[82] The donor of this chapel was Gentile de Monteflori, a franciscan, created cardinal in 1298 by Boniface VIII.
[83] Simone was born at Siena in 1283, and died at Avignon in 1344. He belonged to the school of Duccio, though influenced to some degree by his contemporary Giotto, whose work at Assisi he had full opportunity to study.
[84] _Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance_, B. Berenson, p. 47.
[85] _Sketches of the History of Christian Art_, by Lord Lindsay, p. 134, vol. i.
[86] _The Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance._ Bernhard Berenson, p. 48.
[87] Built by the Orsini brothers, the founders of the Chapel del Sacramento, in the beginning of the fourteenth century.
[88] It is curious that the early Umbrian painters had so little share in the decoration of the franciscan Basilica, the only other picture of the school is the one in the Chapel of St. Anthony the Abbot, and a fresco by some scholar of Ottaviano Nelli on the wall near the entrance of the Lower Church.
[89] Not only had the friars to guard their own things, but also the vast treasures of the Popes who, especially during their sojourn at Avignon, found San Francesco a convenient store-house. See on p. 20 for the story of how these goods were stolen by the citizens and the penalty this brought upon the town.
[90] _La Benedizione di San Francesco_, Livorno, 1900.
[91] See chapter vi. p. 171 for description of the frescoes here, and of those above the altar. For Cimabue's Madonna on the right wall of the Transept see chapter v. p. 155.
[92] In 1529 the campanile, which rather gives the impression of a watch-tower, was used by Captain Bernardino da Sassoferrato, as a sure place of refuge when the Prince of Orange entered Assisi with his victorious army. From its heights he kept his enemy at bay for three days, and finally escaped to Spello leaving the city a prey to another despot.
[94] Cary's translation. Dante, _Inferno_, canto xxvii.
_Giotto's Legend of St. Francis in the Upper Church_
"What, therefore, Giotto gave to art was, before all things, vitality."--J. A. SYMONDS. _Renaissance in Italy._
Giotto in the Lower Church had felt his way towards the full expression of his genius; succeeding so well in the four Allegories that he was chosen to illustrate the life of St. Francis, withheld, as we have seen, from all former artists, while Cimabue was to hear the poet's praise of his pupil, "Ora ha Giotto il grido." The task undertaken by the young painter, already a master at twenty-five, was almost superhuman, and certainly unique in the career of any artist; for whereas the pictorial treatment of the New Testament had been attempted by many during several centuries, Giotto was destined to invent forms for the whole franciscan cycle with such perfection that no succeeding artist has varied his formula. It remains a wonderful achievement, and the noble manner of its accomplishment proved him to be, as Mr Roger Fry expresses it, "the supreme epic painter of the world."