Some of these allegorical figures are very beautiful; especially there should be noticed _Charity_, holding a basket of fruit in one hand and stretching forth the other to the _Almighty_, who bends down from heaven to place some fruit in her hand. As Mr. Ruskin has remarked, the figure is made to trample upon money-bags, as if in contempt. _Hope_ also is a very beautiful figure flying upward with outstretched arms, and an expression of rapture and longing upon her face. After these _Justice_ and _Temperance_ are the finest. Of the Vices, _Injustice_ is perhaps the most interesting, if it is only for the sake of giving a clear example of how far Giotto understood the nature of trees. The foreground of this fresco being a wood, behind which sits _Injustice_ in a cave, with a sword in his left hand and a grappling-hook in his right, to catch the unwary traveller, who is represented in a small predella to the picture, being robbed and stripped of his clothes. _Anger_ too is a fine figure, rending her garment apart in futile wrath, and so is _Despair_, with clenched fists and downcast head. On the whole, this series of Virtues and Vices is a remarkable one for the plainness with which the thing symbolised is shown, and the penetration which has led Giotto in almost every case to the real root of the Virtue or Vice. For a full description of these most interesting frescoes the reader cannot do better than refer to the little book written for the Arundel Society by Mr. Ruskin, entitled _Giotto and his Works in Padua_.
NOTE.--"This chapel, built in, or about, the year 1303, appears to have been intended to replace one which had long existed upon the spot; and in which from the year 1278 an annual festival had been held on Ladyday, in which the Annunciation was represented in the manner of our English mysteries (and under the same title: 'Una sacra rappresentazione di quel _mistero_'), with dialogue and music, both vocal and instrumental. Scrovegni's purchase of the ground would not be allowed to interfere with the national custom; but he is reported by some writers to have rebuilt the chapel with greater costliness, in order, as far as possible, to efface the memory of his father's unhappy life. But Federici, in his history of the Cavalieri Godenti, supposes that Scrovegni was a member of that body, and was assisted by them in decorating the new edifice. The order of Cavalieri Godenti was instituted in the beginning of the thirteenth century, to defend the 'existence,' as Selvatica states it, but, more accurately, the 'dignity' of the Virgin against the various heretics by whom it was beginning to be assailed. His knights were at first called 'Cavaliers of St. Mary;' but soon increased in power and riches to such a degree that from their general habits of life they received the nickname of the 'Merry Brothers.'