Shortly after these frescoes had been completed in the Lower Church, art received a new impulse (one likes to think that the struggles of the first artist towards something better and more true to life had to do with this); others came, with Giotto at their head, and painted over some of these early efforts, leaving us only Cimabue's great Madonna, a few ruined frescoes, a Byzantine pattern, and stray touches of colour in dark corners of the church to remind us of these first decorators of San Francesco. We get a melancholy picture from Vasari of the depths to which art had sunk, and of the degenerate artists still following a worn-out tradition until it became as a dead thing in their hands deprived of all inspiration, when "in the year 1240, by the will of God, Giovanni Cimabue ... was born in the city of Florence to give the first light to the art of painting." Cimabue is rightly called the Father of Italian art, as he represented a new era among Italian masters who were awakening to their country's needs; when men, filled with strange restless energy, grew tired of the Byzantine Madonna with her court of stiff, lifeless saints, and looked for something in closer touch with their mood and aspirations. Round the name of Cimabue are grouped many charming legends belonging to a time when the people, anxious to possess the new thing their hearts craved for, looked eagerly and critically at an artist's work. There is the story of how when he had finished the picture of the Virgin Mary, the Florentines came to his workshop, and, expecting much from him, yet were amazed at the wonderful beauty of the grand Madonna, and carried the picture with rejoicing, to the sound of music, to the Church of Sta. Maria Novella, where it still hangs in the dark chapel of the Ruccellai; a street in Florence down which the picture passed being called Borgo Allegri, because of the gladness of that day. It is only a legend, and one that has been oft repeated, and as often doubted. Now the existence of Cimabue is even questioned by some, but whoever invented the story understood the great change which had come among the people and into art. It was only right that in the church of the saint who personified the feeling of the age, caught its spirit, and sent the impulse of the people even further, should centre all the first efforts towards this awakening and revival, until, step by step, the masterpieces of Giotto were reached. When we remember this, the large fresco of Cimabue in the right transept of the Lower Church becomes more full of beauty and meaning.[70] The great spirit of her presence fills the church, her majesty and nobility is that of the ideal Madonna, grave to sadness, thinking, as her eyes look steadily out upon the world, what future years would bring to the Child seated on her lap, who stretches out a baby hand to clasp her veil. All the angels round the throne sway towards her; in their heavy