Of course this alteration in architecture and colour was caused to some considerable extent by the necessity of the work being in harmony with the very elaborate decoration of the church, and by the fact of the construction of the building being far more intricate and elaborate than the plain oblong box of the Arena Chapel. The simple magnificence of tint which makes each fresco in the latter building tell as if it were of a perfect jewel, and the breadth of composition and treatment, owing to which the picture denotes as forcibly as possible the fact depicted, would perhaps have been out of harmony if adopted here; but there can be little doubt which treatment is the most admirable in itself or most like that of Giotto's usual style.
However this may be, there is another and a simpler reason for the differences we have noted, which is, that in all probability the only frescoes executed by Giotto's own hand were those in the four triangular spaces above the choir, and two others presently to be mentioned; the majority of the works attributed to him were probably executed by Taddeo Gaddi and Simon Memmi, under his superintendence. This would render it probable that greater elaboration should be bestowed upon the more mechanical portions of the composition which could be executed almost equally well by the pupil, and would likewise account for the pictures being treated more from the point of view of portions of the building, and the figures being kept subordinate, as it will of course account for the work being both more varied in colouring, and also for its having less of the master's delicate beauty.
It must be noted that the scale of colouring in the _Vows of St. Francis_ is a much more extended one than the painter was possessed of at the time of his decoration of the Arena Chapel, and this alone should have made Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle hesitate before attributing these works to an earlier period.[71] Very certainly growth in years and genius would be likely to increase the richness and variety of his tints, and no doubt most of these north transept frescoes were executed by his pupils, and only had the final touches laid on by the master. The most noticeable quality in these frescoes, compared with the undoubted work of Giotto, both in the Arena Chapel and the frescoes in the ceiling of Assisi, is the lack of that life in every line which was so excellent a merit in Giotto's work. In the frescoes of Padua every line is perfectly unfaltering and necessary, and endowed with a force and deliberate intention to which it is difficult to find a parallel in the history of art. "No man," says Mr. Ruskin, somewhere, "has expressed so much action in a single gesture as Giotto has done." Of this vivid expression the frescoes in the north transept appear to me to retain few traces; they have just the same relation to the early work that a clever imaginary landscape has to a rough sketch from nature. The first may not be _wrong_, but we feel that the latter is right.
