Some or all of these various reasons may serve to explain the difference in feeling between these works and those executed by Giotto both in earlier and later times, especially the excessive use of gold and lustrous richness; and some of the lifeless expressions of the figures may probably be attributed to the influences of monastic discipline and want of fresh air and sunlight.
The pictures in the north transept, attributed to Giotto by Professor Dobbert (the latest writer on this subject, and, as far as critical opinion goes, little more than an echo of Crowe and Cavalcaselle) are as follows:—1. The Visitation; 2. The Adoration of the Shepherds; 3. The Magi; 4. The Presentation in the Temple; 5. The Flight into Egypt; 6. The Massacre of the Innocents; 7. The Return of the Family; 8. The Crucifixion.
The Salutation (or Visitation).—This composition is in its main figures a repetition of the one in the Arena chapel. There are, however, more people introduced; the background is altered, the figures are slighter and stiffer, the lines of the drapery less flowing, and with less action in them. The faces are thinner and larger, and the figures are smaller in proportion to the size of the picture.
The Nativity.—This composition is altogether inferior in interest and dramatic power to that in the Arena. The natural action of the Virgin, as she half turns on her bed to place the Child in the nurse's arms, is changed to a stiff sitting posture; the angels are arranged in four groups, instead of flying hither and thither as in the Arena picture. Indeed the picture is wholly symmetrical in its arrangements, Joseph being in one corner, the shepherds and their flocks in another; the two attendants and the Child in the centre. Above these come again the Virgin and Child, with a row of angels hovering on each side; and above these again the roof of the shed, with two more groups of angels; down the centre of the picture a glory streams upon the Infant Christ. It may be noticed that the Virgin's face in this and the other pictures in this transept is much more of the Greek type than that used by Giotto at Padua. The only real Giottesque traits in this composition are, first, the natural actions and expressions of the two attendants engaged in purifying the Child; and, second, the actions of the ox and the ass, who poke their heads across the manger with the patient stupidity, and wonder-what-it's-all-about, look of nature.
The Adoration of the Magi.—In this and the following fresco of the Presentation in the Temple we find perhaps the strongest proof of these works being more probably imitations of Giotto's manner than original works. I cannot conceive how it is possible for any artist (or indeed any one with an eye for a picture at all) to imagine that these stiff, formal draperies, falling in folds, which seem as if each had a leaden weight attached to it, so straight and stiff are they, and those inexpressive faces, chiefly of the aquiline type, could have proceeded from the same hand as the frescoes of Obedience and Poverty.
Standing, as I did, here on the steps of the high altar, by the side of the one fresco, and beneath the others, it appeared inconceivable that a question should ever have been raised as to the authorship of the frescoes of the north transept, or at least as to their being by Giotto's own hand. The misleading fact has, I suppose, been the reproduction of so many of the master's figures and attitudes in these frescoes; but, rightly understood, this should rather have created the contrary presumption, for it is far more likely that a pupil should repeat his master's figures, than that a man of such inventive genius as Giotto undoubtedly was at a later time, should deliberately set himself to copy his earlier work, as he must have done if these pictures were by him.
But apart from all such à priori considerations, the difference in the work and the style is so great as to put the matter beyond a question. There is not to be found in any of the hundreds of figures in the four large compositions in the ceiling of this church, one in which the faces are of the same type, the figures of the same long, lean kind, and the drapery of the straight, angular nature that we find in these two frescoes of the Adoration and the Presentation. The same thing applies to the Flight into Egypt, though in this composition there is a greater approach in some respects to the master's manner. It is worthy of notice that the various trees and ferns in this picture are painted without the dark background employed by Giotto in his Arena pictures; each leaf is now painted dark against the background, instead of light on a background of a dark patch, the rough outside shape of the tree. This is no inconsiderable advance, and a still greater may be noticed in the painting of the bramble in the fresco of St. Francis' Wedding to Poverty.
The only other picture in this series of which it is necessary to speak is the Crucifixion, which is incomparably the finest of these paintings, and bears most likeness to the master's work. I am inclined to think that this composition was in great measure, if not wholly, executed by Giotto himself, though even this work shows traces of inferiority to that of the Arena Chapel in some respects; and the painting has suffered a good deal from damp and apparently, in some places, from restoration, though being unable to examine it in a very good light, I am not certain upon the latter point.
It only remains to sum up my remarks upon these works. From the considerations I have given, and many other differences on which it were too long to enter here, I am led to the inevitable conclusion, that the only composition actually painted by Giotto in the Lower Church of St. Francis at Assisi, besides the four allegorical works in the ceiling of the choir, is the Crucifixion, and a small predella to it in monochrome, representing St. Francis and four monks of the order gazing towards the cross in the above picture.
Professor Dobbert's conjecture, that Giotto visited Assisi a second time, and then designed both the allegorical pictures and those in the transept, and left them to be executed by his pupils, seems to be refuted by the excessive superiority of the ceiling frescoes to those of the transept, and the unlikeness of the former to the work of any of Giotto's pupils. It must be repeated here that there is not at present the slightest evidence of Giotto having been twice at Assisi, and that the professor's conjecture is not supported by anything but Crowe's idea that the transept frescoes were done at a later period than those of the ceiling.