The next fresco is similar in composition, but better preserved. Here we feel the blindness of Isaac, the perplexity of Esau, who cannot understand why his father refuses to bless him, and the fear of Rebecca, who has stepped back, knowing that her fraud must now be discovered. In this composition the artist has strictly kept to rules laid down by his predecessors, and the result, if a little stiff and wanting in originality, is yet pleasing and restful to look at, presenting a great contrast to the somewhat exaggerated movements expressed in the preceding ones. The last of the series is the steward finding the cup in Benjamin's sack, though greatly ruined it still shows much beauty of composition. Upon the opposite wall, by the altar, is depicted the life of Christ by followers of Cimabue, but the few frescoes that remain are so mutilated and repainted, that it is impossible to say much about them, or even to imagine what they may once have been. "In the Capture," writes Messrs Crowe and Cavacaselle, "the Saviour is of a superior size to the rest of those around him, and of a stern but serene bearing. Trivial conception marks the scene of the Saviour carrying the Cross." The Pietà, one of the last, is evidently by a finer scholar of Cimabue, and the woman coming round the rocks resembles slightly the figure of Rebecca in the two frescoes on the opposite side. "The composition," write the same authors, "is more like that which Giotto afterwards conceived than any other before or since"; but the colossal figure of Christ destroys the harmony of the scene. The arch at the end of the nave is painted to represent a series of niches, in each of which stands the figure of a saint, all are much repainted, as are the medallions of St. Peter and St. Paul by the door. The Descent of the Holy Spirit is greatly ruined, and in the Ascension the _intonaco_ has peeled off, showing the bricks, so that the apostles have the appearance of looking over a wall. The ceiling is frescoed in three different places by other masters, whose names have not come down to us. Between the transepts and nave the four Evangelists, seated outside the gates of towns, are so utterly ruined and blackened by time and damp that it is barely worth craning one's neck to look at them.[71] But the four medallions of Christ, the Madonna, St. John the Baptist and St. Francis, which ornament the centre of the nave, are among the most beautiful things in the church, and quite perfect as decoration. At each corner of the spandrels stands an angel upon a globe, with wings uplifted, delicate in outline and brilliantly coloured, while the whole is bordered by the most exquisite design of blossoms and green foliage rising out of slender vases, which mingle with cupids, angels, winged horses and rabbits on a dull red ground. It must have been painted by one who had learned his art from the same source whence the decorative painters of Pompeii drew their inspiration.