I am much puzzled by the interior of this upper church. I cannot get out of my head the impression that they [the two “churches”] were designed and _in part executed_ by Frenchmen. The detail of the groining piers and their capitals and bases are so peculiarly and characteristically French that (seeing how very different Italian work of the same date was) I cannot believe that they were ever wrought by Italian hands from French designs, because sculpture of foliage was just one of these things in which the character of different schools was so marked that it was impossible to get any but Frenchmen to do such work as this. Above this point I do not feel the same thing because I see that the window traceries, though very fair, have a feature peculiar to Italian Gothic--in the way in which the circles, etc., in the tracery are put under the main arch, just touching but not uniting with it. The string under the windows has for a considerable portion of its length a complete English dog-tooth. The whole of the walls are painted. Below the string-course, which is very high from the floor, is, first a painted imitation of hangings (much like our thirteenth century patterns) in which the diaper is continued regularly without reference to folds in the draperies; then a row of noble frescoes by Giotto; and above the string on each side of the windows other frescoes by Cimabue. The roof is by the latter, and the groining bays are alternately blue studded with stars, and frescoed in subjects. The latter have a predominance in the ground of a rich chrome--reddish yellow--and the ribs throughout are bordered with wide patterned borders. The contrast of colours is admirable and finer than anything I have seen. The borders round the work done by Giotto are very inferior to those in Cimabue’s work. The latter[5] are all severely flat and geometrical, indulging, after a few feet of plain pattern, in a quatrefoil [Illustration: quatrefoil] or one inscribed on a square, painted with a head on a blue ground. Giotto’s, on the other hand, though in some respects very beautiful, indulge too much in perspective, _e.g._ each division between the groining piers is divided into the subjects by painted and shaded imitations of twisted columns bearing cornices. There are some features of interest in the work beyond the exquisite beauty. To me it was new to find Cimabue painting with so little rudeness and so much magnificent simplicity and breadth of purpose. I note another of Giotto’s frescoes is interesting as showing the original use of the painted roods of which we have seen so many. I think there can be little doubt they were to be placed on the rood-screen, as he distinctly shows them, and, curiously, I find in this upper church the two ends of the ancient rood-beam sawn off a foot from the wall. This was a few feet west of the crossing. The transepts, altar and stalls are all modern in their arrangements.