Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/34

14 bined, is now known to have been a Lombard friar, Fra Filippo di Campello, and so speedily was his work done, that by 1239 the lofty Campanile was finished and the bells were hung. Even before the consecration of the Upper Church, Tuscan painters were employed to decorate the walls of the Lower Church with frescoes, and thus the shrine of St. Francis became the cradle of early Italian art. All the different currents of thought from East and West, all the varied elements that were to influence the art of Giotto—Greek and Roman, Gothic and Byzantine—seem to meet in this sacred spot, this fortunate Assisi of which Dante sang as blessed above all the other cities in Italy. Here, among the ruined paintings which still adorn the walls of the Upper Church, we find traces of the works of those Greek artists, whom Vasari mentions, side by side with frescoes which plainly reveal their Roman origin. Many of the Old Testament subjects along the upper course of the nave bear a marked likeness to the contemporary mosaics executed in S. Maria Maggiore of Rome, and justify Crowe and Cavalcaselle's suggestion, that one of the artists employed at Assisi may have been the same Filippo Rusutti whose signature appears on some of these frescoes. Unfortunately the records of the Franciscan convent are silent as to the painters of the frescoes which cover the walls of the great church, and while we are told the names of the carpenters and masons who were employed, and the exact date of the year and month when the leading of the windows or plaster of the walls was repaired, neither Cimabue nor Giotto are once mentioned. But Ghiberti, Vasari and the