Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/369

 In Florence. 339 The following may be taken as typical works by this great master : — the historical paintings representing thirty- eight scenes from the lives of the Virgin and Christ in the chapel of the Madonna dell' Arena at Padua ; the frescoes in the lower church of S. Francesco at Assisi, over the tomb of the saint, representing scenes from the life of that saint, of which one of the best is the Marriage of S. Francis to Poverty; the celebrated mosaic, known as the Navicella, in the old basilica of S. Peter, Rome, repre- senting a ship on a stormy sea containing the disciples, with Christ walking on the waves (still preserved, much restored, in the vestibule of the present S. Peter's) ; the Seven Sacraments, in the church of the Incoronata at Naples, in which Giotto departed from his usual symbolic style and painted actual scenes of human life; and a series of small paintings on wood in the Florence Academy. A fine Portrait of Dante, by Giotto, was discovered in 1840 on a wall in the palace of the Podesta at Florence. Several of the works of Giotto, and many of those by Italian artists who flourished at or near the time to which we are refer- ring, have been reproduced in chromo-lithography by the Arundel Society. The general characteristics of the early Italian painters may be well studied at the National Gallery, which is tolerably rich in specimens of the various early schools of Italy and Germany. Two Apostles, by Giotto, and a Coronation of the Virgin, by a disciple of his school, are of the class to which we allude. Two works by Giotto are in the Liverpool Institution : they are the Presentation of S. John the Baptist to Zacharias, and Salome with the head of the Baptist, both from Santa Maria del Carmine at Florence ; they were exhibited at the Old Masters Exhibition in 1881. In Giotto's paintings