After 1296, according to Vasari’s entirely credible account, young Giotto took over the direction of the work for the newly elected Franciscan General, Giovanni dal Muro. What share he had in the vivacious and justly loved stories of St. Francis,[9] in the lower range of the nave, is greatly disputed. Of the twenty-eight frescoes involved, it seems clear to me that the first and the last three are by an artist more nearly in the Sienese tradition, that Nos. II to XVIII inclusive are designed by Giotto in the style of the Old Testament stories above and painted by him with a certain amount of assistance, and that the rest are largely inspired by Giotto but executed in his absence and without his final control. What is more important is the variety and vivacity of these narratives. Young Giotto is free to improvise, as he was not in the standard Bible subjects, and the mood shifts readily. We have charity, with St. Francis giving his cloak to a beggar, in an idyllic landscape; family strife in St. Francis renouncing his father, Figure 9; sorcery in the exorcism of the devils from Arezzo; an odd mixture of ogreishness and witchcraft, in St. Francis’s Fire Ordeal before the Soldan, Figure 11; a great pious intentness, in the choristers at the Cradle Rite; intense physical appetite, in the Miracle of the Spring; an entrancing blend of reverence and humor, in the Sermon to the Birds, Figure 10; stark tragedy in the Death of the Knight of Celano. [Illustration: FIG. 10. The Sermon to the Birds.—_Upper Church, Assisi._ ] [Illustration: FIG. 9.—St. Francis renounces His Father.—_Upper Church, Assisi._ ] [Illustration: FIG. 11. St. Francis before the Soldan.—_Upper Church, Assisi._ ] [Illustration: FIG. 12. Early Sketch Copy after Giotto’s Mosaic of the Navicella. Compare Fig. 31.—_Metropolitan Museum, New York._ ] Giotto is still chiefly a sprightly illustrator. He is as yet insensitive to composition. He often perfunctorily splits his groups, giving each a landscape—or architectural back-screen quite in the Byzantine manner. His story-telling is brusque and without rhythm. His sense of form is already strong and growing, but there is little of the ease and style of the Isaac frescoes just above. In vitality the stories of St. Francis mark a great advance, but they lack the gravity and exquisiteness of balance proper to the best mural decoration.