CHURCH OF SANTA CROCE (Florence) Peruzzi chapel see red color (enlarge image) Church of Santa Croce (plant) Bardi chapel see blue color (enlarge image) The cycle of frescoes in the Peruzzi chapel was painted (tha date is controversial) in a period between 1320/1325 The cycle in the Bardi chapel was painted later.There is no document relative to these works able to give us any other precise information. Both chapels underwent the same fate.They were completely whitewashed in the 18th century and tombs were built against its walls, destroying parts of the frescoes. In 1852 they were freed from the overpainted coat. The rediscovery was followed by an intervention that rather than "restore" the frescoes deeply altered the original painting. The restorers, Antonio Marini for the Peruzzi chapel and Gaetano Bianchi for the Bardi chapel, retouched and completed the missing parts and also added new figures. At the end, to give uniformity to the old and new parts, they covered all painting with a layer of brown tempera that, with the passing of time, turned all colours dull and dark. The modern restoration (1959) removed all these 19th century interventions, but what is left is a feeble memory of the original painting. Nevertheless, it is still possible to judge these frescoes for the value of their composition and general plastic rythm. In comparison to Giotto's previous cycle of frescoes in the Scrovegni chapel, we can read, in the Peruzzi chapel, a rythm that flows more broadly and on a larger scale. The forms are more complex and the composition seems more monumental and sustained by a richer inventive mood. In the Bardi chapel, instead, we can perceive the softening of all tensions and the research of an ultimate sense of calm and supernatural abandonment. The rythm of the composition flows sweetly and without any harshness. The general impression is of a genuine spiritual committment to those stories of St.Francis that so many times Giotto had dealt with. We can only regret the loss of parts of these paintings and of the technical quality of them. The dimension of every single painting is 4,50 meters wide and 2,80 meters high.