tto's presence at Ferrara reached
the Florentine poet Dante, he succeeded in inducing his friend to
visit Ravenna, where the poet was exiled, and caused him to paint
some frescoes about the church of S. Francesco for the lords of
Polenta, which are of considerable merit. From Ravenna Giotto
proceeded to Urbino, and did a few things there. Afterwards he
happened to be passing through Arezzo, and being unable to refuse a
favour to Piero Saccone, who had been very kind to him, he executed
in fresco, on a pillar of the principal chapel of the Vescovado, a St
Martin, who is cutting his mantle in two and giving part of it to a
beggar who is all but naked. Then, when he had painted in tempera a
large crucifix in wood for the Abbey of S. Fiore, which is now in the
middle of that church, he at length reached Florence. Here, among
many other things, he painted some pictures in fresco and tempera for
the Nunnery of Faenza, which no longer exist owing to the destruction
of that house.

In 1321 occurred the death of Giotto's dearest friend Dante, to his
great grief; and in the following year he went to Lucca, where, at
the request of Castruccio, then lord of that city, his birthplace, he
made a picture of St Martin, with Christ above in the air, and the
four patron saints of the city--St Peter, St Regulus, St Martin, and
St Paulinus--who seem to be presenting a pope and an emperor,
believed by many to be Frederick of Bavaria and the anti-Pope
Nicholas V. There are also some who believe that Giotto designed the
impregnable fortress of the Giusta at S. Fridiano at Lucca. When
Giotto had returned to Florence, King Robert of Naples wrote to his
eldest son Charles, King of Calabria, who was then in that city, to
use every means to induce the painter to go to Naples, where the king
had just completed the building of the Nunnery of S. Chiara and the
royal church, which he wished to have decorated with noble paintings.
When Giotto learned that he was wanted by so popular and famous a
king, he departed to serve him with the greatest alacrity, and on his
arrival he painted many scenes from the Old and New Testaments in
some chapels of the monastery. It is said that the scenes from the
Apocalypse which he made in one of those chapels were suggested by
Dante, as also perchance were some of the much-admired works at
Assisi, of which I have already spoken at length; and although Dante
was dead at this time, it is possible that they had talked ov