Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/28

8 whole conception in grace and feeling, to that of Duccio, is evident at first sight, while a close comparison of this picture, with the great Sienese master's genuine works reveals a variety of minor differences in technique and style. We may therefore safely accept the old tradition, recorded by Vasari, and confirmed by an earlier and more trustworthy writer, Albertini (1510), and believe that this altar-piece, which still hangs in the Rucellai Chapel, is the last and best of Cimabue's Madonnas, the picture which made the heart of old Florence glad, and was borne in triumph through her streets.

Some remains of Cimabue's frescoes may still be found at Assisi, where, Vasari tells us, he was invited, "in company with certain Greek masters, to paint the roof of the Lower Church of S. Francesco, together with the life of Jesus Christ and that of St. Francis, on the walls." The learned and accurate Franciscan friar, Petrus Rudolphus, who wrote a careful description of the great church in 1586, records that Cimabue and Giotto both worked there, and Ghiberti, writing early in the fifteenth century, says that Cimabue painted the whole of the Upper Church of Assisi. Most of the early frescoes in the Lower Church have been destroyed, and the hands of many different artists are apparent in the paintings of the Upper Church; but in the south transept of the Lower Church, close to the noble works painted by Giotto a few years later, we find a Madonna attended by angels, bearing strong marks of Cimabue's style, which his great scholar may well have left untouched out of respect to his master. This Virgin is of the same Byzantine type as those in his other altar-pieces, the throne is of the same carved