Besides the human interest of the frescoes it is a delightful task to study the architecture in each scene, for here, in the Upper Church, Giotto has built a whole city of little pink houses with balconies, towers and turrets, of exquisite Gothic basilicas, of temples and gabled thrones. His priests sit within palaces full of lancet windows and pointed arches, the groined roofs, as in the Assisan Church, ablaze with myriads of stars. What love he had for dainty ornaments, simple, nay almost severe in outline, but perfectly finished; and he always likes to show the blue sky overhead, or at least peeping through one of the windows, making the marble seem more lustrous and creamy white. Would that all Florence had been built by him.
2. St. Francis giving his cloak to a poor Knight.
"Going forth one day, as was his wont, in apparel suited to his state, he met a certain soldier of honour and courage, but poor and vilely clad; of whose poverty, feeling a tender and sorrowful compassion, he took off his new clothes and gave them to the poor man-at-arms."
None are there to witness the kind action of the young saint who, like another St. Martin, has dismounted to give his mantle to the poor man in a ravine near a little town enclosed by walls, a church spire rising upon the opposite hill. Giotto must have been thinking of the small rock-set towns, with stunted trees growing outside their walls, in his Tuscan home in the Mugello when he painted this, instead of the Umbrian town, standing amid vineyards and cornfields above an open valley with winding rivers, whose church he was decorating. It is the only one of the series in which the landscape is an important part of the picture, in the others it is a mere accessory.
3. The Vision of St. Francis.
"On the following night, when he was asleep, the divine mercy showed him a spacious and beautiful palace filled with arms and military ensigns, all marked with the Cross of Christ to make known to him that his charitable deed done to the poor soldier for the love of the great King of heaven should receive an unspeakable reward."
It will be remembered that after this dream St. Francis started to join the army of Walter de Brienne, having wrongly interpreted the vision, which in reality symbolised the army he was eventually to lead in the service of the Pope (see p. [44]). This is, perhaps, the least successful of the frescoes; probably the subject did not appeal strongly to the painter (he only seems to have enjoyed inventing the colonnaded palace with its trefoil windows) and also, as Mr Ruskin explains: "Giotto never succeeded, to the end of his days, in representing a figure lying down, and at ease. It is one of the most curious points in all his character. Just the thing which he could study from nature without the smallest hindrance, is the thing he never can paint; while subtleties of form and gesture, which depend absolutely on their momentariness, and actions in which no model can stay an instant, he seizes with infallible accuracy."[97]
4. St. Francis praying before the Crucifix in San Damiano.
"As he lay prostrate before a crucifix he was filled with great spiritual consolation, and gazing with tearful eyes upon the holy cross of the Lord, he heard with his bodily ears a voice from the crucifix, which said thrice to him: 'Francis, go and build up My house, which as thou seest, is falling into ruin.'"
Unfortunately this fresco is much faded and in parts peeled off; this, combined with the representation of a ruined church, gives a curious effect of total destruction, as if an earthquake had passed over the land. The figure of the saint, just visible, and his attitude of earnest prayer is very charming.