No pains had been spared to make San Francesco as lovely in every detail as the brain of man could devise, and it is most remarkable how the frescoes belong to the general idea of the building as though every artist had thought as much of this unity as of the individual perfection of his work. The beautiful papal throne in the choir, of white marble encrusted in mosaic with its frieze of strange animals in low relief, its arms supported by red marble lions, is almost a replica of the Soldan's throne in Giotto's fresco, and was designed by Fuccio Fiorentino in 1347, when the architecture that Giotto delighted in was still the recognised style in Italy.[72] The marble and mosaic altar is of the same date, and the octagonal pulpit of sculptured stone, with saints in small tabernacles, spiral columns and designs of leaves slightly tinted, supposed also to be by Fuccio, is placed at the corner of the wall of the nave looking as if it had grown there. The columns supporting the arched gallery round the church have each been painted to represent mauve and rose-coloured marbles, and there is not a single space in all the building which has not been decorated to harmonise with the frescoes, giving a perfect sense of infinite completeness and beauty, to which time has added by mellowing everything into a pale orange colour--the colour of Assisi. FOOTNOTES: [68] It is difficult to say how free a hand the artists were allowed when called in to execute work for any church, but probably, in the case of San Francesco, they were obliged to illustrate precisely the scenes and events chosen by the friars, who in the case of the saint's legend would be very severe judges, requiring quite the best that the artist could produce. [69] Later documents of the convent speak of a crucifix painted in 1236 by Giunta Pisano with a portrait of Brother Elias "taken from life" and the following inscription: Frater Elias fieri fecit Jesu Christe pie Misere pecantis Helie Giunta Pisanus me pinxit. A.D.M. MCCXXXVI. It hung from a beam in the Upper Church until 1624 when it suddenly disappeared, and it seems to have inspired Padre Angeli (author of the "Collis Paradisi") with the theory that Giunta Pisano was the first to paint in San Francesco, ascribing to him, as some have continued to do, the frescoes in the choir and transept of the Upper Church. Messrs Crowe and Cavacaselle say, on what authority it is impossible to discover, that the middle aisle of the Lower Church "seems to have been painted between 1225 and 1250," ignoring the fact that Pope Gregory only laid the foundation stone of the Basilica in 1228. Without trying to find such early dates for the history of art at Assisi, it appears to us quite wonderful enough that some fifty or sixty years after the ceremony of the consecration in 1253, Cimabue and his contemporaries--Giotto and his Tuscan followers--had completed their work in both churches.