Underneath the windows there is a third row of paintings, thirty-six in number, commonly supposed to be the work of Giotto, and beneath this again painted bands of mosaic, and so to the floor, which is alternately inlaid with squares and octagons of marble originally red and white, but which has worn into the warm dusty yellow which seems to overspread the whole of Assisi.
The choir is built and decorated in a similar manner, and its centre occupied by a very elaborately worked iron screen (once bronzed and gilt) erected upon a marble daïs, inlaid with glass mosaic, the patterns of each step being different, but all intricate and beautiful. The daïs is about ten feet high and thirty-eight feet long, and the screen about nine feet high. Surmounting the screen there is a narrow marble canopy, supported upon twelve marble pillars, with capitals of acanthus leaves richly gilt, the convex side of the leaves in the upper portion of each capital being very deeply cut and painted vermilion. The screen surrounds a plain marble altar.
The arrangement of the choir is similar to that of the body of the church, each of the transepts being similar in size and arrangement to one of the four divisions already spoken of; the only difference is in the size of the windows, which are exactly double of those in the nave, though of identical shape, each having one pointed archivault; but at the choir end of the church the window is treble in size. The two sides of the choir which have no windows, are ornamented with small galleries of tre-foiled Gothic arches supporting canopies. Underneath these galleries are a row of paintings corresponding with the lowest row of frescoes in the nave. There is a recess of about two feet running the whole length of the church between the groups of shafts just above the lowest row of frescoes, which serves to measure the depth of the side arches, and also as a domain to the two lower rows of frescoes. The colour on the shafts, and on the lowest portion of the side walls, has almost entirely disappeared, and the whole of the paintings in the church are much injured by damp. So much is this the case, that it makes me doubt whether it is worth while going very deeply into the question of their authorship, though this is a favourite battleground with the biographers of early Italian painters.