in fresco, there
is a S. Francis who is receiving the Stigmata, so loving and devout that
to me it appears the most excellent picture that Giotto made in these
works, which are all truly beautiful and worthy of praise.

Having finished, then, for the last, the said S. Francis, he returned to
Florence, where, on arriving there, he painted, on a panel that was to
be sent to Pisa, a S. Francis on the tremendous rock of La Vernia, with
extraordinary diligence, seeing that, besides certain landscapes full of
trees and cliffs, which was something new in those times, there are seen
in the attitude of a S. Francis, who is kneeling and receiving the
Stigmata with much readiness, a most ardent desire to receive them and
infinite love towards Jesus Christ, who, being surrounded in the sky by
seraphim, is granting them to him with an expression so vivid that
anything better cannot be imagined. In the lower part of the same panel
there are three very beautiful scenes of the life of the same Saint.
This panel, which to-day is seen in S. Francesco in Pisa on a pillar
beside the high-altar, and is held in great veneration as a memorial of
so great a man, was the reason that the Pisans, having just finished the
building of the Campo Santo after the design of Giovanni, son of Niccola
Pisano, as has been said above, gave to Giotto the painting of part of
the inner walls, to the end that, since this so great fabric was all
incrusted on the outer side with marbles and with carvings made at very
great cost, and roofed over with lead, and also full of sarcophagi and
ancient tombs once belonging to the heathens and brought to Pisa from
various parts of the world, even so it might be adorned within, on the
walls, with the noblest painting. Having gone to Pisa, then, for this
purpose, Giotto made in fresco, on the first part of a wall in that
Campo Santo, six large stories of the most patient Job. And because he
judiciously reflected that the marbles of that part of the building
where he had to work were turned towards the sea, and that, all being
saline marbles, they are ever damp by reason of the south-east winds and
throw out a certain salt moisture, even as the bricks of Pisa do for the
most part, and that therefore the colours and the paintings fade and
corrode, he caused to be made over the whole surface where he wished to
work in fresco, to the end that his work might be preserved as long as
possible, a coating, or in truth an intonaco or