grandeur and force that are absent from painting till Giotto's time, and
for very many years after his death. The restorer has done his best to
obliterate all trace of Giotto's achievement, especially in the fresco
of Drusiana, but in spite of him we may see here Giotto's very work, the
essence of it at any rate, its intention and the variety of his powers
of expressing himself.

The chapel nearest the choir was built by Ridolfo de' Bardi, it is said,
sometime after 1310,[106] and it was for him that Giotto painted there
the story of St. Francis; while on the ceiling he has painted the three
Franciscan virtues, Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, and in the fourth
space has set St. Francis in Glory, as he had done in a different manner
at Assisi.

After the enthusiastic pages of Ruskin,[107] to describe these frescoes,
beautiful still, in spite of their universal restoration, would be
superfluous. It will be enough to refer the reader to his pages, and to
add the subjects of the series. Above, on the left wall, St. Francis
renounces his father, while below he appears to the brethren at Arles,
and under this we see his death. On the left above, Pope Honorius gives
him his Rule, and below, he challenges the pagan priests to the test of
the fire before the Sultan, and appears to Gregory IX, who had thought
to deny that he received the Stigmata. Beside the window Giotto has
painted four great Franciscans, St. Louis of Toulouse, St. Clare, St.
Louis of France, and St. Elizabeth of Hungary. All these frescoes in the
Bardi Chapel are much more damaged by restoration than those in Cappella
Peruzzi.

In the choir, behind the high altar, Agnolo Gaddi, one of the two sons
of Taddeo, has painted, with a charm and brightness of colour that hide
the poor design, the story of the Holy Cross. It was at the request of
Jacopo degli Alberti that Agnolo painted these eight frescoes, where the
angel gives a branch of the Tree of Life from Eden to Seth, whom Adam,
feeling his death at hand, had sent on this errand. Seth returns,
however, only to find Adam dead, and the branch is planted on his grave.
Then in the course of ages that branch grows to a tree, is hewn down,
and, as the Queen of Sheba passes on her way to King Solomon, the
carpenters are striving to cut this wood for the Temple, but they reject
it and throw it into the Pool of Bethesda. And this rejected tree was at
length hewn into the Cross of Our Lord. Then comes Queen Helena