_The Adoration of the Magi._--In this and the following fresco of the _Presentation in the Temple_ we find perhaps the strongest proof of these works being more probably imitations of Giotto's manner than original works. I cannot conceive how it is possible for any artist (or indeed any one with an eye for a picture at all) to imagine that these stiff, formal draperies, falling in folds, which seem as if each had a leaden weight attached to it, so straight and stiff are they, and those inexpressive faces, chiefly of the aquiline type, could have proceeded from the same hand as the frescoes of _Obedience_ and _Poverty_.
Standing, as I did, here on the steps of the high altar, by the side of the one fresco, and beneath the others, it appeared inconceivable that a question should ever have been raised as to the authorship of the frescoes of the north transept, or at least as to their being by Giotto's own hand. The misleading fact has, I suppose, been the reproduction of so many of the master's figures and attitudes in these frescoes; but, rightly understood, this should rather have created the contrary presumption, for it is far more likely that a pupil should repeat his master's figures, than that a man of such inventive genius as Giotto undoubtedly was at a later time, should deliberately set himself to copy his earlier work, as he must have done if these pictures were by him.
But apart from all such _à priori_ considerations, the difference in the work and the style is so great as to put the matter beyond a question. There is not to be found in any of the hundreds of figures in the four large compositions in the ceiling of this church, one in which the faces are of the same type, the figures of the same long, lean kind, and the drapery of the straight, angular nature that we find in these two frescoes of the _Adoration_ and the _Presentation_. The same thing applies to the _Flight into Egypt_, though in this composition there is a greater approach in some respects to the master's manner. It is worthy of notice that the various trees and ferns in this picture are painted without the dark background employed by Giotto in his Arena pictures; each leaf is now painted dark against the background, instead of light on a background of a dark patch, the rough outside shape of the tree. This is no inconsiderable advance, and a still greater may be noticed in the painting of the bramble in the fresco of _St. Francis' Wedding to Poverty_.
