Now there is a consensus of testimony that in Florence, in the year 1303, Giotto executed the designs for the façade of the Duomo, afterwards carried out by Andrea Pisano; and that in the same year he married. What happened during the next two years is matter of conjecture: Vasari states that he proceeded to Avignon, which is contradicted by Crowe and Cavalcaselle on the authority of Abertini; and we can find nothing certain till we discover our painter at Padua between 1305-6 painting in the Chapel of the Arena.
If the frescoes in the Upper Church be compared at all carefully with those of the Arena Chapel, it is at once evident that if they be the work of the same hand, it must have worked in a far earlier stage of progress, and it is equally evident, that the transition from the frescoes of the Upper Church to those of the Lower, is marked by an abrupt interval of time.
It is impossible that Giotto could have so far fallen away in skill as to execute the frescoes in the Upper Church subsequent to his painting of the Arena Chapel at Padua; and it is nearly impossible from the dates of his work that he could have found time to do them before. The only hypothesis that seems to be left, if we wish to believe that Giotto executed this series in the upper church, is that Giotto accompanied Cimabue when he worked at Assisi, and painted the lower row of frescoes under the direction of his master.
This theory does not seem to me likely for many reasons; first, it would have been most probable that had Giotto and Cimabue visited Assisi together, some evidence of such a visit would have been discovered; secondly, it seems improbable that Cimabue would have allowed his apprentice such license in composition and incident as is here shown; and thirdly, the manner of the pictures is not as was Giotto's early manner, semi-Byzantine, but rather errs in the opposite direction, and seems a coarse imitation of Giotto's natural method of depicting events. It will be noticed, in careful examination of these works, that, as far as can be judged from the damaged state in which they at present exist, the composition, and what artists call motive, of the pictures are, as a rule, very superior to their execution, which is blundering and unmasterly. I am led by this, and other considerations of style and time, to come to the conclusion that these works are not from the hand of Giotto himself, but were probably executed by his pupils, while the master himself was painting in the Lower Church. The likelihood of this hypothesis will be greater if we remember that there are in the Castellani Chapel of Santa Croce, frescoes which are undoubtedly by the hand of Agnolo Gaddi, which betray many of the so-called Giottesque traits that we find in these frescoes; and indeed the wonder would rather be demanded if this were not the case, and if the inaugurator of a new style of painting did not have his merits imitated by the students working under his tuition.
Again, it seems to be a gratuitous assumption on the part of Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle to hold that this lower row of scenes from the life of St. Francis must be the work of successive artists merely because they exhibit differences of merit. We should rather expect that the same workman, or workmen, would improve in the course of so long a series, especially if they were painted more or less under the direction of a master like Giotto. In any case, a comparison of dates renders it excessively improbable that Giotto paid two visits to Assisi, and if this be so, we are, I think, justified in concluding that the utmost connection he had with the frescoes of the Upper Church was through the medium of his pupils.
Whether or no Crowe and Cavalcaselle are right in believing that other painters besides Giunta and Cimabue had a hand in the upper rows of frescoes, and, if so, who those painters were, are questions which are just now beyond our subject; and very soon they will be beyond any one's interest or power to answer, for the last traces of colour yet remaining in these works are rapidly fading away. It is, however, impossible to imagine with Vasari that all these upper rows of pictures were executed by one hand, for the very strongest differences in style, composition, and even (traces of) colour exists between them.
Thus in the fresco of the Creation, there is not the slightest approach to naturalism of treatment; the Almighty stands within a circle of vermilion and gold surrounded by a halo, which is apparently intended to represent the sun; beneath him is the moon, with a man's face in it, so that there should be no mistaking what it was intended for; beneath the moon, floating in the air in a lozenge-shaped patch of red, is Adam, while beneath him again are some sheep, and an animal that may be either ox, dog, or fox, for it partakes of the character of all three; and to the right of the picture is the sea, with several gigantic fishes half in, half out of the water. The only other fresco in this compartment which is yet decipherable, represents the building of the ark, and is of like character. Compare, however, with these the picture in the next compartment eastwards, representing the sacrifice of Isaac. Large portions of the left-hand side of this work are destroyed, but sufficient are left to show an attempt, rough, it is true, but quite unmistakable, to represent a mountain landscape, with a temple in the distance. Turn to the right hand of the picture: Isaac is half sitting, half lying on the sacrificial altar, and Abraham stands beside him with one hand upon the child's head, his left foot firmly planted on the step of the altar, and his right arm swung up to its fullest height above his head. Seldom have I seen a more vivid bit of arrested motion depicted in any work of art; the painter has actually caught the pause caused by the sudden appearance of the angel, bidding the father to stay his hand. The action of all the limbs is most remarkable in its intensity, even Abraham's long robes fly out wildly behind his outstretched arm. It is impossible that these two pictures can belong to the same hand, or even to the same school—the first is entirely Byzantine in manner, and might have been copied from a fifth century MS.; the latter lacks nothing but a certain amount of fuller detail and a little more anatomical knowledge, to stand as a faithful representation of the event it depicts.
We now come to the question of whether this fresco be one of the works of Giotto, and again must answer it in the negative. In none of the undoubted works by this master is there so advanced a naturalism as here, especially in the treatment of the drapery, which is far nearer to that of the Renaissance period than that of the Byzantine. It will be found on a careful examination of the works in the Arena Chapel at Padua, that the main lines of the drapery are either straight (or very slightly curved), and in some measure stiff; it would have been almost folly to expect that this should be otherwise, remembering that anterior to Giotto the treatment of drapery had been exclusively founded upon the formal parallel lines of the Byzantine mosaics.
In all probability the Renaissance painters have here supplied the place of a vacant or faded fresco with one of their own compositions, and this is rendered the more likely as there are in the Lower Churches several wretchedly bad Renaissance pictures.