Assisi Frescoes

At Assisi, a small act can fill an entire wall. Francis bends towards a gathering of birds; a thirsty man lowers himself to drink; a son returns his clothes to his father. Elsewhere, people crowd around a body, priests attend an altar and angels occupy the space above a religious community. Across these different kinds of encounter, painting makes the life of a saint available to people standing together in a church.

The frescoes associated with Giotto in the Basilica of Saint Francis belong to several programmes, in two very different interiors. The best known is the sequence of twenty-eight episodes from Francis's life and posthumous miracles in the Upper Church. The Lower Church contains a separate Magdalene Chapel, scenes from Christ's childhood and the Franciscan Allegories above the high altar. These works share subjects, artistic resources and a devotional setting, but their dates, painters and relationships have to be considered separately.

Giotto's name is inseparable from their history. Precisely what he designed, directed or painted remains disputed, especially in the Upper Church. The basilica's own description acknowledges the disagreement: some scholars attribute the Francis cycle to Giotto, while others associate it with a Roman school. ^[1] Looking closely at the paintings makes that uncertainty more intelligible. It also reveals how much there is to understand before any individual hand can be named.

Two churches, several histories

Begin with the building. The Lower Church is a comparatively low, strongly ribbed interior, extended by side chapels; the Upper Church opens into a tall nave whose walls offer successive bands of painted narrative. The institution dates the beginning of the Lower Church to 1228 and its completion to 1230, when Francis's body was transferred there. It gives 1253 for the completion of the Upper Church. ^{[1] [2]} These dates describe the architecture's early history. They do not date every layer of its decoration.

The nave of the Upper Church of San Francesco at Assisi, photographed in 2010. The Francis cycle occupies the lower narrative register; its authorship remains disputed. The photograph records the wider setting rather than an isolated scene. Dennis G. Jarvis. Image source. CC BY-SA 2.0. Proportionally reduced reproduction; original composition, colour and photographic lighting retained.

The distinction matters because the basilica accumulated paintings over generations. In the Upper Church, the Francis stories occupy the lower narrative band of the nave. Above them are Old and New Testament scenes, while the presbytery and transepts include work associated with Cimabue and the painter conventionally called the Oltremontano Master. Jacopo Torriti is among the artists connected with the upper nave decoration. ^[1] A visitor therefore encounters an ensemble of different projects rather than a room painted throughout by one person.

The long nave view helps explain the Francis cycle's particular presence. Painted columns and an emphatic horizontal cornice give its stories a continuous architectural setting. The episodes seem to unfold in openings along a shared structure. From across the church, that repeated framework can hold the sequence together even when individual faces and incidents are difficult to distinguish. Moving closer changes the experience: each compartment supplies its own streets, rooms, cliffs or crowds.

Downstairs, the scale and arrangement change again. A chapel devoted to Mary Magdalene asks the viewer to look around a small, irregularly interrupted space. The paintings of Christ's childhood spread through a transept. The Allegories rise over the high altar in four sections of a vault. Their positions affect their meaning: an image overhead gathers attention towards the altar, while a sequence along a nave invites movement, return and comparison. These are forms of religious attention shaped by architecture.

Francis died in 1226. His canonisation in 1228 and the transfer of his body in 1230 were subsequent, distinct events. ^[21] The basilica's paintings belong to the continuing construction of his public memory. They address a community already living with his example, his order and his cult. Their Francis is consequently more than the subject of an illustrated biography: he is a founder whose way of life requires interpretation and whose continuing intercession gives the shrine its purpose.

How the Upper Church tells a life

The twenty-eight scenes follow Francis from the anticipation of his vocation to miracles after his death. They begin with an Assisi citizen spreading a garment before the young man and finish with the freeing of a prisoner. Between these events come renunciation, papal approval, preaching, prayer, the stigmata, death and canonisation. The sequence carries the visitor from a saint still unrecognised by his neighbours to a figure whose power is represented as extending beyond his own lifetime.

Bonaventure's Legenda maior, or Major Legend, supplies the principal narrative framework. Its stories explain why an apparently small gesture matters. The man receiving Francis's mantle, for example, is described as a poor soldier of noble birth. Giving him clothing combines relief of poverty with the preservation of dignity. The dream of a palace full of arms then redirects the young Francis's military aspirations towards spiritual service. These adjoining episodes turn outward generosity into a sign of a vocation he has yet to understand. ^[21]

The paintings do not simply reproduce the book chapter by chapter. The spring miracle belongs to chapter VII, yet appears after Greccio, whose account comes in chapter X. Francis's apparition at Arles draws on chapter IV but stands late in the painted life. This arrangement allows related actions and changes of setting to produce a visual rhythm. A dream or ecstasy requires a different kind of looking from a public encounter; a scene of papal authority differs from a body pressed close to the earth.

The cycle runs around the nave rather than forming a row to be read from a single fixed position. The early episodes lead towards the entrance end, where Greccio and the spring miracle occupy the entrance wall; the birds scene continues the sequence on the return side. It is helpful to keep the episode numbers in mind, since the corners of the building interrupt the modern expectation of a continuous illustrated strip. The complete guide below follows the narrative order.

The biblical stories above establish a larger horizon for Francis's life. His poverty, preaching and wounded body invite comparison with Christ; Bonaventure also makes explicit comparisons with prophetic figures such as Moses and Elijah. ^[21] Yet the arrangement does not produce an uncomplicated pair of parallel biographies. Michael Viktor Schwarz stresses that the upper biblical sequences and the encircling Francis cycle do not consistently travel in the same direction. He therefore questions the assumption that the entire decorated church sprang from one unified plan. ^[22] The reader can recognise theological relationships without assuming that every panel has a securely established counterpart directly overhead.

Buildings that make an action visible

Architecture in the Francis scenes does more than identify an address. In the Prayer at San Damiano, the church is turned obliquely towards the viewer. Its exposed structure lets us see Francis praying inside; its broken upper portions make damage part of the image's immediate meaning. The building shelters an act of devotion while also requiring repair. The compact scene brings a kneeling body, a speaking crucifix and an endangered church into a legible relationship.

Bonaventure says that Francis initially understands the command to rebuild in a material sense, while the narrative gives it a larger meaning concerning the Church. ^[21] The painted ruin holds both possibilities together. A viewer can apprehend masonry and timber before considering the institution for which the building stands. The physical setting gives the theological claim something concrete to work through.

That method differs from the Renunciation of Worldly Goods, where buildings establish a public environment around a divided group. On the father's side, heads overlap and turn in different directions. The crowd's internal variety gives force to the confrontation: this is a withdrawal from possessions performed before other people. Francis's exposed body and the bishop's covering gesture then make the consequences of his decision visible. Property, family and ecclesiastical protection meet within one field.

Bonaventure's version includes the return of clothing and the renunciation of the father's inheritance before the bishop. It also gives Francis a change in the meaning of fatherhood, from earthly dependence to trust in the heavenly Father. ^[21] The painting's arrangement allows the legal and familial event to carry this spiritual interpretation. It does not require the viewer to imagine the young man's unrecorded private thoughts. His position, gesture and relation to the surrounding bodies do the work.

Schwarz uses such architecture and grouping in his attribution argument. He compares the ruined, opened church of San Damiano with the architectural invention of the Padua Pentecost, and the overlapping heads in the Renunciation with a group in the Padua Crucifixion. In his reading, these are signs that resources developed at Padua were being adapted at Assisi. ^[22] Under an earlier chronology, similar relationships can be read in the opposite direction, as stages towards Padua. The resemblance is a starting point; its historical direction is the difficult question.

This is also why the paintings should not be described as an invention of fully systematic linear perspective. Their spaces are carefully constructed to make selected actions intelligible. A room can open towards the spectator, a building can turn to accommodate a group, and the framing can suggest depth without obeying a single geometrical rule across every scene. What matters to the narrative is where a person stands, what becomes visible and how one body responds to another.

Greccio: the viewer on the other side of the screen

The Nativity at Greccio offers an unusually rich encounter between religious ceremony and pictured space. Francis kneels in the foreground beside the manger. Behind him, friars cluster around a tall bookstand, their lifted faces making collective singing a visible action. A canopy over the altar, a pulpit and the back of a painted cross occupy the upper part of the composition. The furnishings organise the bodies below them.

The cross deserves particular attention. We see its supporting structure from behind, as though standing within the choir and looking towards the area beyond the screen. An object normally encountered frontally in devotion becomes a piece of constructed wood with a particular position in a church. That reversal gives the pictured ceremony a convincing location. It also reminds us that medieval worship involved barriers, thresholds and different degrees of access.

At the doorway, women look into the scene from beyond the principal enclosed space. Their presence makes the division perceptible without cancelling their participation as witnesses. The arrangement invites the viewer to notice several kinds of attention at once: the singing friars attend to their book, Francis to the manger, the surrounding worshippers to the event. The image's coherence comes from a shared ceremony rather than from every face looking towards one point.

The basilica's detailed account identifies the scene as episode thirteen and discusses its furniture in relation to the Lower Church's historical liturgical setting. Some identifications, including the connection with a lost cross by Giunta Pisano, are scholarly reconstructions of what is represented. ^[23] The image offers evidence for how a late medieval church interior could be pictured, with furniture selected and combined to serve the represented ceremony.

Nativity at Greccio, with the reverse of the painted cross and church furnishings. Image source. Public domain. Proportionally reduced reproduction; no colour or content enhancement.

Bonaventure describes the Christmas commemoration at Greccio through hay, manger, animals, Mass and Gospel proclamation. Francis serves as a deacon, and a knight's vision brings the Christ Child into the account. ^[21] The combination explains why the painting contains both an intensely focused action at the manger and the apparatus of a larger service. Calling the episode simply a Christmas play loses much of that liturgical structure.

The event also belongs within the cycle's account of Francis's devotion to the Incarnation: the humility of Christ's birth can be approached through material things, a gathered congregation and acts of worship. A modern crib may help a viewer recognise the subject, but the painted scene deserves to be read through its own choir, altar and book. These objects make the commemoration a corporate act, occurring within the religious life of the church.

Open ground, small creatures and bodily need

The Sermon to the Birds changes the scale of encounter. Francis leans forward from the left, one hand lifted towards the birds assembled near his feet. His companion stands behind him. A large tree closes the right side of the image, while open space separates the saint's gesture from the foliage above. A few birds are in flight; others form a scattered, attentive congregation on the ground.

The composition gives unusual importance to that open interval. In the papal and civic scenes, Francis must be located within a human group. Here, his bent posture, hands and downward gaze can carry the action almost alone. The birds remain small. They acquire narrative weight because his body acknowledges them. The image makes preaching recognisable without a pulpit, grand interior or audience of human dignitaries.

Bonaventure sets the episode after Francis considers whether to devote himself entirely to prayer or to go out preaching. Counsel from Clare and Silvester helps him choose the active ministry. His address to the birds concerns the gifts they receive from their Creator, and he blesses them. ^[21] Within that narrative, the scene joins contemplation to outward action. Its appeal to a modern concern for animals can coexist with its specific medieval account of providence and praise.

Francis preaching to the birds in Assisi’s Upper Church. Image source. Public domain. Proportionally reduced reproduction; no colour or content enhancement.

Nearby in the sequence, the Miracle of the Spring gives another kind of importance to a lowered body. The thirsty man bends close to the water at the foot of the rocks. Francis kneels above him in prayer, while companions and the cropped form of the donkey occupy the opposite side. The sharp rise of the rocky setting separates the upward appeal from the downward act of drinking. The two gestures communicate across that difference in height.

The man has lent his donkey to carry the weakened Francis. His thirst therefore belongs to a story of practical help and reciprocal care. Bonaventure explicitly compares the production of water from the rock with Moses. ^[21] The painted man still has to bend and drink: bodily necessity remains the means by which the miracle can be understood.

These landscapes are selective constructions. A few trees or a cleft between rocks can establish a place sufficiently for an action to unfold. The edges can crop an animal or a companion, suggesting a world continuing beyond the painted field. Their economy makes them especially useful to compare with the busier religious interiors. Across the cycle, the environment alternately gathers attention, divides witnesses or leaves a gesture room to be seen.

Witnesses, wounds and the saint after death

The final part of the cycle asks how holiness becomes known to others. Dreams and apparitions convey news across distances; bodies are inspected; crowds assemble; a pope declares sainthood. In Bonaventure's narrative, testimony is repeatedly used to defend claims about Francis. The frescoes give that concern a physical form by showing people seeing, approaching, touching or responding to what lies before them.

The Verification of the Stigmata is particularly revealing beside Greccio. Both scenes use a church interior, but the gathering around Francis's dead body is densely compressed. Heads accumulate behind the foreground action, while the body remains the centre towards which examination and attention converge. The viewer must work through a crowd rather than take in a single serenely ordered congregation.

Schwarz sees this comparison as evidence of a difference between the cycle's principal campaigns. For him, the purposeful congestion of the Verification marks a compositional approach distinct from Greccio's grouping. ^[22] Even without accepting his full division of painters, the comparison helps a viewer articulate what has changed. A familiar setting can support a different relationship between individuals and a mass of witnesses.

The examining knight in Bonaventure is Jerome, or Girolamo. The writer compares his previous doubt with that of Thomas, but he is not the apostle Thomas transported into Francis's story. ^[21] Preserving the distinction clarifies the image's argument. The saint's wounded body is being placed in relation to Christ's, and the knight's change from doubt to testimony strengthens that relation within the hagiography.

Death is also divided into several episodes. The Death and Ascension of Saint Francis represents the saint's passing and heavenly reception; the apparition to Brother Augustine and the bishop carries news beyond the deathbed; the Poor Clares' mourning belongs to the body's subsequent journey past San Damiano. These are different moments and kinds of presence. The Bardi Chapel's death scene in Florence is another painting, within another programme, and should be compared on those terms.

The posthumous miracles extend the cycle towards the needs of living believers. John of Lerida is healed after a violent attack. A woman returns from death long enough to confess and receive absolution. A prisoner is released from his bonds. These narratives concern damaged bodies, spiritual preparation and confinement. ^[21] Their position at the end of a life cycle explains something central about the shrine: Francis remains available as an intercessor after the historical story of his life has ended.

What can be said about Giotto's authorship?

Several different questions are often compressed into the phrase “by Giotto”. Did he conceive a programme, supply designs, organise a campaign, execute important figures or personally paint an entire scene? Could a local painter have worked from his model, or could a former collaborator have carried his methods to a new project? Each proposition requires its own evidence. Agreement that a painting is Giottesque does not settle all of them.

Early testimony gives Giotto a connection with Assisi. Riccobaldo of Ferrara, writing in the early fourteenth century, names works in the Franciscan churches of Assisi, Rimini and Padua. A 1309 record involving the Assisi painter Palmerino and a debt in Giotto's name supplies another connection. ^{[24] [25]} Neither source is a surviving contract that identifies the painter of each of the twenty-eight scenes. Their importance is real, but their precision has limits.

Later written accounts introduce further problems of interpretation. Boskovits notes that Riccobaldo's wording and Ghiberti's reference to the lower part of the church are not unambiguous identifications of the Francis cycle. Vasari explicitly names the life and deeds of Francis in the second edition of the Lives in 1568. ^[24] Such testimony belongs in the discussion, alongside the considerable time separating the later writers from the paintings.

The visual arguments involve connections with the upper biblical scenes at Assisi, the works at Padua and paintings associated with Roman traditions. The conventional name Isaac Master refers to an artistic personality reconstructed around the Isaac scenes in the Upper Church. Identifying that personality with the young Giotto is itself a scholarly position. It should not be used as an already proven signature from which every subsequent attribution automatically follows.

Boskovits's 2001 account defends Giotto's guiding role in the Francis cycle while recognising several painters and changes in participation. It places the principal work within a late thirteenth-century reconstruction of his career. The basilica's Greccio article gives 1290–95 for the cycle. ^{[23] [24]} These dates represent an influential early chronology, in which Assisi can precede the Scrovegni Chapel. They are useful orientation, provided the reader knows that other reconstructions challenge them.

Schwarz's 2008 argument changes the sequence substantially. Building on an earlier distinction between a more plastic and a more colourist approach, he proposes two broad campaigns, each involving several painters. He reads selected motifs as adaptations from Padua and, in the later campaign, from the orbit of Pietro Lorenzetti. He considers a first campaign around 1308, with either limited direction from Giotto or a former Padua collaborator transmitting his style; the later campaign follows on a different timetable. ^[22] This is a revisionist proposal, not a consensus date for all twenty-eight paintings.

The disagreement is consequential. A motif shared by Assisi and Padua might be an early invention developed later, a later adaptation of an established composition, or evidence that workshop designs circulated between projects. Merely placing the pictures side by side cannot determine which explanation is right. Technical observations about the sequence of work can help, but their interpretation must still be argued. The delayed execution of the opening scene, for instance, complicates the assumption that narrative order equals painting order.

Schwarz also distinguishes a bottega, organised around a master and training, from a cantiere, a group formed to carry out a particular project. He emphasises that actual groups could combine aspects of both. ^[22] At a major site such as Assisi, this distinction offers an alternative to picturing a solitary artist followed by an exactly countable set of assistants. Shared materials, local experience, designs and differing responsibilities can produce coherence without making every brushstroke the work of one person.

The Magdalene Chapel: another saint, another scale

The Magdalene Chapel lies in the Lower Church and was commissioned by Teobaldo Pontano, bishop of Assisi from 1296 to 1329. The basilica's account dates the painting to 1307–08 and associates it with Giotto and his pupils. ^[26] This separate campaign should not be folded into the twenty-eight scenes upstairs, even though questions of Giotto's presence, collaborators and the relationship with Padua recur.

A partial Magdalene Chapel interior photographed in 2012, before its 2020–21 restoration. Sailko / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA3.0. Image source. CC BY-SA 3.0. Proportionally reduced reproduction; no colour or content enhancement.

Its programme joins Gospel subjects, including the Raising of Lazarus and Noli me tangere, to the medieval legendary life of Mary Magdalene. The combination reflects the saint as understood in that devotional tradition; it is not a single continuous narrative supplied by one Gospel. The chapel's window, painted framing, saints and donor figures belong to the experience alongside the principal stories.

The architecture makes the act of looking unusually active. A doorway interrupts the wall beneath the narrative, the pointed upper fields narrow towards the vault, and painted ornament follows the ribs and openings. The figures occupy surfaces of different shapes rather than a uniform sequence of rectangular bays. A photograph taken in 2012, before the later conservation campaign, shows how Noli me tangere, the Marseille story and an upper eremitic scene share one wall around an opening. Its oblique view is especially helpful for understanding that arrangement, while remaining a record of an earlier condition.

The Raising of Lazarus gives a more focused comparison. Christ and his followers enter from the left; Lazarus stands at the right, still bound, with attendants nearby. Between them, the kneeling Magdalene brings the action towards the foreground. The spread of the figures across the field allows Christ, the supplicant and the restored brother to remain distinct centres of attention. The scene reads differently when it belongs to a chapel dedicated to Magdalene rather than solely to a life of Christ.

Schwarz develops exactly that distinction in comparing the Assisi and Padua versions. He reads the Assisi picture as giving Magdalene's appeal a particular prominence and relates it to her role as an intercessor. His broader interpretation connects pilgrimage, penitence and the bishop's memorial chapel. ^[27] That is a historically grounded reading of the programme's purpose; it does not require the claim that every visitor experienced the painting identically.

Schwarz also draws attention to the vault medallions of Christ, Magdalene, Martha and the risen Lazarus. Their return to the Lazarus story places resurrection above the surrounding scenes. In his reading, that choice answers the purpose of a burial chapel: the hope of being called from the grave gives the Gospel miracle a particular relevance to the donor's memorial. ^[27]

The donor's presence matters within this setting. A memorial chapel is a place where the living worship, the dead are remembered and saints are invoked. Images of Teobaldo before holy figures bring that relationship into view. The chapel therefore joins a public religious function with a particular person's hope for remembrance and salvation. Its carefully directed encounters between figures give those purposes a visible form.

Christ's childhood and the vows above the altar

The Lower Church's north transept introduces another substantial group associated with Giotto and his artistic environment. Scenes of Christ's childhood, the Crucifixion and Franciscan miracles occupy a programme distinct from the Magdalene Chapel. Across the sanctuary, the Passion paintings associated with Pietro Lorenzetti belong to another artistic contribution. Treating the whole area as a single uninterrupted Giotto cycle conceals the differences that make it rewarding to explore. ^[28]

The Lower Church's Flight into Egypt is a useful example. Mary and the child occupy the donkey at the centre, with Joseph walking ahead and attendants behind. Small trees and plants punctuate a long pale ridge, while distant buildings rise at either side. The travellers extend across the breadth of the scene. Compared with the more tightly concentrated Padua version, the Assisi composition makes greater room for an inhabited landscape and the varied forms of vegetation.

Schwarz discusses these changes as part of a broad reworking of Padua's pictorial resources. He observes smaller figures in relation to the setting, an increase in detail and more extensive architectural constructions. He ultimately proposes the Giotto follower Stefano as the leading artist behind this Lower Church group and the vault paintings, while acknowledging the chain of attribution and chronological arguments involved. ^[28] That name is a hypothesis to weigh against other assignments, rather than a documented signature revealed by a resemblance.

Above the high altar, the Franciscan Allegories present Poverty, Chastity and Obedience, together with Francis in glory. The basilica associates the vault with Giotto and his workshop around 1315. ^[2] Their position gathers the order's way of life above a principal place of worship, close to the saint's burial setting. Here the viewer leaves the succession of earthly episodes for a concentrated account of vows, reward and religious identity.

The triangular vault fields ask for a different kind of composition. In Poverty, the central marriage group is surrounded by figures who occupy the widening base and the narrowing area above. Decorated ribs visibly divide the subjects, yet also bind them into a canopy. An individual panel photograph can help identify the participants, but it loses the bodily experience of looking upward at a shared vault.

The marriage of Francis and Poverty gives voluntary renunciation a memorable ceremonial image. Other figures and incidents amplify the allegory, so the scene rewards gradual reading. Schwarz relates its elaboration to the accompanying verses and to Franciscan literary traditions, while questioning a direct attribution to Giotto. ^[28] The painting can be read in relation to the order's values without assigning every element to an otherwise undocumented programme devised by one named adviser.

The contrast with the nave stories is instructive. The young Francis gives up clothes in a public encounter; the vault presents Poverty as a bride. The two images can illuminate one another, but they serve different formats and settings. One tells an event in a life; the other makes a chosen way of life visible through personification. Assisi's range emerges most clearly when those different forms of thinking are allowed to remain distinct.

Surviving paint, reconstruction and continuing care

The paintings encountered today have material histories as well as narrative ones. Abrasion, loss and past interventions affect the balance of colour, the legibility of faces and the relation between painted and missing areas. A faded surface can still preserve an exceptionally clear composition; a vivid reproduction can also make its colours seem more certain or uniform than the object warrants. Close looking therefore includes attention to the condition in which the work survives.

The Istituto Centrale per il Restauro has a long history of involvement at Assisi. Its institutional account records intervention on the Upper Church Francis cycle in 1941, followed by control and maintenance campaigns in 1989 and 1991. It separately records treatment of the Magdalene Chapel in 1967 and again in the 1990s. Photographs by Antonio Quattrone associated with the latter campaign preserve evidence of the painted surfaces at that stage. ^[29] These overlapping histories make it useful to ask when a photograph was taken, as well as which painting it shows.

The earthquake of 26 September 1997 caused collapses in parts of the Upper Church vault. Giuseppe Basile's account distinguishes the recovery and reassembly of original fragments from making replacement copies. He records the Upper Church's reopening on 29 November 1999. The hundreds of thousands of recovered fragments belong to collapsed vault areas; they should not be mistaken for the destruction of the entire twenty-eight-scene Francis cycle. ^[30]

Basile also discusses the impoverished surfaces of the Francis stories and sampled, non-destructive investigation undertaken with ENEA. His account of Fabio Fernetti's virtual restitution concerns hypothetical reconstructions developed from surviving traces, with unresolved areas left acknowledged. Digital work and subsequent manual finishing produced representations of a proposed earlier appearance, not conservation of the original paint. ^[30] Such distinctions are essential when comparing an existing fresco with an image that appears newly complete.

Care has continued through separate campaigns downstairs. In an interview published by the Sacro Convento on 22 June 2021, chief restorer Sergio Fusetti said that the Magdalene Chapel's restoration had been completed a few months earlier and that work was then underway on the presbytery vault. ^[31] This is a dated account of conservation history, not a statement about work currently in progress or access arrangements today.

The distinction between original surface, repair, documentary photograph and reconstruction also returns us to authorship. A face reproduced at small scale may seem decisive until its condition is understood. A broad composition may remain persuasive even where much finishing has been lost. At Assisi, both the eye and the historical record are necessary: looking can test an argument, while the record helps explain what it is possible to see.

For a first sustained reading, keep three relationships in mind. Notice how a body occupies its setting, how witnesses are gathered around an action, and how the painting's place in the church changes its purpose. The birds, the singing friars at Greccio, the crowded inspection of the wounds and the figures beneath the vault each offer a different answer. Together they make Assisi an unusually rich place to encounter the artistic world associated with Giotto, even while the identities and responsibilities of its painters remain open to debate.

The twenty-eight scenes: a complete linked guide