Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/40

20 Giotto was in Rome during this famous year 1300, when both his fellow-citizens Dante and the historian Giovanni Villani were present in the Eternal City. The divine poet, who places his great vision of heaven and hell in that memorable year, was an intimate friend of the painter—coetaneo e amico grandissimo, says Vasari—and, after his return to Florence, Giotto introduced Dante's portrait, robed in red and holding his book in his hand, in an altarpiece of Paradise which he painted for the chapel of the Podestà palace. But since this chapel was burnt down in 1332, and only rebuilt after Giotto's death, the fresco of Dante on the walls of the present building, which was discovered some years ago, must have been copied by one of his followers from the original painting.

It was probably on his journey back to Florence, or on some other visit to Assisi during the next few years, that Giotto painted his frescoes in the Lower Church. Chief among these are the four great allegories on the vaulted roof immediately above the high altar, under which the ashes of the Saint were laid. Here, in the Holy of Holies, the young Florentine master was employed by the Franciscans of Assisi to illustrate the meaning of the three monastic virtues, Obedience, Chastity, and Poverty, whom, according to the legend of the Fioretti, the Saint met walking on the road to Siena in the form of three fair maidens, and whom he held up to his followers as the sum of evangelical perfection. Nowhere is Giotto's creative power more finely displayed than in these subjects, where he has succeeded in animating the frigid conceits of mediæval allegory with human life and