impossible to the false painters
of the Sixteenth Century.

Nevertheless, what his art can honestly do to make you feel as much as
he wants you to feel, about this fire, he will do; and that studiously.
That the fire be _luminous_ or not, is no matter just now. But that the
fire is _hot_, he would have you to know. Now, will you notice what
colours he has used in the whole picture. First, the blue background,
necessary to unite it with the other three subjects, is reduced to the
smallest possible space. St. Francis must be in grey, for that is his
dress; also the attendant of one of the Magi is in grey; but so warm,
that, if you saw it by itself, you would call it brown. The shadow
behind the throne, which Giotto knows he _can_ paint, and therefore
does, is grey also. The rest of the picture[21] in at least six-sevenths
of its area--is either crimson, gold, orange, purple, or white, all as
warm as Giotto could paint them; and set off by minute spaces only of
intense black,--the Soldan's fillet at the shoulders, his eyes, beard,
and the points necessary in the golden pattern behind. And the whole
picture is one glow.

A single glance round at the other subjects will convince you of the
special character in this; but you will recognize also that the four
upper subjects in which St. Francis's life and zeal are shown, are all
in comparatively warm colours, while the two lower ones--of the death,
and the visions after it--have been kept as definitely sad and cold.

Necessarily, you might think, being full of monks' dresses. Not so. Was
there any need for Giotto to have put the priest at the foot of the dead
body, with the black banner stooped over it in the shape of a grave?
Might he not, had he chosen, in either fresco, have made the celestial
visions brighter? Might not St. Francis have appeared in the centre of a
celestial glory to the dreaming Pope, or his soul been seen of the poor
monk, rising through more radiant clouds? Look, however, how radiant,
in the small space allowed out of the blue, they are in reality. You
cannot anywhere see a lovelier piece of Giottesque colour, though here
you have to mourn over the smallness of the piece, and its isolation.
For the face of St. Francis himself is repainted, and all the blue sky;
but the clouds and four sustaining angels are hardly retouched at all,
and their iridescent and exquisitely graceful wings are left with really
very tender and delicate care by the restorer of