The two Gothic chapels to the right of the choir contain Giotto's frescoes--both chapels were originally entirely painted by him--rescued from the whitewash under which they were discovered, and, in part at least, most terribly "restored." The frescoes in the first, the Bardi Chapel, illustrating the life of St. Francis, have suffered most; all the peculiar Giottesque charm of face has disappeared, and, instead, the restorer has given us monotonous countenances, almost deadly in their uniformity and utter lack of expression. Like all mediæval frescoes dealing with St. Francis, they should be read with the _Fioretti_ or with Dante's _Paradiso_, or with one of the old lives of the Seraphic Father in our hands. On the left (beginning at the top) we have his renunciation of the world in the presence of his father and the Bishop of Assisi--_innanzi alla sua spirital corte, et coram patre_, as Dante puts it; on the right, the confirmation of the order by Pope Honorius; on the left, the apparition of St. Francis to St. Antony of Padua; on the right, St. Francis and his followers before the Soldan--_nella presenza del Soldan superba_--in the ordeal of fire; and, below it, St. Francis on his death-bed, with the apparition to the sleeping bishop to assure him of the truth of the Stigmata. Opposite, left, the body is surrounded by weeping friars, the incredulous judge touching the wound in the side, while the simplest of the friars, at the saint's head, sees his soul carried up to heaven in a little cloud. This conception of saintly death was, perhaps, originally derived from Dante's dream of Beatrice in the _Vita Nuova_: "I seemed to look towards heaven, and to behold a multitude of Angels who were returning upwards, having before them an exceedingly white cloud; and these Angels were singing together gloriously." It became traditional in early Italian painting. On the window wall are four great Franciscans. St. Louis the King (one whom Dante does not seem to have held in honour), a splendid figure, calm and noble, in one hand the sceptre and in the other the Franciscan cord, his royal robe besprinkled with the golden lily of France over the armour of the warrior of the Cross; his face absorbed in celestial contemplation. He is the Christian realisation of the Platonic philosopher king; "St. Louis," says Walter Pater, "precisely because his whole being was full of heavenly vision, in self banishment from it for a while, led and ruled the French people so magnanimously alike in peace and war." Opposite him is St. Louis of Toulouse, with the royal crown at his feet; below are St. Elizabeth of Hungary, with her lap full of flowers; and, opposite to her, St. Clare, of whom Dante's Piccarda tells so sweetly in the _Paradiso_--that lady on high whom "perfected life and lofty merit doth enheaven." On the vaulted roof of the chapel are the glory of St. Francis and symbolical representations of the three vows--Poverty,