More remarkable still is the contrast between St. Francis Braving the Fire Ordeal before the Soldan, Figure 22, as depicted at Assisi and Florence. We have to do not merely with an immense advance in decorative composition, the accessories at Assisi being trivial and fantastic; not merely with progress towards a gracious symmetry and more massive and impressive form, but also with a complete change of moral point of view. At Assisi the Soldan is an ogre exacting a cruel test. The Moslem priests are a cowardly pack of magicians ignobly slinking away, St. Francis a grim fanatic. At Florence the Soldan is a noble and humane gentleman, amazed at an unreasonable ordeal forced upon his wise men. The Moslem doctors are splendid scholars grudgingly shrinking from an unfair test, St. Francis an alert little enthusiast half gloating over the confusion he has thrown into the enemy camp. With a by no means orthodox feeling, old Giotto, humanistic Giotto, almost seems to take, or at least to see, the pagans’ side of it. He who had written a manly poem against the excesses and hypocrisies of the Franciscan ideal of poverty, is now capable of criticizing the more extravagant propagandism of the saint himself. It is a criticism that admits all tenderness and sympathy, as may be seen in the famous fresco representing the Mourning over the body of St. Francis while his soul is translated to heaven, Figure 23. Again John Ruskin is your best interpreter to this picture, which after all only needs to be seen. It combines all the qualities for which Giotto had striven—warmth, vivacity, ingenuity, unexpectedness in the narrative details; massiveness and dignity of the individual forms; and a decorative symmetry at once monumental, formal, and delightfully varied. [Illustration: FIG. 22. Giotto. St. Francis before the Soldan. Compare Fig. 11.—_Bardi Chapel, Santa Croce._ ] [Illustration: FIG. 23. Giotto. Death of St. Francis.—_Bardi Chapel, Santa Croce._ ]