We now come to the question of whether this fresco be one of the works of Giotto, and again must answer it in the negative. In none of the undoubted works by this master is there so advanced a naturalism as here, especially in the treatment of the drapery, which is far nearer to that of the Renaissance period than that of the Byzantine. It will be found on a careful examination of the works in the Arena Chapel at Padua, that the _main_ lines of the drapery are either straight (or very slightly curved), and in some measure stiff; it would have been almost folly to expect that this should be otherwise, remembering that anterior to Giotto the treatment of drapery had been exclusively founded upon the formal parallel lines of the Byzantine mosaics.
In all probability the Renaissance painters have here supplied the place of a vacant or faded fresco with one of their own compositions, and this is rendered the more likely as there are in the Lower Churches several wretchedly bad Renaissance pictures.
[64] A small portion of this chapter appeared in the _Spectator_ last year under the title of "The Shrine of Poverty," and is here reprinted by the kind permission of the editors of that paper.
[65] I may as well mention that the hotel given by Bradshaw, though the largest, is very poor in its accommodation, and the visitor would probably do better to go to the Albergo Subasio close to the monastery.
[67] In Appendix C, at the end of this book, will be found a list of the works attributed to Giotto by Lord Lindsay, Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Ruskin, and Dohme.
At first sight the church seems of small extent, as the entrance is in a transept at the north side, and the eye looks across the nave without perceiving it; but a few steps forward, and an abrupt turn to the left, brings the church before us--a vast dim cave, glowing with rich colour and subdued light. Looking up the nave, the building appears to be lighted only by the narrow windows in the thick wall of the apse, save where here and there a dull gleam from one of the side chapels steals across, but hardly lightens, the gloom.
Nor is it alone in shape of roof and dimness of light that the resemblance to a cavern exists, for it is visible too in the low walls, whence the arched roof springs in massive curves, and in the seeming absence of all support for the great arches, for the plain stone pillars that support them, half embedded in the walls, and only reaching to a height of eight feet from the ground, attract little notice, and the arches seem to grow out of the walls as if in a building of nature's own construction.