And how shall we picture him in the flesh, the man who was so close to the best side of the religion and the morality of his age? In the year 1222 St Francis, attracted by the thought of St Benedict, went to stay at the ancient monastery at Subiaco, and here, in memory of his visit, his portrait was painted on the wall of a chapel which was completed before 1228. On this picture St Francis is represented without the stigmata and without a halo. He wears the penitent’s rough garb with a cord round his waist, and he is designated simply as Frater Franciscus. The _Poverello_ is seen full face. His figure is slim, his hair and beard are crisp and fair, his face is long and thin. In spite of a certain awkwardness, due no doubt to the painter, he has an appearance of refinement and delicacy well in keeping with the stock from which he had sprung. His large eyes and parted lips suggest the enthusiast; his thin neck and slender hands belong to a physique which might well contract phthisis. There are other early pictures of St Francis. But the great painters who set forth his life’s history do not appear to have been directly influenced by them. Thode has shown how, in some parts of Italy, a bearded type of the saint is traditional, in others a beardless type. Sometimes he was painted dark, sometimes fair, sometimes comely in figure, sometimes emaciated. Even Giotto, judging by the two series of pictures he painted, the one at Assisi, the other in the church of Santa Croce in Florence, had before him different ideal types of the saint. Were it not for the ravages of time, the convent at La Verna would possess one of the early cycles of pictures representing the story of St Francis. A chapel was erected in 1264 on the spot where St Francis received the most holy stigmata, and Taddeo Gaddi, the godson and pupil of Giotto, was summoned to decorate it. No trace of the work remains. Taddeo’s stay at La Verna was however productive of other results. A youth from the neighbouring Pratovecchio, Jacopo Landini, was sent to work under him, and he afterwards went to Florence and gained considerable renown as Jacopo del Casentino. In later life he returned to his native district, where some paintings of his are extant. Vasari includes an account of him in his _Lives of the Painters_, and he tells us that it was due to Jacopo that the painters of Florence first combined together in a guild (_compania e fraternita_) in 1350.