Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/36

16 sentations, and were repeated with little variation by Tuscan artists during the next two centuries. They reveal in a wonderful way the vigour of his youthful genius, his strong dramatic sense and sympathy with every form of human life. Each separate scene is realised in the same vivid manner: the parting from the angry father, at whose feet Francis lays down his clothes, while the Bishop casts his cloak over him, and the bystanders look on with evident compassion on their faces; the solemn moment in which Francis and his poor companions kneel before, the great Pope Innocent III. and receive his permission to preach; or the ordeal before the Soldan, when the bare-footed friar boldly enters the flames, while the magicians shrink back in terror at the sight. The sudden death of the Lord of Celano, while he is in the act of entertaining the Saint, is represented in the most striking manner, and the different phases of grief and horror are vividly painted on the faces of the women and attendants who crowd round the dying man, and in the gesture of Francis himself as he rises from the hospitable board. But finest of all is the touching scene in which the funeral procession passes before the convent of S. Damiano, and Chiara bends in an agony of love and grief over the lifeless form of her beloved master, while her companions kiss the stigmatized hand, and the people gaze with reverent awe and sorrow on the face of the dead Saint in his last sleep. Already in these youthful works we see traces of the shrewd sense of humour, the genial sympathy with the lighter side of things, that was so marked a characteristic of the great Florentine. It must have