Very beautiful are the two saints beneath gothic arches in the last window, and the priests in their rose-coloured stoles, the bishops in crimson and gold, and the other figures of warriors and saints.
The right half of the bay window near the door upon the opposite side, belonging also to the Umbrian school, contains some charming scenes from the life of St. Anthony, while on the left are incidents of the life of St. Francis. The whole is remarkable for delicate rose colours, greens and pale blues, and a total absence of the strong deep tones of the older and finer windows; but they are very beautiful of their kind, like patches of pale sunshine in the church.
The next two windows betray a more ancient style in the fine figures of the apostles (their heads, alas, are modern), and in the scenes from their lives, which are of a deeper tone than the former one; but even more beautiful is the last window, which does not seem to have been restored within the last three centuries, and where the colours standing out from a creamy background are very lovely. The two large and grand figures of two apostles are believed by Herr Thode to be from drawings by Cimabue.
Both Francesco di Terranuova and Valentino da Udine were employed to repair all the windows about 1476, large sums being expended, principally by the Popes who never ceased to patronise the franciscan Basilica. A most comical appearance is given by the distressing additions made in our own time of modern heads upon bodies of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Until very lately an exquisite rose window was to be seen over the eastern door, now replaced by white glass; one would like to know how it so mysteriously disappeared and where it now is.
No pains had been spared to make San Francesco as lovely in every detail as the brain of man could devise, and it is most remarkable how the frescoes belong to the general idea of the building as though every artist had thought as much of this unity as of the individual perfection of his work. The beautiful papal throne in the choir, of white marble encrusted in mosaic with its frieze of strange animals in low relief, its arms supported by red marble lions, is almost a replica of the Soldan's throne in Giotto's fresco, and was designed by Fuccio Fiorentino in 1347, when the architecture that Giotto delighted in was still the recognised style in Italy.[72] The marble and mosaic altar is of the same date, and the octagonal pulpit of sculptured stone, with saints in small tabernacles, spiral columns and designs of leaves slightly tinted, supposed also to be by Fuccio, is placed at the corner of the wall of the nave looking as if it had grown there. The columns supporting the arched gallery round the church have each been painted to represent mauve and rose-coloured marbles, and there is not a single space in all the building which has not been decorated to harmonise with the frescoes, giving a perfect sense of infinite completeness and beauty, to which time has added by mellowing everything into a pale orange colour—the colour of Assisi.
CHAPTER VI
The Paintings of Giotto and his School in the Lower Church
"... Cimabue thought
To lord it over painting's field; and now