On the left we see the story of St. John Baptist; above, the Angel announces to Zacharias the birth of a son; and, with I know not what mastery of his art, Giotto tells us of it with a simplicity and perfection beyond praise.  If we consider the work merely as a composition, it is difficult to imagine anything more lovely; and then how beautiful and full of life is the angel who has entered so softly into the Holy of Holies, not altogether without dismay to the high priest, who, busy swinging his censer before the altar, has suddenly looked up and seen a vision.  Below, we see the Birth of St. John Baptist, where Elizabeth is a little troubled, it may be, about her dumb husband, to whom the child has been brought.  An old man with an eager and noble gesture seems to argue with Zacharias, holding the child the while by the shoulder, and Zacharias writes the name on his knee.  Below this again is the Dance of Herodias, the first of these frescoes to be uncovered and ruined in the process.  But even yet, in the perfect grouping of the figures, the splendour of the viol player, the frightened gaze of the servants, we may still see the very hand of Giotto.

But it is in the frescoes on the right wall that Giotto is seen at his highest:  it is the story of St. John the Divine; above he dreams on Patmos, below he raises Drusiana at the Gate of Ephesus, and is himself received into heaven.  Damaged though they be, there is nothing in all Italian art more fundamental, more simple, or more living than these frescoes.  It is true that the Dream of St. John is almost ruined, and what we see to-day is very far from being what Giotto painted, but in the Raising of Drusiana and in the Ascension of St. John we find a grandeur and force that are absent from painting till Giotto’s time, and for very many years after his death.  The restorer has done his best to obliterate all trace of Giotto’s achievement, especially in the fresco of Drusiana, but in spite of him we may see here Giotto’s very work, the essence of it at any rate, its intention and the variety of his powers of expressing himself.

The chapel nearest the choir was built by Ridolfo de’ Bardi, it is said, sometime after 1310,[106] and it was for him that Giotto painted there the story of St. Francis; while on the ceiling he has painted the three Franciscan virtues, Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, and in the fourth space has set St. Francis in Glory, as he had done in a different manner at Assisi.

After the enthusiastic pages of Ruskin,[107] to describe these frescoes, beautiful still, in spite of their universal restoration, would be superfluous.  It will be enough to refer the reader to his pages, and to add the subjects of the series.  Above, on the left wall, St. Francis renounces his father, while below he appears to the brethren at Arles, and under this we see his death.  On the left above, Pope Honorius gives him his Rule, and below, he challenges the pagan priests to the test of the fire before the Sultan, and appears to Gregory IX, who had thought to deny that he received the Stigmata.  Beside the window Giotto has painted four great Franciscans, St. Louis of Toulouse, St. Clare, St. Louis of France, and St. Elizabeth of Hungary.  All these frescoes in the Bardi Chapel are much more damaged by restoration than those in Cappella Peruzzi.