' looks to the Saint. The other friars are all looking at Saint Anthony, except for those who for their position would have been excessively twisted. Another exception is the realistic portrayal of a friar who sits showing his back to the Saint and talking to another friar. In any way all of them show at least part of their faces.
A curious detail of this picture concerns the ceiling whose section is decorated where the plane of the ceiling meets the plane of the fresco, as if it needed some sort of embellishment. The decoration cannot belong to a porch-roof outside the main scene since there is one whose pillars are visible beyond the windows. Its beams are drawn almost on a vertical line to show the considerable inclination.
The space of this interior is not limited to the right by any precise boundary but it is by the vertical plane that ideally touches the rigid geometrical structure of the friars' bench. Here Giotto does not appear to be capable of creating a unitary closed space as he does in the fresco of the preaching in front of the Pope.
Another feature of this particular fresco concerns the horizontal lines of the upper part (the beams of the ceiling) and of the lower part (the bench and the pedestal where Saint Anthony is standing). They converge towards a central horizon line which more or less coincides with the window-sill. The cord of Francis's cowl is just over it whereas Saint Anthony's arms are just below it in perfect accordance with the required hierarchy.

NINETEENTH EPISODE
(Second of the Sixth Pair of the Second Series)

As the Blessed Francis was praying on a ridge of Mount Verna, he saw the image of Christ Crucified in a Seraph's shape, marking his own hands and feet and the right region of the ribs with the stigmatas of the Crucifixion and of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

LM 13,3- 1c 94/95 -3Cp 69- AP 46-LEE 5- Cons. 4.

The main reference for this episode appears to be the Considerations about the Sacred Stigmatas, enclosed at the end of the Little Flowers of Saint Francis, which were written later than the time of the frescos in point of fact. They are rich with details over this miracle, such as the poor houses for the Saint and Friar Leon and the cleave of the mountain. The earlier sources do not indulge over details about the Saint's movements with his companions on Mount Verna. In fact there are very few hints to the circumstances of the miracle. One reason for this could be the Saint's reluctance to speak about or show those holy marks.
These details are not wanted to understand the fresco the panels always having tituli while other explanations were given by word of mouth to the pilgrims when they visited the Basilica. If the emphasis was on the miracle, it would suffice to merely picture Saint Francis receiving the Stigmatas the way the earlier sources narrate it, and the pilgrims would have related the scene to the whole story. Since nothing in the cycle is either left to chance or unwanted and since there was no reason to devise such details as setting and characters it is more likely that Giotto's choice mirrored specific time and place circumstances that were told in a possible oral tale or legend which isno longer available as a source and from which also the Flowers drew inspiration.
Moreover if we compare the fresco with the picture that is kept at the Louvre, we see that the two poor houses are still there in the scene, even though the figure of Friar Leon disappears- which most likely happens for reasons of space. Apart from the considerations about authorship, it is important here to observe that even in a process of simplification such as this one from the fresco to the painting, the two houses are not considered superfluous elements, which confirms the hypothesis of a lost source or of a legend.
About the figure of the friar, he can either be a witness to the episode like in many other cases or his presence is wanted to attest the presence of the Order on such an important occasion. The latter idea is supported by the elected attitude of the friar: he is reading and he does not look at the main scene. Indeed not one source refers to any witness to the miracle, whereas the fact that the Saint was always accompanied by his early mates was an established tradition. The Considerations mention the name of Friar Leon.
As for the two little houses, they are obviously attributed to the two characters, since the Seraph is here identified with Christ, like the voice in the episode of the dream of the Palace. However it must be remarked that their shape is made similar to that of a church, and inside the left one the frontal of an altar is discernible- the pilgrims would anyway consider the two houses as holy places. Finally I believe that it would have been very naive to paint two houses only to justify the presence of Friar Leon, also on consideration of the fact that he is represented isolated from the site of the miracle.
Summing up, the scene of the fresco is very similar to the story in the Considerations. Unless we consider the latter a derivation from the fresco, which is very unlikely, they must both refer to a lost tradition.
When it comes to the analysis of the structure, the first thing to be observed is that although this fresco is not symmetrical, the masses appear well-balanced also from a tonal standpoint. A vertical line starts at the top of the mountain, passing between the Saint and the house behind him, made noticeable thanks to the parallel lines of trees. The line ends where the edge of the precipice is made hollow on that part of the ridge where the Saint is kneeling. To the right and to the left of this nearly invisible line the mountain stretches its flanks according to a very simple sketch.
The figure of the Saint is drawn following the lines of the landscape: the back is vertical like the external wall of the little house behind him, but he appears slightly bent to the right like the profile of the mountain. The edge of his cowl follows the curve of the ridge, its folds multiple like the broken line of the rocks.
To the right, in a lower position and separated by the cleavage, sits the other friar reading in meditation in front of the other house. Up above, against the intense blue of the sky, there is the Seraph with a Christ-like face. This image shows up because of its bright and red hues, that allude to the building behind Saint Francis, with which it is in tone-balance. There is in this fresco a special play with colors, since the balance between the two friars also serves the purpose of including Friar Leon in a scene to which he would have been otherwise external.
The most striking feature of this fresco is the presence of very thin lines joining the Seraph's sores (hands, feet and ribs) and the relative parts of Francis's body. Since the Seraph-Christ is placed higher than the Saint, the lines cross and the one reaching Francis's left foot, passes behind his body. This is an exception to the strategy of the cycle which is usually based on links created by ideal lines joining the looks of the characters.
In point of fact this particular fresco is the climax of the cycle, showing the highest point of perfection reached by the Saint. Francis achieves the maximum state of sanctity for a man thanks to the miracle of the Stigmatas that proves his perfect imitation of Christ. As we know, this was the most discussed miracle at the time of his canonization and the very iconography was long debated. Thence the exceptionality of Giotto's representational strategy here.
This episode is of capital importance for the Order, that becomes the guardian of an authentic way to perfection and imitation of Christ, also acquiring a unique position in the history of human salvation. The iconography must be clear and unequivocable: the Saint's Stigmatas were to be the specular image to those of Christ and the presence of the Order had to be attested to grant the continuity between the founder and his followers, which becomes a common feature of the cycle from the moment of the Approval of the Rule onwards. Moreover, all that concerns Saint Francis and the Order is sacred, e.g. the poor houses resembling chapels in this fresco.
By now the Saint has reached the climax of his earthly journey. The Franciscan Order will have to carry on his work.

TWENTIETH EPISODE
(First of the Seventh Pair of the Second Series)

As a friar, at the time of the Blessed Francis's transit, saw his soul ascend into Heaven in the shape of a brighest star.

LM 14,6- 1c 110-2c217- 3Cp 68.

The literary sources describe the scene as it was seen by a friar, Francis' soul ascending " like a star, as big as the moon, and bright like the sun, brought on a snow-white cloud" (Vita Prima).
Giotto's interpretation focusses on the very moment of the transit which covers the upper part of the fresco. But the painter modifies the scene by adding a number of angels (six are symmetrical to the image of the Saint's soul and four actually support the moon-like disc which in its turn appears over a cloud). Within the disc the Saint's bust shows the Stigmatas. This image looks like a painted medallion that the angels exhibit to the pilgrims.
The lower part of the fresco illustrates the mourning for the Saint's death. The mortal remains are surrounded by eleven friars, who are depicted in various attitudes of sorrow and compuction. One kisses Francis's left foot, while another is holding a hand, in accordance with Tommaso da Celano's description. The Stigmatas of the right hand and of the feet are clearly observable; the ribs' are also visible through an oblong cut in the Saint's cowl.
The central band is the fullest, with a crowd of friars, among whom one is wearing priestly paraments.
The reason for this subdivision into zones is the preoccupation for conveying the message that there was no particular or exclusive heir to the Saint's mission. All the friars enjoy such inheritance, those who were with the Saint at the time of the Approval of the Rule and those who came later, respectively represented in the lower and central part of the fresco. And Tommaso da Celano is quite clear over this issue, when he describes the blessing act of the now blind Francis, before he dies.
The question arose because some people interpreted the blessing as a personal address to friar Elijah, who in fact receives it for the whole Order. No one among the early mates and no one after them could claim this special role- the same goes for the question of the blessing to Bernardo da Chiaravalle. In fact, after Elijah's excommunication, this incident disappears from the narrations that follow Vita Prima, though the rest of the episode is kept.
The structure of the composition is similar to that of a Church, with the three areas much more connected than they appear at a first sight. Up above there is the Saint, like in a gothic rosette; in the middle there are the friars and the whole Order, in a semicircle, like an apse; below there is the Saint's body and the group of the founders of the Order, like in a Cathedral's crypt where the martyrs' and the Saints' bodies represent the foundations and pillars of the Church as well as of the people's faith. Finally the light which shines in the upper part of the fresco reminds of the light that in cathedrals symbolizes the Divine Grace in which people hope.
Even if this idea were not planned by the friars of Assisi or Giotto, the effect would be the same. The characters concentrate on the sides of the three different levels, so that the figure of Saint Francis becomes central though in a low horizontal position. A sort of emptiness is made into the centre of the image, the most hollow part of the semicircle formed by the friars which has the Saint's figure projected forward in the most central and visible position, with the exception of one friar, who partly covers the Saint's legs, closing the space to the viewer. Perhaps this first image of the Saint's death was to be bound within the Order's context.
One final remark concerns the tones of the fresco, which become lighter as the viewers' looks move upward. From the warm brown color of the friars'cowls and of the ground to the alternation of white and black clothes of the friars ( those who are officiating and those who are not), to the cold and deep blue of the background sky and the shining white of the angels, the movement is suggestive of the passage from the earthly death to the heavenly life.

TWENTY-FIRST EPISODE
(Second of the Seventh Pair of the Second Series)

When Friar Augustin was a Minister in Terra di Lavoro, ill and close to the end of his life and having long lost the power of speech, he cried: " Wait for me, Father, I shall come with thee" and once dead, he followed the Saint.
Moreover, the Bishop of Assisi, on the mountain of San Michele Arcangelo, saw the Blessed Francis, who said to him: " Here I go to the Heavens".

M 14,6- 2c 218/220.

This fresco completes the last pair of episodes of the central series. It includes two different wonders which are described as contemporaneous to the Saint's death and ascension and repeat the model of the friar's vision of the Saint's soul. Differently from the other pairs- all showing distinct aspects of the Saint's life- this pair presents one moment (the vision of the Soul) in three different places, two of which are fused in one panel.
Giotto follows the literary sources which all agree about this episode being told in connection to the previous vision, including the reference to those who witnessed the Saint's ascension. Therefore Time is unitary and Space is differentiated into three scenes, and, needless to say, three is the number of perfection. The two spaces of this fresco appear divergent, which stresses their separate position, though the time of the action is supposed to be one. Time and Space are fundamental notions for the development of Western thought and art and Giotto for the first time in european painting emphasizes this relationship.
This is also the first fresco that does not portray the Saint's corporal body, although the ideal connection with the previous panel makes it less obvious to the viewer, who must have been considered positively to follow the planned circuit.
This pair means that the Saint's death was immediately acknowledged as a fundamental moment for the Church, since the Saint's legacy concerns the closer Order (including the early followers and all the other friars) and the farther Church Hierarchy. The viewer, then, first sees the panel devoted to the Order, which has a bigger space, and then the panel devoted to the Secular Clergy, in its two representatives, namely Friar Augustin and the Bishop of Assisi. The panels also make the Order and the Secular Clergy of Assisi witness to the Blessed status of the Saint that lived and died in that tow.
The role of the Order appears uppermost here, higher than the clerical hierarchy. In fact the Order was always respectful of the authorities, which suggests that the intention of this panel was mainly to create cohesion within the Order rather than address the people external to it. Alternatively the Bishop's role as a witness would have been greater.
The figure of the Bishop calls to mind other episodes of the cycle: it was the Bishop who first accepted Francis into the world of the clergy, even though in an informal way, at the moment of the Renunciation to the father's riches. And his position here recalls that of the sixth episode not to mention the fact that in both panels the Bishop is portrayed in his paraments and in a rich bedroom to make him easy to recognize.
The two episodes showed in the panel differ considerably. The Bishop is alone in a room of which we only see a corner, part of the ceiling, and the outer part of a garret; the furnishing fabric and the Oriental carpet on the floor look very valuable but the position of the Bishop in a corner of a room whose dimensions are not explicit diminish his importance. On the contrary Friar Augustin's bed is surrounded by many brothers who show care and preoccupation till the moment of death, a sign of the community feeling that characterizes the Franciscan Order. The space is larger and the architecture is better defined. The room shows two inner and one outer side to the viewer, thus allowing a sense of largeness and depth Moreover the room looks more like a church than a monk's cell. Indeed this shape recalls the scene of the Saint's death.
From a technical point of view the architecture of this fresco is very interesting. The upper part of the architecture is accurate, featuring a number of marble statues on top of the pillars (supposedly four, though only three are visible) and two flights of stairs leading from the roofs of the two aisles to that of the central nave. The bell-tower in the background and the cross-vault add to the church-like appearance of the setting.
The vertical dimension is emphasized by the high thin pillars that let the scene be seen. The friars are all standing: there are four on each side of the bed and two in the middle closer to Friar Augustin. On each side two characters stand outside the architecture, thus creating a linking element between the spatiality of the scene and that of the real Basilica. This is very likely the first attempt at such an effect in the history of painting.
This is evident because the space of the cloister (or of the church) must be limited by a front wall as well as by the upper architecture that has been described. Even though the wall is missing to let the scene visible, all the characters should have been within the spatial limits of the two front pillars. This also strengthens the assumption that in the previous episode the viewers have been deliberately left out.
Let us consider another element that in previous frescos had been definetely neglected- the feet. Here, the friar on the right has feet that point to the edge of the fresco, and imaginatively step out of it, projecting the scene to the inner part of the Basilica, the pilgrims being on a lower plane.
The figure of Friar Augustin covers part of the narrow space between the two front pillars which is characterized by other geometrical features than the vertical lines: the horizontal bed, the inclination of Augustin's body and the movement of the friars' arms. In particular the friar on the left seems to address the viewer in a gesture of invitation to observe the scene, thus adding to the sense of depth of the panel.
The other scene is not as well projected towards the pilgrims, both because there is no frontal architectural reference and because the upper part of it seems to be located on a plane that lies behind the bell-tower of the first scene. Moreover this part of the scene is decoratively empty as compared to the complex architecture of the other setting, with its statues, arches, and rich decoration of which the lily on the pinnacle is the most striking element.
All this confirms the hypothesis that the plan of the cycle aimed at respecting the clerical hierarchies, but leaving them figuratively aside, with a marginal role in this prevalently " inner matter" that is the works of the Basilica of Assisi.

TWENTY-SECOND EPISODE
(First of the Third Series)

When the body of the Blessed Francis lay at the Porziuncola Master Geronimo, an acclaimed doctor and man of letters, removed the nails and with his own hands inspected the Saint's hands, feet and ribs.

LM 15,4.

The third series of the plan is devoted to the burial and canonization of the Saint. It may appear excessive to give such an importance to events that follow the death of the Saint, but at the time ceremonies and miracles were of great consequence. Moreover this part of the cycle wants to affirm the work and role of the Order after the Saint's death, because the whole community pursues the founder's aims and identifies itself with him. The miracle of the Stigmatas covers therefore the whole Order with a special sanctity.Obviously enough, the first fresco of the series testifies to the miracle of the Stigmatas.
The titulus is explanatory enough in this case. As for the literary sources, the episode is mentioned only in Legenda Maior and in the later Considerations on the Holy Stigmatas included in The Little Flowers. The most obvious remark here is the parallel between Master Geronimo and Saint Thomas, since both want to search the Stigmatas, which reinforces in fact the parallel between Saint Francis and Jesus Christ.
This is the first and greatest of the Saint's miracles, though it would be more correct to say that this is a miracle concerning the Saint. In any case, what is relevant here is that this is not merely a witness' eye, but rather a medical report. Master Geronimo is both a man of science and a man of faith - he is compared with an apostle- , but his role here is to give evidence for himself and everybody else. Indeed the exceptionality of this miracle made it the most discussed case of canonization, since it appeared as an excessive honor for a human being, though a Saint, to be so close to the Grace of God as to suffer the same wondrous sores as Jesus Christ. In some ways, considering the popular feel of the cult of Saints, the Clergy could even expect a sort of envy for this outstanding Saint.
The composition of this fresco is not singular reminding in particular that of the Nativity Scene of Greccio, because of a beam supporting a central Crucifix and two side panels, representing the Virgin with the Child on the left and Saint Michael on the right. The main difference is that these images are seen from a frontal viewpoint and not from behind like in the other composition.
We suppose that this is the beam that also supports the Iconostasis, which in this case is not a series of wooden panels, but a heavy cloth that has been here removed for the sake of the blessing of the corpse. The body of the Saint must lie outside it, since from the viewpoint of the liturgy there are even today precise minimal distances between a corpse and the altar. A dead body would desecrate the altar that keeps the Eucharist, i.e. Eternal Life. The scene of Greccio, on the contrary, was set beyond the Iconostasis, because it concerned the moment of Consecration.
The beam cuts the panel into two areas horizontally and the action takes place in the lower area. Like in the episodes of the Saint's death and of Friar Augustin's vision, the figure of the Saint catches the eye because of the horizontal position. All the other characters- here are men only, differently from the scene at Greccio- are standing, except for Master Gerolamo who is kneeling and indeed forms one shape with the body of the Saint, breaking its line in the middle of it.
Gerolamo's looks are obviously directed to the Saint's chest, which he searches with one hand while the other unfastens the cloth. Following his looks, the viewer's too are directed there. The isolation of this scene is highlighted by the apparent distraction of the other characters, who are all intent on carrying out the funeral service. This fresco presents a real crowd, with their typical attitudes, a series of different looks and postures that eventually do not make a significant difference or distinction.
There is, though, one character that stands out- the gentleman on the left, whose body bends smartly in the opposite direction to that of the rigid staffs held by the clergymen in front of him. His fluttering cloth seen from the back and the position of the feet drawn according to perspective laws suggest the supposition that this character was drawn later, or painted on a previous drawing about a hundred years later. This is also likely for the Archangel Michael's face, since traces of a previous drawing are visible.

TWENTY-THIRD EPISODE
(Second of the Third Series)

The crowds that had gathered to carry the sacred body adorned with celestial gems to the town of Assisi, holding dry branches and a large number of lit candles, show it to the Blessed Clare and the other Holy Virgins.

LM 15,5- 1c 116/117.

The literary sources for this episode are Vita Prima and Legenda Maior. Tommaso da Celano sets the scene inside a church, whereas Giotto locates it outside it. One reason may be that he associates the event of the funeral procession with the episode of the mourning of the Poor Clares. This is also the only fresco that portrays the Sisters of the second Franciscan Order. It was only rightful to do that at least once, all the more because the event was exceptional: the nuns only broke their enclosure on that momentuous occurrence. Tommaso da Celano underlines this factor.
The scene is situated in front of a Gothic church reminiscent of the Arnolfian architecture. An imaginary cross divides the fresco: the upper horizontal line joining the heads of the crowd with the architrave of the central door, the lower joining those of the side doors. The left corner is the vertical line that divides the scene into two: the mourning sisters (the word was used by Saint Clare herself) stand on the right, just coming out of the church, with bent heads and looks directed to the Saint's face; the crowd stands on the left.
There is here the now well-known play of looks between the nuns'eyes and the dead eyes of the Saint. Normally this device was used to indicate- especially to those who could not read- the subjects of the dialogue of the episode. But here there is no dialogue, the Saint is dead and his eyes are closed. A similar artifice had been employed in the episode of the Death of the Knight of Celano.
There is no deeper sense of death than this representation of sorrow. Within the general structure of the composition, a priviliged mute dialogue is constructed between Saint Clare and the dead eyes of Francis. She stoops towards him nearly embracing and shaking his body as if it was alive, but her gesture cannot but be without reply. The intense moment is heightened by the closeness of the faces and the specular profiles of the cowls, especially on the heads and necks. A triangle is formed that expresses the special relationship that existed between the two Saints.
At a distance the other nuns repeat Clare's inclination of the bodies and faces, with a particular emphasis on the looks. One of them is bent over the body and kisses the Holy Stigmatas, thus filling a compositive void between Clare and her nuns. In fact the bent profiles are connected to the rest of the standing group thanks to the folds of the drapery of another nun who is standing behind them.
The area properly concerning Saint Francis is characterized by the horizontal lines of the body made stiff by death and of the litter covered with a cloth hanging heavily on the front plane, thus making a compact bulky mass strike the eyes of the viewers.
The left part of the scene is filled with a crowd that presents more variety, though the general attitude is one of compunction. Their looks are mostly directed to the Saint, and the attention is drawn to the Saint's body by the presence of three characters that are bent towards his head. One of them is seen from the back and seems to be calling someone standing farther. An ermine on his shoulders indicates him as a Magistrate; other men of Justice are discernible among the crowd.
Giotto's intention was to portray the notables of the town leading the crowd. The friars here play a lesser role and are only noticeable thanks to the long candles that they hold. Their attitude is not desperate since from a Christian standpoint the Saint's death inaugurates hig Glory in the Heavens. The palms some of them hold symbolize that Glory.
The candles and the palms also have a compositive purpose. The former carry on the vertical orientation of the spires of the church. The latter fill in a void over the crowd: that space would have been excessively empty in comparison to the rich decoration of the building. There is also a big tree with a child climbing on it, a classic "topos" . This part of the fresco calls to mind Jesus Christ's thiumphal entrance of Jerusalem, with another parallel between the Saint and Jesus. The fresco represents the tribute of the town of Assisi to the Glory of the Saint.

TWENTY-FOURTH EPISODE
(Third of the Third Series)

When the Holy Father (Pope Gregory IX) personally visited the town of Assisi and having carefully examined the miracles and with the friars' witnesses, he canonized the Blessed Francis and registered him in the Saints' roll.

LM 15,7 - 1c 123/126- 3Cp71- AP 46/47.

This is the solemn canonization of Saint Francis that occurred on the 16th of July 1228. The very titulus emphasizes the importance of the friars' witnesses, which we have noted as a constant element of the frescos of the first and especially the second series.
The literary sources do not indulge on the description of the ceremony, except for the first, i.e. Vita Prima. Tommaso da Celano writes a whole section on behalf of the Pope. It seems that the canonization took on importance because of the historical context. Facts such as the uprising stirred by Frederic the Suevian that very year, the Pope's frequent journeys to Perugia for political reasons suggest that the Pope might have thought of the occasion to strengthen his power. The Franciscan Order was a firm support for the Church of the time.
The fresco does not refer to those events in any way, which is not difficult to understand: about seventyfive years had passed between those difficult times and the making of the cycle. Saint Bonaventura himself in his Legenda Maior deals with the canonization as an obvious matter.
The composition of the fresco is centred on a large elevated covered baldachin, which is empty. Its function is to separate the various groups of people attending the ceremony. The right corner (the farthest from the viewer) cuts the panel into two areas with an imaginary vertical line. The central line that represents the floor of the baldachin is drawn outside this on the same axis as the heads of the characters sitting beside the Pope, but the crowd of notables at the back estranges from this effect and expands with no reference to the compositive structure.
The crowds end up being cut off the structure, almost as if the painter wanted to include more characters than he possibly could, with the result that the structural function of the baldachin gets lost. The overall impression is that the geometrical plan of the fresco was not respected. This panel might be the first to be abandoned by Giotto and continued by some other painter unable to understand the indications of the magister.
Below, between the two staffs that support the baldachin, stand the friars behind an altar. The Pope, a Cardinal, a Bishop and a friar stand opposite; in front of them in a lower position there is a crowd of women with several children whereas behind them there is a crowd of notables- women were always segregated in official rites.
The positioning must have been drawn from Tommaso da Celano's text that mentions a Cardinal, a Bishop and an Abbot standing beside the Pope in a hierarchical order. However, the impression that one gets from this composition is one of "horror vacui" which never occurs elsewhere in the cycle.

TWENTY-FIFTH EPISODE
(Fourth of the Third Series)

Since Pope Gregory rather doubted the Stigmatas of the Chest, the Blessed Francis appeared in a dream and said to Him : "Give me an empty phial" and once he had it, it was visibly filled with the blood of his chest.

LM 1M, 2.

The obvious function of this fresco is to close the series devoted to the death and canonization of the Saint by an indisputable wondrous fact. Once the truthfulness of the Stigmatas is acclaimed by the Pope himself, the eminence of the Saint and the rightfulness of the honors tributed to him are ratified.
In addition the exceptionality of the miracle, and consequently the special status of the Saint also serve to justify the spreading iconography of the Saint. The earlier panels were dominated by the indissoluble presence of the friars: his image was that of the founder of the Franciscan Order. At this stage he becomes a reference point for the Order and his power as a Saint becomes the subject-matter of the cycle.
The following three frescos show the miracles that he makes after his death and from this standpoint we can say that this twenty-fifth panel links the three preceding frescos with the three that follow. Legenda Maior, the only literary source reporting the episode, also gives it a connecting function placing it soon after the magnification of the miracle of the Stigmatas and before the list of the following miracles.
By quoting this legend Saint Bonaventura shows his preoccupation to prove the conformity between the Order and the Church Hierarchy. However the way the Pope becomes convinced thanks to celestial intervention seems to underline the idea that the Franciscan Order takes its origin in the Divine Will rather than in human will.
The scene is located in a well-defined space, with regular and precise lines, including geometrical proportions. The coffered ceiling is made of squares whose dimensions create a width-depth ratio of 8:2. Spatiality here priviliges height, which is about twice an average man's, if we make a rough estimate referring to the Saint's height.
The space does not appear deep enough for the scene (the panel of the Approval of the Rule, for instance, was much more verisimilar in its proportions). Yet almost all historians of art agree that at least the plan of the fresco is to be attributed to Giotto. In fact the depth compression could be a deliberate artifice to push the image towards the viewers, adding to the visual impact of the fresco.
Besides this, there are a few more structural features to be examined: first of all, the whole appears to be constructed on two basic lines- one is horizontal, the other is vertical. The former is marked by the edge of the bed and the heads of the characters couched on the floor; the latter is indicated by the Saint and by the second character from the right. Fairly enough, this line is central. A number of parallels to the two main lines develop within the picture, among which the one created by the tonal contrast of blue and pink of the bed.
The bed where the Pope is sleeping is the focus of the scene though decentred on the right of the fresco. It is located on a higher level than the other characters except for the Saint who is central. However the heart of the fresco is the communication between Francis and the Pope, which is symbolized by the proximity of the hands. They nearly touch on a diagonal line, thus leaving the Pope's right arm on the right and a certain emptiness on the left of the Saint.
The suspended baldachin is probably an artifice to focus the attention on the main scene. It is, though, a beautiful and brave solution: it is an aerial structure supported by taut ropes, and the perspective lets both sides of the cloth visible. This is a new technique that Giotto adopts here for the first time.
Finally, the patterns of the decoration of the floor and the ceiling as well as the cloths covering the walls and of the bed are all similar which both reduces the compositive void by narrowing the space and creates a homogeneous setting.

TWENTY-SIXTH EPISODE
(Fifth of the Third Series)

The Blessed Francis, being invoked by Giovanni da Ylerda, for whom the doctors had given up all hope restored him to health by touching and melting his wounds.

LM 1M,5- 3c 11/13.

This is the first of the three miracles- that close the cycle of Assisi- the purpose of which is to give evidence of the power of the Saint after his corporal death. In fact three miracles are wanted in a process of canonization.
This episode is reported only in Legenda Maior: a knight, after being wounded mortally invokes the Saint and cured by his prodigious faculties. The miracle is ascribed to the power of the Holy Stigmatas, since it is the touch of the Saint's sore hands that heals the Catalan knight.
The spatiality of this fresco is unitary and rather peculiar within the cycle. This is one of the reasons why historians attribute it to a different magister. Space is not allocated according to narration. Giotto placed each element of narration in a separate area, constructing space differently for each narrative section. Here, the story has two moments (the physician, the wife and a relative on one side and the Saint with two angels and the knight on the other), but the scene is tripartite.
The room is symmetrically cut by two thin columns, so that there forms a central section on a square basis, and two side sections, as deep as the central but less wide. Moreover the central area appears on a higher level, with two windows on top. This difference is highlighted by the curtains of the bed and two parapets that fill in the void of the empty lateral sections.
The two columns cut the scene irrespective of what is behind, namely the Saint. Thus the two delicate angels end up being the prominent figures of the picture, though absent in the literary source. On the left the two men are also partially hidden by the refined drapery of the curtains.
The stylistic difference in drawing the figures, which appear more delicate, and the lesser narrative intuition of this second magister, suggest that he must have not appreciated neither the significance of Giotto's accurate sense of spatiality nor the value of his drawing style as his imposing figures seem to make a statement of their historical importance out of their mass.
Notwithstanding these considerations, it still appears that this fresco is an organic part of the cycle, whose plan goes back to Giotto even if the structure or the making of some parts of it belong to different minds and hands. Here the plan wanted the exhaltation of the power of the Stigmatas, an eternal source of Grace, and the fresco carries it out.

TWENTY-SEVENTH EPISODE
(Sixfth of the Third Series)

The Blessed Francis raised this woman from the dead and after she confessed at the presence of some clergy and other people a sin she had not confessed before , she died again and rested in the peace of God and the devil fled in confusion.

LM 2M, 1 - 3C 40.

The episode is told in Trattato dei Miracoli by Tommaso da Celano and in Legenda Maior with no substantial differences. It is the first of a series of miracles where the Saint intercedes with God and raises people from the dead. The confessor of the fresco is fairly enough a Franciscan friar, a detail that is not reported in the sources, although it only seems obvious for a devotee of Saint Francis.
Another difference from the sources is the addition of the representation of the dispute between an Angel and a Devil of the dead woman's soul. It symbolizes the fate of man after death- either Heaven or Hell. This image belongs to the popular imagination and therefore was included in the panel with no literary reference.
The structure of the composition is easy and not very accurate: a pillar cuts the image into two parts that are neither equal nor symmetrical. A certain sense of symmetry is appreciable only as far as the two groups of people are concerned that stand by the woman's bed, the fleeing devil being on the left of the pillar and the driving angel on its right.
Although this fresco is dominated by a narrative principle and a popular feel, which suggest that the autor be the same as of the previous panel, it still fully adheres to the propositions of the whole cycle. Like for the previous panel, our remarks concerning the author of the work do not imply a judgment on the plan of the cycle.

TWENTY-EIGHTH EPISODE
(Seventh of the Third Series)

The Blessed Francis freed this man who had been accused of heresy and, by the Pope's decree, sent under an episcopate to the Bishop of Tivoli. This occurred on Saint Francis's Day on the Eve of which the man had fasted according to Church observance.

LM 5M,4 - 3c 93.

The literary sources for this episode are Tommaso da Celano's and Saint Bonaventura's. The earlier source is richer in details than the later. Legenda Maior eludes all the contextual elements that Tommaso da Celano narrates that could throw an embarassing light over the Church. Although the latter himself shows an initially benevolent Bishop, he shows an innocent ill-treated in prison. Saint Bonaventura on the contrary does away with such incidents as the prisoner's attempt to flee from custody and the political implications of the Bishop of Tivoli, whose relationship with the notables of the town were problematical. Most significantly he omits the innocence from the accusation of heresy. In fact he implicitly suggests the contrary as he propounds that the man had gone back to his true faith during the period of custody. Finally he omits the Bishop's emotional reaction to the news of the prisoner's freedom.
The scene represented in the fresco is commom to both sources: the guards show the prisoner with the broken blocks and chains to the Bishop that kneels down thanking the Lord while his retinue look in wonder. The composition roughly reminds of the Renounciation to the Father's Goods, but its structure is less precise since the action of the two characters is not well connected: the prisoner is showing the chains while the Bishop is already kneeling in prayer.
Spatiality is subdivided thanks to the presence of two buildings, the typology of which is highly imaginative, although the one on the left recalls the architecture of Pisa. Both present a massive body and a central tower-like part that goes into a spin towards the sky. The one on the right, presumably the prison, has a spiral column that elevates the building while its gravity is preserved. The building on the left is presumably the Bishop's palace, but there is no evidence to it.
The towers address the viewers' looks to the sky where Saint Francis intercedes with God, or, like the sources say, where he returns after personally freeing the prisoner. The aim of this fresco, like the two preceding ones is to provide a pattern for the ex-voto reverence, which has always been a relevant part of a Saint' s devotion. The fact that the episode occurs on Saint Francis's Day is not accidenrtal.
Finally a remark about the figures: they are more elegant than Giotto's and add to the hypothesis that the three last frescos of the cycle belong to a different hand.

APPENDIX

I include here the conclusions of a short essay of mine on Dante and the figurative arts entitled La Pittura di Dante and a number of considerations on Giotto's fame. I recommend the reading of the whole essay for a full account of the subject whereas for the sake of the present work the conclusions suffice to clarify the thesis propounded here.
The english text of Dante Alighieri is the classic translation by Wadsworth Longfellow.

DANTE AND GIOTTO

Dante's view of art is definitively clarified apertis verbis in the last cantos of Paradiso, where the art of painting appears to be the most apt means to express what is Beautiful and Good. Dante declares himself incapable of describing things and thoughts that are too strong for the human mind (a tint too glaring) so as to overcome his creative ability (my fantasy).

From that one which I noted of most beauty
Beheld I issue forth a fire so happy
That none it left there of a greater brightness.

And around Beatrice three several times
It whirled itself with so divine a song,
My fantasy repeats it not to me;

Therefore the pen skips, and I write it not,
Since our imagination for such folds,
Much more our speech, is a tint too glaring.
(Par. XXIV, 19-27)

He recurs to parallels with painting and in particular he hints to the question of the shading of folds in a cloth. This was a difficult problem to which Giotto gradually found different solutions. As his mastery of the art progressed the solutions became more skillful. Giotto was aware of problems of tridimensionality and adjusted elements in space and modified techniques accordingly. When the color was too glaring (troppo vivo), i.e. too vivid, he lightened it and in Padua he even modified its tone, which usually becomes colder. The shade was shifted to blue tones that did not alter the original color, but apparently made it less vivid. The cycle of Padua must have been known by Dante when he composed these lines.
We want to consider the issue of the influence of Dante's work on the cycle of Padua or alternatively, the evolution of Dante's idea of painting after the acquaintance with the Giottesque renovation. The feeling of humanity of Inferno reveals through the paintings of Padua, yet the publication of the first seven cantos of Inferno before the exile years is very unlikely, while it is certain that the two first books were widely known from 1312 on, when the Scrovegni Chapel had come to completion. On the other hand Dante must have had a certain knowledge of the cycle of Assisi and it is more likely that it was him who drew inspiration from the other's work.
If we read the history of art, we see that cycles of painting tend to replace cycles of sculpture. The art of Giotto contributed to this phenomenon and we only have to observe that Dante himself drew inspiration from the art of sculpture for his Purgatorio only to come to different conclusions in the last Book of the Comedy. As we have seen, he refers to the art of painting as the one possessing the most communicative qualities, especially in the realm of feelings.
The beauty of painting is compared with that of Nature for its power on Man and it cannot be diminished but in Heaven:

My mind enamoured, wich is dallying
At all times with my Lady, to bring back
To her mine eyes was more than ever ardent.

And if Art or Nature has made bait
To catch the eyes and si posses the mind,
In human flesh or in its portraiture.

All joined together would appear as nought
To the divine delight which shone upon me
When to her smiling face I turned me round.
(Par. XXVII, 88-96)

To paint, to make poetry and follow Beauty is the aim of Art:

From the first day that I beheld her face
In this life, to the moment of this look,
The sequence of my song has ne'er been severed,

But now perforce this sequence must desist
From following her beauty with my verse,
As every artist at his uttermost.
(Par. XXX, 28-33)

I do not believe that Dante had such a convinced and clear idea of art before writing the Comedy nor that the above lines could have been composed at the time of Vita Nova. They are the result of a years' long process that may have been accelerated and perfected by the contemplation of Giotto's work. Another factor was the poet's disappointment and disillusionment in life with the consequent need of a hope in a future life. These elements find a shape in the images of the last Book and contribute to the poet's new sensibility for art, which eventually becomes his only life-reason on earth. The after-life was the other higher objective.
Saint Thomas's theory of cognition propounds the impression of reality on the human mind. This theory is compared- in the poetic interpretation of Dolce Stil Novo- with the trasmigration of sprites from the person generating Love, the loved one, to the lover's soul, where they eventually find shelter. The realm of Rationality is governed by the faculties of the Intellect that thus learn to comprehend the world. The realm of Poetry is governed by other faculties of the human mind, which are trained by the "courtly" education- in fact we should speak of a whole way of life, with a style of its own, rather than of proper education. This all-encompassing view of the human being together with the idea of progress that Dante theorizes in the lines about Giotto's superiority are the germs of the yet-to-be-born Humanism.
The last cantos of Paradiso tend to lose the excessively rational approach and are diffused with a more generic mystical feeling which is perfectly in tune with the subject-matter of the poetry. In stead of Saint Thomas's Summa Teologica, the reference text seems to be Itinerarium mentis in Deum by Saint Bonaventura. The poet appears to be preoccupied with poetry and art as the only means to express such spiritual need. This ideas cannot originate from conscious choices and seem the result of a spontaneous process ignited by the very poetical activity.
The real novelty and progress of the artistic conception that Dante develops throughout the Comedy consists in going beyond the idea of painting as a matter of technique and manual skill. The poet amd the painter have something in common, as his own early education to drawing shows. Both arts are dignified by this conception in a way unknown for centuries.
The new global notion of life as the education of the mind and spirit is a sort of itinerarium animi towards perfection. While theoretically the only perfection lies in God, in fact man can strive for it through the love that the contemplation of Beauty generates. In the Comedy Dante performs his personal itinerarium mentis in Deum led by Beatrice. In the last Book, after purifying himself from his sins, and realizing he is still attached to earthly things, he decides to sing Beauty declaring this as the final aim and objective of every artist.
In the course of writing his masterpiece, the poet acquired the capability of expressing himself spontaneuosly and straightforwardly. He exploits the possibilities of the language that he prodigiously masters and translates feelings directly into poetry thus paving the way for the artists of the younger generations as well as even surpassing the ancient models.
Likewise it was for Giotto and the art of painting. This indicates that new ways of art were coming into being. Both artists changed themselves and their art as they experimented and refined their expressive ways. It was not just a natural evolution of the artist due to personal inner growth, it was a prolonged research into style grounded on conscious and deliberate autocorrection. This process is so evident that its tracks can be followed, as they were, by historians and later artists.
When we speak of modernity or of revolution we mean this act of conceiving of the work before doing it. Even though Dante did not speculate over the matter, I believe that his search for making sense in life through love first and truth and salvation later runs parallel to the search for an objective in art, which is in fact stated in the lines quoted above. As for Giotto there is no written text to prove the thesis, but his works appear fair evidence to me.
A series of questions follows here that will remain unanswered: if the great fame of these artists in their own days was due to the highest quality of their works, was this quality understood thoroughly? Was it for both? Did the contemporaries easily perceive the relationship between the two personalities and their modes of working like we do? And finally how could those people feel that cultural unity and excite that we associate to the Italian artists of those times?
The heart of the matter concerns the fullness of the success of these two artists. Dante wrote works that tuned in with the medioeval mind, especially as far as aims and structure were concerned: this helped his immediate fame. But was the new important role of the artist understood and/or accepted?
Giotto's technical innovations were obviously accepted with enthusiasm since they improved the ways of representation of painting, but didn't his humanizing the sacred yeld fierce reaction against him? Some historians believe so, but this might have been only the appearance.
Sociological and political observations should be taken into account for a balanced answer to the last question. The reactions to the excessive realism of Giotto's art were embodied in cultural refinements that restablished the traditional divide between the educated and the unlearned. But, differently from previous centuries this "culture" belonged to those who could manage and articulate it and not to those who simply covered offices and had charges, namely the clergy. Significantly Petrarca, the other great poet of the time and a different personality to Dante, never compares the expressive capacity of poetry to that of painting despite the high consideration of both. It would also be of interest to examine the relationship between Petrarca and Simone Martini, but these issues are outside the scope of this work.

GIOTTO' S FAME

All we have said must be related to the widespread opinion of Giotto's art of painting as a revolution in the history of art and of visual communication. But what was the reaction of his contemporaries? Beyond the positive appreciation, did they see him as an innovator or simply as a superior, maybe far superior magister?.
A posteriori evaluation is easily supported by undisputable arguments but the contemporary eye is not provided with the interpretative key that is very often correct, but none the less added. The reading of history itself implies an ideological frame of mind.
The notion of revolution was unknown at the time and all appreciative remarks ignore the newness of the manner and only concern the quality of the works. Let us consider the words that Franco Sacchetti has Taddeo Gaddi utter:
" & among other issues one Orcagna, magister of the noble oratory of Nostra Donna d'Orto San Michele, raised this: who was the major master of painting beside Giotto? Some replied Cimabue, others Stefano, others Bernardo, and some said Buffalmacco, amd others suggested one or the other. Taddeo Gaddi, who was among the companions, said: 'Certainly they were skilled painters who painted according to form, which is impossible for the human nature, but this art has been disappearing&".
This quotation shows that the superiority of Giotto's art was acknowledged also by those who in different ways reacted to its excessive materialism, like Orcagna. Incidentally it should be noted that Sacchetti gives information about Orcagna but does it through Taddeo Gaddi, who had worked with Giotto, as if his fame did not need any notes.
I do not really know how far we can trust a dialogue reported later than the year 1390 that should have occurred about 40 years earlier. It was also objected in the proem to Trecentonovelle and it is cetain that Cennini ignored the position held by Sacchetti. Before that, Benvenuto da Imola, an annotator of Dante's Comedy comments the two famous terzinas about the fact that fame lives on until a new figure obscures the previous:

O thou vain glory of the human powers,
How little green upon thy summit lingers,
If't be not followed by an age of grossness!

In painting Cimabue thoght that he
Should hold the field, now Giotto has the cry,
So that other's fame is growing dim.
(Purg. , XI 91-96)

with these words :"Giottus adhuc tenet campum, quia nondum venit alius eo subtilor, cum tamen fecerit aliquando magnos errores in picturis suis, ut audivi a magnis ingeniis".

On consideration of the admitted incompetence of the author of this statement, who recurs to other experts' opinion, I believe that what really matters here is the proposition to prove Dante's thoughts rather than to find faults in Giotto's work. Fairly enough, nobody would argue for Giotto's perfection and therefore it only seems obvious that art made progress even soon after Giotto's own achievement. Any consideration on this line of thought does not represent an anti-Giottesque statement.
Such an anti-materialistic poet as Petrarca praises Giotto in his testament of 1370, where he mentions a Virgin cuius pulchritudinem ignorantes non intelligunt, magistri autem artis stupent. No wonder in the fact that the poet was more preoccupied with beauty than with any possible faults (From this standpoint the spiritualist currents of art that meet in the school of Simone Martini in Siena were capable of much better paintings as far as realism and perspective are concerned. But the fact that he mentions unlearned people not wondering means that his technical and expressive innovations had become accepted.
The quotation echoes Quintiliano's Docti rationem artes intelligunt, indocti voluptatem, and reminds us of Petrarca's reading of Institutiones Oratoriae, which he had discovered in one of the earliest conscious acts of Humanism. Despite Petrarca's reference to ignorant people in a technical sense where Quintiliano's assumption was more general, both imply a feeling of superiority towards them. The cultural superiority of the mind for Quintiliano and of the spirit for Petrarca over the instinctual part of man adjusted the excessive realism of the two beginners of modern art of the thirteenth century, namely Dante and Giotto.
Summing up, we have seen that Dante had a rather lucid idea about the painter's importance, which he relates to the general renewal of the arts of which he considered himself an actor. Dante's fame assumed huge proportions during their lifetime.
We believe that the negative reaction to Giotto's innovation was due to the contemporary and immediately following generation's ignorance of any theory about perspective, which is only obvious since the latter was a consequence and not a cause of the Giottesque revolution. Therefore the contemporaries could only intuitively grasp his greatness, which was as a matter of fact universally acknowledged in all sources despite a lack of analysis and definition. Indeed is not this capability of communicating without the understanding of the ways a feature of

art ?