Vision of the Thrones

Five empty chairs occupy the sky above two praying friars. Four are handsome seats with cushions and hanging cloths; the fifth, raised in the middle, has the height and enclosure of a small building. Beneath them, an angel reaches between heaven and the ground. Francis kneels before an altar on the right, while his companion looks upward from the left. The extraordinary subject of the Vision of the Thrones is a place kept for someone who has yet to occupy it.

This is the ninth scene in the twenty-eight-part Franciscan cycle in the Upper Church of the Basilica of Saint Francis at Assisi. Traditionally associated with Giotto, the cycle remains the subject of disagreement over authorship, the contributions of different painters, and its date. The basilica itself acknowledges the competing attribution to a Roman school of painting. ^[1] Here, the immediate story is unusually intimate: a companion receives a revelation about Francis's future glory while Francis himself continues to pray.

Who sees the vision?

Bonaventure tells the story in chapter VI, section 6 of his Major Legend of Saint Francis. Francis and an unnamed brother of exceptional devotion are praying together in a deserted church. The brother enters an ecstasy and sees many heavenly seats. One shines more splendidly than the others and is adorned with precious stones. Wondering who could be worthy of it, he hears a voice explain that it formerly belonged to a fallen angel and is now reserved for the humble Francis. ^[2]

The fresco gives this revelation a visible speaker. Its winged angel hovers above the two friars, with one hand raised towards the seats and the other extended down towards Francis. The brother at the lower left lifts his face and opens a hand in response. Francis, recognisable by his halo, kneels closer to the altar with his hands together. The arrangement connects three different roles: the messenger who explains, the companion who receives the explanation, and the saint whose humility is being revealed. ^[22]

This is a vision concerning Francis, received by his companion. Francis remains awake at prayer below the five empty seats. The distance between his living body and the unoccupied throne makes the promise visible: the honour awaits him.

Bonaventure identifies the companion through his devotion and his relationship to Francis, leaving his personal name unstated. The fallen angel is also unnamed in this passage. Their roles carry the argument: pride loses a place, while humility is promised elevation. ^[2]

The conversation outside the church

The narrative continues after the moment selected for the painting. When the companion returns from his ecstasy, he follows Francis out of the church. Walking along the road, they speak of God. The brother remembers what he has seen and discreetly asks Francis what he thinks of himself. Francis replies that he considers himself the foremost of sinners. His companion objects that he cannot conscientiously believe this. Francis explains that another person, however guilty, might have responded more fully if given the mercy Christ has shown him. ^[2]

This exchange supplies the test of the vision. Francis does not announce that he deserves the throne. He measures his response against the gifts he has received, allowing that someone with a much worse reputation might have made better use of the same mercy. The companion recognises in this answer the humility that the heavenly voice had named. The revelation and the ordinary conversation confirm one another.

Bonaventure frames the account within his discussion of humility and obedience. Immediately before it, he explains the names Brothers Minor and Ministers, and recalls Francis's resistance to the promotion of his brothers to high ecclesiastical office. The heavenly seat therefore belongs to a chapter already concerned with the relationship between service and rank. Its magnificent appearance gives the reversal a tangible form: the one who declines to exalt himself is promised elevation. ^[2]

For a modern viewer, Francis's reply can sound like a statement about personal worth. Within Bonaventure's argument, it concerns responsibility for grace and the spiritual danger of pride. The story asks how a person uses what has been given to him. That theological setting keeps the exchange connected to the fresco's imagery, where the humble bodily posture below is answered by the height of the throne above.

Five seats and an empty centre

Two chairs stand on either side of the central throne. Their ochre frames, slender uprights, curved arms and pale cushions make them recognisable as things on which a body could sit. Cloths fall down the fronts of the seats, their vertical folds describing the drop from cushion to footrest. The blue background surrounds and separates them. Their isolation lets the eye examine each chair's construction. ^[22]

The five empty heavenly seats, with the central throne, its neighbours and their footrests retained. Image source. Public domain. Cropped and proportionally reduced reproduction; no colour or content enhancement.

The great middle throne intensifies those familiar features. Its tall red back is enclosed by narrow green supports; red hangings rise above it, and its broad base projects towards the viewer. The curved front of the seat and the white cushion soften an otherwise elaborate arrangement of upright and horizontal members. Compared with the four adjacent chairs, this throne possesses a deeper setting and a more commanding platform. The hierarchy is immediately visible before the narrative explains it.

These objects have convincing bulk, although they stand in the sky. Their platforms are seen from above, and the side faces of their frames turn away at an angle. Each has its own small area of implied support. The painter thus makes the vision legible through the same kinds of surfaces, corners and recessions that describe the altar below. Heaven is introduced through furniture whose structure the viewer can follow.

Scale makes the promise especially striking. The central throne is large in relation to the two friars, and even the simpler chairs have considerable presence. Yet no seated figure supplies a measure of their size. We must imagine the bodily relationship that the empty furniture invites. Francis's kneeling form, occupying the lower part of the painting, remains separated from this vast reserved place by the angel and an expanse of blue.

The empty seat also gives the scene its distinctive sense of time. Its former occupant belongs to the story's past; Francis's occupation of it belongs to a promised future. The present consists of prayer, revelation and the companion's questioning attention. A chair can carry these different moments without the painter having to show either the angel's fall or Francis's eventual enthronement. The absence of an occupant is an active part of the narrative.

Two bodies and a hovering messenger

The companion kneels low at the left edge, his brown habit spreading into a broad, heavy shape. His bent body and lifted face direct attention towards the angel. One hand rises into the blue field, where its small pale shape becomes particularly clear. Francis, farther right, forms a narrower upright mass. The folds of his habit gather around his legs and feet, grounding him on the pale steps before the sanctuary. ^[22]

The difference between their hands carries much of the action. Francis holds his together in prayer; the companion opens his towards the apparition. Neither needs an exaggerated movement. The stillness of one figure and the questioning response of the other let a spectator distinguish continuing devotion from the interruption of a vision. Their shared clothing makes this difference in gesture more consequential.

Above them, the angel spreads broad pale wings across the central space. Red sleeves and a light green outer garment stand out against the blue. The body takes a diagonal course, with the feet trailing towards the companion and the head near the level of the sanctuary roof. Its two arms connect the thrones with the saint. This hovering figure occupies the otherwise difficult gap between a row of heavenly furnishings and two bodies resting on the ground.

The angel's downward hand leads towards Francis, but its face turns towards the receiving brother. That division is essential to the story's economy. The companion learns something about another person. Francis's absorbed position by the altar leaves room for the revelation to take place beside him, without turning his prayer into a display of his own reward. The viewer is allowed to see all the connections at once.

An altar open to view

On the right, the church setting is concentrated into an altar and an architectural enclosure. Pale columns support an arch and a flat canopy-like roof. Behind the altar, a curved wall rises in a warm golden colour. The open front exposes the furnishings to view, while the projecting steps establish a sequence of levels between the floor, Francis's body and the altar. The structure has enough depth to feel inhabitable and enough openness to keep the action visible. ^[22]

A small pale cross stands on the altar. A suspended lamp hangs under the canopy, its thin lines and rounded frame conspicuous against the curved wall. The altar's white covering extends over a red frontal, with blue stripes visible at the right. Below it, a low ochre rectangular furnishing has a row of dark openings along its front. These small details give the sanctuary a different rhythm from the broad folds of the friars' habits.

The architecture also repeats the colours of the celestial throne. Pale supports, red accents, greenish surfaces and warm ochres appear in both zones, although they belong to different objects. The eye can pass from the altar enclosure to the throne without encountering an entirely separate visual language. Both are built from frames, recesses and platforms; one accommodates earthly prayer, the other expresses heavenly honour.

Bonaventure gives only a deserted church as the setting. The painting supplies a richly articulated place of worship, but its convincing construction does not make it a measured record of a particular building. Its visible arrangement serves the narrative: Francis can kneel before an altar, his companion can receive a revelation beside him, and the angel can occupy the open space between their prayer and the seats above. ^{[2] [22]}

That economy becomes clearer if one follows the edges. The sanctuary presses close to the right border, while the companion's habit approaches the left. The two friars anchor opposite portions of the lower field. Between them, the angel crosses a comparatively open stretch of blue. Above, the chairs spread across nearly the whole width. The painting expands from the intimate scale of hands and faces towards a heavenly order too large to fit inside the church enclosure.

A place within the Assisi cycle

The scene follows the Vision of the Flaming Chariot and precedes the Expulsion of the Devils from Arezzo. That order brings together episodes in which Francis's spiritual standing becomes perceptible through supernatural events. It is a thematic sequence, selecting stories from different sections of Bonaventure's account, rather than a record of successive days or stops on one journey. ^[23]

Within that sequence, the thrones scene gives an unusually large part of its surface to still objects. Chairs wait above the kneeling men; the altar remains carefully furnished; the angel's suspended body mediates between them. Movement is concentrated in an exchange of gestures. Bonaventure's subsequent road conversation helps explain why so quiet a scene can carry such a strong claim: the public honour awaiting Francis is grounded in a humility discovered through private speech. ^[2]

The subject also places a brother's understanding at the centre of the narrative. He first sees, then wonders, then asks a question, and finally recognises the meaning of the answer. The painting selects the beginning of that process. Its upward-looking companion offers the spectator a point of entry, while the empty throne holds a promise that requires the rest of the story to become fully intelligible.

Giotto, other painters and the question of date

Calling this a work associated with Giotto requires some historical care. In his 2001 Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani entry, Miklós Boskovits defended Giotto's authorship of the Franciscan cycle while recognising the participation of other painters. His reconstruction placed the cycle within the painter's development before Padua and treated it as an enterprise with substantial artistic coherence. The entry discusses dating arguments within the 1290s; those arguments are a scholarly reconstruction, rather than a dated commission for this scene. ^[24]

Michael Viktor Schwarz offered a substantially different account in Giottus Pictor II in 2008. He challenged the assumption of a cycle produced as one coherent campaign. Developing Erik Moltesen's division into two principal groups, he proposed different teams and phases, and considered a date around 1308 for the earlier campaign. In his argument, features comparable to Padua could have reached Assisi through Giotto or a former collaborator. This reverses the direction of development assumed by an earlier Assisi dating. ^[25]

These positions leave authorship and chronology linked but unresolved. The basilica's current description keeps the broader attribution question open, naming Giotto and a Roman school as competing scholarly views. ^[1] The firm starting point for this individual scene is its place in the Upper Church cycle and its relationship to Bonaventure's account. Neither a traditional name nor a proposed workshop division establishes that every part was painted by one identifiable hand.

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 fresco's particular achievement remains available to close looking. A small praying body, an attentive companion, an airborne messenger and five unoccupied seats form a lucid chain. The highest chair is also the one whose meaning depends most completely on the man kneeling below. Its splendour becomes comprehensible through the humility of a person who, in Bonaventure's continuation, makes no claim to deserve it.