one of the best of Giotto’s didactic works, apart from the excellence of its design. The saint, sketched calmly in death; the intense, yet dignified sorrow of some of his surrounding brethren; and the eager examination by others of the marks of the stigmata, are well expressed in the attitudes and faces of the central groups of figures, while both sides of the painting are occupied by observant and stately figures, who look on the central scene where all the action is represented. This symmetrical kind of composition, produced by placing the more quiescent and choragic figures at either side of the picture, and the chief actors in the centre, was a favourite design of Giotto’s, which he adopted in many of his great works—among others, for example, in “St. Francis fleeing from his Father’s House,” painted on the upper part of the left wall, and in the “Ordeal of Fire,” on the centre of the opposite wall. It may be pointed out that many Italian artists subsequent to Giotto have also adopted this arrangement in their decorative compositions.
It is a moot question whether Giotto thought the illustration of the scene, or the story, or the correct balance and distribution of the units of his composition was the more important; in any case, however, he invariably told his story well, no one could tell it better, while at the same time his compositions are undoubtedly consistent with the principles of good decoration.
In this chapel of the Bardi, on either side of the window, Giotto has painted life-size figures of St. Louis (King of France), St. Louis of Toulouse, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and St. Claire. Each is standing under a painted niche of the Campanile-Gothic architecture. The “St. Louis of France” is the most interesting, and the finest figure of the series; and although considerably repainted, it has still much of Giotto’s work left untouched, especially in the head and hexagonal pointed crown. It is a most dignified and serious rendering of the saintly king, as he stands in a firm and easy pose, Osiris-like, with his kingly attributes of sceptre and whip of authority in either hand.
The three small frescos by Giotto, painted on the walls of the cloisters, in the Church of Santa Maria Novella, at Florence. Two of these, the “Meeting of Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate,” and the “Birth of the Virgin,” are on the recessed wall, on either side of the tomb of the Marchessa Strozzi-Ridolfi, and on the right of these two will be found the third, the “Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple.” These small frescos measure each about 4 feet in width, and are shaped like quarters of a circle. From the technical point of view, the “Meeting of Joachim and Anna” is the most interesting, as it has suffered least of the three from repainting, and there are some fine passages of beautiful, though faded colour, and of frank and decisive brushwork, which is decidedly characteristic of the hand of
Photo. Alinari.
Plate 13.—St. Louis, King of France
Giotto, Bardi Chapel, Sta. Croce, Florence