There is no trace of mysticism, no ecstatic piety, nothing morbid or hysterical, in his imagination.

Imbuing whatever he handled with the force and freshness of actual existence, Giotto approached the deep things of the Christian faith and the legend of S.
Francis in the spirit of a man bent simply on realising the objects of his belief as facts.

His allegories of "Poverty," "Chastity," and "Obedience," at Assisi, are as beautiful and powerfully felt as they are carefully constructed.

Yet they conceal no abstruse spiritual meaning, but are plainly painted "for the poor laity of love to read." The artist poet who coloured the virginal form of Poverty, with the briars beneath her feet and the roses blooming round her forehead, proved by his well-known _canzone_ that he was free from monastic Quixotism, and took a practical view of the value of worldly wealth.[127] His homely humour saved him from the exaltation and the childishness that formed the weakness of the Franciscan revival.

By the same firm grasp upon reality he created more than mere abstractions in his _chiaroscuro_ figures of the virtues and vices at Padua.