_Right Transept._--According to Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle these frescoes are by Giotto, and Mr Bernhard Berenson is of the opinion that they belong to his early period, and were executed by him before the franciscans knew what his powers were, and whether they could entrust to him the more difficult task of illustrating the legend of St. Francis. The subjects are taken from the early life of Christ which had been depicted many times in preceding centuries, but although Giotto attempted no very elaborate or original manner of treatment, his style was rapidly developing, and we have in some of the scenes little traits of nature which only belong to him. On the outside of the Chapel del Sacramento, over the arch, he painted the Annunciation with such charm, dignity and harmony of outline that it would be difficult to find a more perfect conception of religious feeling even among the pictures of Angelico. Unfortunately it can only be seen in the early afternoon when the light comes in through the windows of S. Giovanni; the Madonna rising with queenly grace and the angel hastening forward with his message then stand out from their dark background like living people, and show how, from the first, Giotto attained the power of giving vitality to his figures. His Madonna is not like a graven image to be worshipped from afar; she is essentially the earthly mother of the Saviour, and Giotto, while treating her story with dignity and a certain sense of remoteness, tells it by the simplest means, endowing her with the maternal tenderness of a young peasant girl whom we meet upon the roads carrying her child to lay beneath the shadow of a tree while she goes to her work in the fields close by. [Illustration: CHOIR AND TRANSEPTS OF THE LOWER CHURCH] The Visitation (on the same wall as Cimabue's Madonna) is one of those frescoes that we remember like a scene we have witnessed, so naturally does the Virgin move forward, followed by a group of handmaidens, and hold out her arms to greet Elizabeth who is bending with such reverence to salute her cousin. They stand at the entrance of a dainty house inlaid with mosaic which is set among the bare rocks with only a stunted tree here and there. But Giotto does not forget to place a flowering plant in the balcony just as the peasants have always done in his mountain home.