Cartwright, Julia: The painters of Florence: from the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth century (London: John Murray, 1910)

i4

GIOTTO

[1276-

bined, is now known to have been a Lombard
friar, Fra Filippo di Campello, and so speedily was
his work done, that by 1239 the lofty Campanile
was finished and the bells were hung. Even before
the consecration of the Upper Church, Tuscan
painters were employed to decorate the walls of the
Lower Church with frescoes, and thus the shrine of
St. Francis became the cradle of early Italian art.
All the different currents of thought from East and
West, all the varied elements that were to influence
the art of Giotto—Greek and Roman, Gothic and
Byzantine—seem to meet in this sacred spot, this
fortunate Assisi of which Dante sang as blessed
above all the other cities in Italy. Here, among the
ruined paintings which still adorn the walls of the
Upper Church, we find traces of the works of those
Greek artists, whom Vasari mentions, side by side
with frescoes which plainly reveal their Roman origin.
Many of the Old Testament subjects along the upper
course of the nave bear a marked likeness to the
contemporary mosaics executed in S. Maria Maggiore
of Rome, and justify Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s
suggestion, that one of the artists employed at Assisi
may have been the same Filippo Rusutti whose
signature appears on some of these frescoes. Unfor-
tunately the records of the Franciscan convent are
silent as to the painters of the frescoes which cover
the walls of the great church, and while we are told
the names of the carpenters and masons who
were employed, and the exact date of the year and
month when the leading of the windows or plaster
of the walls was repaired, neither Cimabue nor Giotto
are once mentioned. But Ghiberti, Vasari and the