It is assumed that the Magdalen Chapel was the starting-point of the work carried out by Giotto and his assistants in other parts of the Lower Church, including the right transept and the vault. It has been recently demonstrated that these areas were frescoed before Pietro Lorenzetti painted the scenes of the Passion in the left transept, a work executed before 1320. It is thought that as soon as the frescoes in the Magdalen Chapel were completed, Giotto and his workshop were commissioned to redecorate the right transept of the vault. This area had been previously frescoed in the late thirteenth century, as is indicated by the presence of Cimabue's large fresco of the Madonna enthroned with angels and St. Francis, which was spared.

At the beginning and in the middle of the 20th century the frescoes in the Lower church were cleaned and painstakingly restored. Since then some have held them to be the work of utmost quality from Giotto's own hand, others as the ambitious work of pupils. The debate is open up to now.

Slide 23: Noli me tangere Assisi

Scenes from the Life of Mary Magdalene: Noli me tangere

1320s
Fresco
Magdalene Chapel

There was more wall space at the artists' disposal in the Magdalene Chapel than at Padua, and the two scenes that appear in both places, the Raising of Lazarus and the Noli me tangere are consequently larger.

Slide 24: Noli me tan gere, Arena Chapel

Slide 25: Crucifixion, Assisi

Slide 26: Crucifixion, Arena Chapel

Slide 27: Bishop Pontano and the Magdalen

In the dedicatory scene, Mary Magdalen, wearing a pinkish red dress sumptuously trimmed in gold, takes the hand of Cardinal Pontano, who kneels before her. She stands to one side of the large, rectangular fresco, her figure set off by the blue background. The scene is enclosed within a marvellous frame painted to imitate red marble, trimmed in white, and ornamented with fictive mosaic inlays. At each side is a solid twisted column embellished with a spiralling strip of Cosmati work.

There is a similarity between the latest frescoes of the Arena Chapel and the frescoes depicting the stories of Mary Magdalen in the Magdalen Chapel of the Lower Church at Assisi. The fact that Giotto's assistants were allowed greater freedom in the execution of the Assisi frescoes does not mean that he was not directly involved. There was more wall space at the artists' disposal in the Magdalen Chapel than at Padua, and the two scenes that appear in both places, the Raising of Lazarus and the Noli me tangere are consequently larger and more imposing.

Slide 28: Stigmatisation, Bardi chapel, S. Croce, Florence, 1320s

Stigmatisation of St Francis, Bardi Chapel, Santa Croce

Slide 29: Stigmatisation, St. Francis cycle, Assisi

Slide 30: Renunciation of the Father, Bardi Chapel

Slide 31: Renunciation of the Father, Assisi

Legend of St Francis: 5. Renunciation of Wordly Goods

This is the fifth of the twenty-eight scenes (twenty-five of which were painted by Giotto) of Legend of Saint Francis.

When Francis' father accuses his son before the episcopal tribune of squandering his fortune, Francis returns to him even the clothes he is wearing, and repudiates him. Giotto illustrates this sensational public separation, which signifies the decisive step towards the saint's future life of poverty, by means of the two groups of people on opposite sides. The buildings further reinforce the gulf between the two worlds.

Slide 32: Apparition at Arles, Bardi Chapel

Slide 33: Apparition at Arles, Assisi

Legend of St Francis: 18. Apparition at Arles

Slide 34: Assumption of John the Evangelist, Peruzzi Chapel, S. Croce, c. 1320s

Slide 35: Raising of Drusiana, Peruzzi chapel

Slide 36: Puccio Capanna, Crucifixion, Chapter house, S. Francesco, Assisi, c.1340

Puccio Capanna (Italian, active about 1325-50)

The Crucifixion, about 1330
Tempera and gold leaf on panel, 7 x 5 1/2 in. (17.8 x 14.0 cm.)
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 60.17.8

Puccio's Crucifixion was the central compartment of one wing (panel) of a diptych, or two-paneled devotional work. The other panel, which survives intact in the Vatican Picture Gallery (see illustration), features an enthroned Madonna and Child with attending angels in the central compartment, surrounded by eight smaller compartments depicting female saints and the Annunciation to the Virgin. Puccio was a close follower of the Florentine painter Giotto, and may have been part of the workshop that assisted Giotto on the extensive decoration of the church of Saint Francis at Assisi. The profound emotionalism of this Crucifixion, conveyed through the expressions and poses of the figures and intensified by the shallow, crowded pictorial space, reveals the unmistakable influence of Giotto

Slide 37: Bernardo Daddi, polyptych

DADDI, Bernardo

Slide 38: Maso di Banco, Sylvester and the Dragon, Bardi di Venuo Chapel, Santa Croce, c. 1340

Maso Di Banco
(active 1320-50 in Firenze)

Florentine painter who was the most talented of Giotto's pupils. Maso's work displays a style that effectively and intelligently incorporated the teachings of the master. It was the work of Maso that Ghiberti singled out in the 15th century for praise. Maso is mentioned in connection with the Bardi family in a document of 1341. It was a member of this family that provided for the foundation of a chapel bearing the family name. The Bardi di Vernio chapel in Sta. Croce was largely decorated by Maso di Banco. The frescoes representing five scenes from the legend of St Sylvester possess clarity of design and harmony of colour. The architectural settings and figures in the St Sylvester Resurrecting the Ox and St Sylvester Resurrecting the Two Magi Killed by a Dragon anticipate the monumental style of Masaccio and Piero della Francesca.
Maso's elegance, the suaveness of his contours, and his use of colour display elements of Sienese and Florentine influence, yet his style always remained severe and monumental like that of Giotto. He became a distinguished master in Florence, though he had few followers.

Slide 39: Taddeo Gaddi, view of Baroncelli Chapel, S. Croce, c.1328

GADDI, Taddeo (b. 1300, Firenze, d. 1366, Firenze)

Slide 40: Annunciation to Shepherds, Baroncelli Chapel

The naves of the Franciscan and Dominican Gothic churches in Italy were simple, compared to their northern equivalents, they were used mainly for preaching, but they were also built to be constantly adaptable, especially to the addition and decoration of private chapels where wealthy merchant families were commemorated.. Typical is the the basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, built by the Franciscan in 1296, with its slender, widely spaced piers and the Baroncelli Chapel, painted by Giotto's godson and pupil Taddeo Gaddi.

Taddeo painted the chapel so as to capture the effects of actual southern light coming through the lancet window. He placed a series of mystical experiences, one above the other, at the left. At the top is the Annunciation of the Virgin, traditionally associated with the propagation of light because Mary conceived Christ without any material rupture of her body. In the annunciation to the shepherds below, another, more sudden, incandescent flash of light shocks the shepherds from their sleep. The three Magi on the bottom tier kneel before another vision, this time of the infant Christ, glistening like a star before them. Light here is identified with revelation and patterned to coincide with the light streaming through the actual window.

Another important visual element in the Baroncelli Chapel is the altarpiece, a polyptych of the Coronation of the Virgin painted by Giotto and his assistants. Originally it was not in a classical rectangular frame but in a structure with pointed canopies that echoed the shape of the stained-glass window above it.

Slide 41: Marriage of the Virgin, Baroncelli Chapel (image not found)

Dr. Janet Robson, 13 January 2005