h had not been used for more than two hundred years. If, indeed,
anyone had tried it, as has been said above, he had not succeeded very
happily, nor as well by a great measure as Giotto, who portrayed among
others, as is still seen to-day in the Chapel of the Palace of the
Podesta at Florence, Dante Alighieri, a contemporary and his very great
friend, and no less famous as poet than was in the same times Giotto as
painter, so much praised by Messer Giovanni Boccaccio in the preface to
the story of Messer Forese da Rabatta and of Giotto the painter himself.
In the same chapel are the portraits, likewise by the same man's hand,
of Ser Brunetto Latini, master of Dante, and of Messer Corso Donati, a
great citizen of those times.

[Illustration: _Anderson_

S. FRANCIS PREACHING BEFORE POPE HONORIUS III

(_After the fresco of the_ Roman School. _Assisi: Upper Church of S.
Francesco_)]

The first pictures of Giotto were in the chapel of the high-altar in the
Badia of Florence, wherein he made many works held beautiful, but in
particular a Madonna receiving the Annunciation, for the reason that in
her he expressed vividly the fear and the terror that the salutation of
Gabriel inspired in Mary the Virgin, who appears, all full of the
greatest alarm, to be wishing almost to turn to flight. By the hand of
Giotto, likewise, is the panel on the high-altar of the said chapel,
which has been preserved there to our own day, and is still preserved
there, more because of a certain reverence that is felt for the work of
so great a man than for any other reason. And in S. Croce there are
four chapels by the same man's hand: three between the sacristy and the
great chapel, and one on the other side. In the first of the three,
which is that of Messer Ridolfo de' Bardi, and is that wherein are the
bell-ropes, is the life of S. Francis, in the death of whom a good
number of friars show very naturally the expression of weeping. In the
next, which is that of the family of Peruzzi, are two stories of the
life of S. John the Baptist, to whom the chapel is dedicated; wherein
great vivacity is seen in the dancing and leaping of Herodias, and in
the promptness of some servants bustling at the service of the table. In
the same are two marvellous stories of S. John the Evangelist--namely,
when he brings Drusiana back to life, and when he is carried off into
Heaven. In the third, which is that of the Giugni, dedicated to the
Apostles, there are pain