The Pietà, one of the last, is evidently by a finer scholar of Cimabue, and the woman coming round the rocks resembles slightly the figure of Rebecca in the two frescoes on the opposite side. "The composition," write the same authors, "is more like that which Giotto afterwards conceived than any other before or since"; but the colossal figure of Christ destroys the harmony of the scene.
The arch at the end of the nave is painted to represent a series of niches, in each of which stands the figure of a saint, all are much repainted, as are the medallions of St. Peter and St. Paul by the door. The Descent of the Holy Spirit is greatly ruined, and in the Ascension the intonaco has peeled off, showing the bricks, so that the apostles have the appearance of looking over a wall.
The ceiling is frescoed in three different places by other masters, whose names have not come down to us. Between the transepts and nave the four Evangelists, seated outside the gates of towns, are so utterly ruined and blackened by time and damp that it is barely worth craning one's neck to look at them.[71] But the four medallions of Christ, the Madonna, St. John the Baptist and St. Francis, which ornament the centre of the nave, are among the most beautiful things in the church, and quite perfect as decoration. At each corner of the spandrels stands an angel upon a globe, with wings uplifted, delicate in outline and brilliantly coloured, while the whole is bordered by the most exquisite design of blossoms and green foliage rising out of slender vases, which mingle with cupids, angels, winged horses and rabbits on a dull red ground. It must have been painted by one who had learned his art from the same source whence the decorative painters of Pompeii drew their inspiration.
It is not an easy thing to fit entire figures seated on large marble thrones into triangular spaces, and so the artist found, who in the groined ceiling nearest the door had to paint the Doctors of the Church, Sts. Jerome, Gregory, Ambrose and Augustin, dictating their epistles to busy clerks. But there is much that is charming in them, though as decoration they partly fail, and a resemblance may be found to the frescoes of Isaac and his sons, which seem to have influenced Giotto in his paintings of old men.
Vasari's enthusiasm was roused when he looked upon these endless paintings, and he tells us that: "This work, truly grand and rich, and admirably well executed, must, I conceive, in those times have astonished the world, the more so that painting had for so long been sunk in such obscurity: and to me, who saw it once more in 1563, it appeared most beautiful, as I thought how Cimabue, in such darkness could have discovered so much light."
It would be well, before leaving, to look at the windows of the Upper Church, which are among the oldest in Italy, and, according to Herr Burckhardt, the most beautiful. As of most things connected with San Francesco, little is known about them; Vasari says they were designed by the painters of the frescoes; an opinion partly held by Herr Thode, who sees a great resemblance to the style of Cimabue in the right-hand window of the choir (the centre one is modern) with scenes from the lives of Abraham, David and Christ, of most beautiful colour and design. The left window, belonging to the same period, contains naïve scenes from the Old Testament, amongst which (the sixth from the top of the left half) is Jonah emerging from a blue-green whale the colour of the waves, and possessed of large white eyes.
Those of the transepts of the same date are even finer and more beautifully coloured. Medallions of geometrical patterns of exquisite design and hue ornament the left-hand window of the north transept, while that on the right contains scenes from the Old Testament and the life of Christ; in both of these, according to Herr Thode, the influence of Cimabue is apparent.
The left window of the south transept contains seven scenes from the Creation and seven from the lives of Adam and Eve, who (in the last two divisions of the right half) are being driven out of Eden, and, spade in hand, are working at the foot of a tree. The eight saints of the right window, seated majestically on gothic thrones ornamented with spires, and dressed in rose-coloured, red and green garments, have certainly the appearance of being, as Herr Thode suggests, of a style even anterior to Cimabue.
Half of the bay window on the left, looking towards the altar, is the work of the Umbrian school of the time of Fiorenzo di Lorenzo (there is a Madonna in a blue mantle, and St. Onofrio clothed in vine-leaves), while the left half, with medallions composed of very small pieces of glass representing scenes from the early life of Christ, are perhaps the most beautiful, and certainly the oldest, in the church, and can even be compared to the stained glass of French cathedrals. The third window (the second has suffered considerably, and what is left of the original belongs to the fifteenth century) has been a good deal restored, but the large angels with blue and purple wings standing in an arch, behind which a little town is seen, are very fine, and below them is a curious small figure of St. Francis floating in front of a colossal Christ, belonging also to the fifteenth century.