Part 1 (2/2)

Those are St Francis's three articles of Italian opera By which grew the s you have colass and look up to the roof above Arnolfo's building, you will see it is a pretty Gothic cross vault, in four quarters, each with a circular medallion, painted by Giotto That over the altar has the picture of St Francis hiels In front of hiht hand, Obedience On his left, Chastity

Poverty, in a red patched dress, with grey wings, and a square ni from a black hound, whose head is seen at the corner of the medallion

Chastity, veiled, is iels watch her

Obedience bears a yoke on her shoulders, and lays her hand on a book

Now, this saels, was also painted, but much more elaborately, by Giotto, on the cross vault of the lower church of assisi, and it is a question of interest which of the two roofs was painted first

Your Murray's Guide tells you the frescos in this chapel were painted between 1296 and 1304 But as they represent, aes, St Louis of Toulouse, as not canonized till 1317, that stateether tenable Also, as the first stone of the church was only laid in 1294, when Giotto was a youth of eighteen, it is little likely that either it would have been ready to be painted, or he ready with his scheme of practical divinity, two years later

Farther, Arnolfo, the builder of the main body of the church, died in 1310 And as St Louis of Toulouse was not a saint till seven years afterwards, and the frescos therefore beside thenot painted in Arnolfo's day, it becomes another question whether Arnolfo left the chapels or the church at all, in their present form

On which point--now that I have shown you where Giotto's St Louis is--I will ask you to think awhile, until you are interested; and then I will try to satisfy your curiosity There fore, please leave the little chapel for the moment, and walk down the nave, till you come to two sepulchral slabs near the west end, and then look about you and see what sort of a church Santa Croce is

Without looking about you at all, you may find, in your Murray, the useful information that it is a church which ”consists of a very wide nave and lateral aisles, separated by seven fine pointed arches” And as you will be--under ordinary conditions of tourist hurry--glad to learn so , it is little likely to occur to you that this nave and two rich aisles required also, for your complete present comfort, walls at both ends, and a roof on the top It is just possible, indeed, you , by the curious disposition of painted glass at the east end;-- down the nave, you may this moment have noticed the extremely small circularat the west end; but the chances are a thousand to one that, after being pulled from tomb to tomb round the aisles and chapels, you should take so extraordinary an additional amount of pains as to look up at the roof,--unless you do it now, quietly It will have had its effect upon you, even if you don't, without your knowledge You will return hoeneral iliest Gothic church you ever were in Well, that is really so; and noill you take the pains to see why?

There are two features, on which, ht of a fine Gothic building depends; one is the springing of its vaultings, the other the proportion and fantasy of its traceries

_This_ church of Santa Croce has no vaultings at all, but the roof of a farm-house barn And its s are all of the saly prosaic one of two pointed arches, with a round hole above, between them

And to make the simplicity of the roof more conspicuous, the aisles are successive sheds, built at every arch In the aisles of the Campo Santo of Pisco, the unbroken flat roof leaves the eye free to look to the traceries; but here, a succession of up-and-down sloping bea rather than a church aisle

And lastly, while, in fine Gothic buildings, the entire perspective concludes itself gloriously in the high and distant apse, here the nave is cut across sharply by a line of ten chapels, the apse being only a tall recess in the , the church is not of the forraceful arrangen of the renowned Arnolfo?

Yes, this is purest Arnolfo-Gothic; not beautiful by any htfullest examination We will trace its complete character another day; just noe are only concerned with this pre-Christian form of the letter T, insisted upon in the lines of chapels

Respecting which you are to observe, that the first Christian churches in the catacombs took the for a vaulted recess on each side; then the Byzantine churches were structurally built in the form of an equal cross; while the heraldic and other ornalory and victory, partly of light, and divine spiritual presence

[Footnote: See, on this subject generally, Mr R St J Tyrwhitt's ”Art-Teaching of the Primitive Church” S P B K, 1874]

But the Franciscans and Don of triumph, but of trial[Footnote: I have never obtained tiht study of early Christian church-discipline,--nor am I sure to how many other causes, the choice of the form of the basilica may be occasionally attributed, or by what other communities it may be made Symbolism, for instance, haswith the Dominicans; but in all cases, and in all places, the transition frohted apse, indicates the change in Christian feeling between regarding a church as a place for public judgational praise The following passage froht to be read also in the Florentine church:--”The nearest approach to Westminster Abbey in this aspect is the church of Santa Croce at Florence There, as here, the present destination of the building was no part of the original design, but was the result of various converging causes As the church of one of the two great preaching orders, it had a nave large beyond all proportion to its choir That order being the Franciscan, bound by vows of poverty, the simplicity of the worshi+p preserved the whole space clear from any adventitious ornaments The popularity of the Franciscans, especially in a convent hallowed by a visit from St

Francis himself, drew to it not only the chief civic festivals, but also the nuave alms to the friars, and whose connection with their church was, for this reason, in turn encouraged by theraves, piled with standards und achievements of the noble families of Florence, were successively interred--not because of their eminence, but as members or friends of those faes of the fifteenth century Thus it came to pass, as if by accident, that in the vault of the Buonarotti was laid Michael Angelo; in the vault of the Viviani the preceptor of one of their house, Galileo Fronized shrine of Italian genius”] The wounds of their Master were to be their inheritance So their first aiht present, distinctly that of the actual instrument of death

And they did thisthe forn of peace

Also, their churches were lorification They wanted places for preaching, prayer, sacrifice, burial; and had no intention of showing how high they could build towers, or hoidely they could arch vaults

Strong walls, and the roof of a barn,--these your Franciscan asks of his Arnolfo These Arnolfo gives,--thoroughly and wisely built; the successions of gable roof being a new device for strength, much praised in its day

This stern hu Arnolfo himself had other notions; much more Ci else had to be taught about Christ than that He ounded to death

Nevertheless, look how grand this stern form would be, restored to its simplicity It is not the old church which is in itself unimpressive

It is the old church defaced by Vasari, by Michael Angelo, and by ht hand and left, at the sides of the aisles, with their alternate gable and round tops, and their paltriest of all possible sculpture, trying to be grand by bigness, and pathetic by expense Tear theination; fancy the vast hall with its massive pillars,--not painted calomel-pill colour, as now, but of their native stone, with a rough, true wood for roof,--and a people praying beneath the, and pure in life, as their rocks and olive forests That was Arnolfo's Santa Croce Nor did his work rerace