| disproving Giotto's authorship than anything else. The hills and the buildings are in the backdrop, as the scene was intentionally created to recede from the bay wall. Smart notes that there are touch-ups with tempera over the original fresco layer and that there is a use of white lead-which he claims is not very stylistic of Giotto. The sketchy background of the azure sky works with shading to exaggerate the sense of depth, but it seems to be treated for the most part two-dimensionally. The typification of St. Francis is interesting when one considered an observation made by Salter: "Giotto, and the great majority of Central Italian painters after him, make the Saint chestnut-haired." In considering this figure of St. Francis, Giotto comes to mind because a certain description of his style illuminates this one scene: "Representations of the human face in earlier paintings had given it an expressionless stare: he invested it with grief, fear, pity, joy or other emotions to which the viewer could respond with instant understanding." The viewer clearly focuses in on the figure of St. Francis who speaks with his expression.
It is very important to say that the architecture and landscape are in perspective, but not Giottesque perspective according to Smart, and there is a clear consideration for the position of the two figures in relation to the rest of the composition. This awareness seems evident in Giotto's work in the Arena |