In the adjoining chapel of the Bardi family, Giotto, a little later, I
believe, painted six stories of St. Francis, and four figures of the
great Franciscan saints, St. Louis of France, St. Louis of Toulouse, St.
Clare, and St. Elizabeth of Hungary. Over the entrance arch he set an
animated picture of St. Francis receiving the stigmata, the wounds of
the Saviour. Nearly thirty years earlier he had done this subject for
the Church at Assisi, and in an altar-piece which has passed from Pisa
to the Louvre. By comparing the rigid, angular figures of the earlier
composition and their ill-adjusted accessories, with this easy and
beautifully balanced arrangement, you may see how far Giotto had gone in
the direction of grace, and you will not fail also to note how much more
tragic the earlier and less calculated work is.
For the first time, in the Bardi chapel, Giotto conceives the decoration
of the side walls as a whole. From the pointed lunettes above, through
the three compositions on each wall, there is an architectural axis,
sometimes arbitrarily imposed, about which the figures are symmetrically
distributed. Often the scene is a screen with projecting wings as in the
St. Francis before the Sultan of Morocco, or a similar fore-court, as in
the Mourning for St. Francis. It will be well to compare the story of
St. Francis renouncing his father, Figure 21, with the same subject at
Assisi. You will recall that St. Francis, when rebuked by his father for
a rash and impulsive act of charity, stripped off his clothes, then
threw them at his father’s feet, and took refuge under the robe of the
Bishop of Assisi. In the earlier version the architectural background
splits the composition in two, adding to its intensity perhaps, but
displeasing to the eye. Here in the late version a fine building seen in
perspective both unifies the two groups and serves as apex for the
decorative axis of the entire side wall.
[Illustration:
FIG. 21. Giotto. St. Francis renounces his Father. Compare FIG.
9.—_Bardi Chapel, Santa Croce._
]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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