Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/35

1335] later Franciscan historian, Petrus Rudolphus, all agree in saying that Giotto came to Assisi with his master Cimabue, and there painted the lower course of frescoes in the nave of the Upper Church. Here for the first time we have twenty-eight scenes from the story of St. Francis, the glorioso poverell' di Dio, as described in the life of the Saint by Bonaventura. That story belonged to no remote past, but to the painter's own age and land. The life of Francis had been lived in this very city of Assisi, in the valley of Tiber. The man of God had walked up and down these white, dusty streets, and had gone in and out among the people, sharing their daily joys and cares, feeding the hungry and nursing the sick. The different actors in the story, the angry father who turned his son out into the street, the thirsty peasant for whom water gushed from the rock, Brother Leo and Brother Elias, Chiara and her sisters, had not so long ago been living men and women, filled with the hopes and fears, the passions and emotions of other human beings. Here then, ready to the artist's hand, was a whole cycle of legend which had not yet been stamped with the seal of tradition, but was free to be shaped according to his own fancy—a series full of picturesque incident and dramatic situations, that lent itself admirably to artistic representation. The opportunity was a splendid one, and the right man was not long wanting. At this fortunate hour the young Giotto came to Assisi, and a new day dawned for the art of Italy.

These frescoes of the life of St. Francis which the young Florentine painted along the nave of the Upper Church, supplied the type for all future repre-