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church. 1 The coronation of the Virgin may be seen in the place mentioned by Vasari, partly obliterated and partly damaged. The remains would justify the assertion that the fresco was finely and warmly coloured by a painter of the first half of the fourteenth century. At the sides of the arch, there are, however, no scenes from the life of S. Nicholas. The crucified Saviour is there, with the Virgin in grimacing grief, and S. John in a violent atti tude at the sides of the cross. The Redeemer is a coarse figure, but still Giottesque in type and form. Two remain ing scenes are taken from the martyrdom of S. Stanislas of Cracow; but, besides being of a different period from the Florentine works assigned to Giottino, and of a different hand, they are vastly inferior to the frescos of the cap- pella del Sacramento, which is really decorated with those scenes from the life of S. Nicholas which may be sought in vain where Vasari describes them. 2 Many of these frescos are, however, gone altogether and the following is all that remains to be described: S. Nicholas, hearing that a consul had been bribed to put three innocent youths to death, appears on the place of execution, where he finds the patients kneeling with their arms bound, and arrests the hand of the executioner, as he is about to strike off the head of one of them. Constan tine, having sent out three generals, Nepotian, Ursus, and Apilio, to a distant expedition, causes them, on their return, to be arrested for treason. But S. Nicholas appears in a dream before Constantine, who sleeps by the side of his prisoners, inclosed in a cage, and calls upon him to release them. These are the first frescos on the left wall. In the lunette, on that side, is an episode relative to a posthumous miracle of the Saint. Nicholas is at once the patron of thieves and the protector 1 Vas. Vol. II. p. 143. * In the old ex-chapter, as one issues from the church, where a door leads to the room, celebrated as being that in which S. Giu seppe da Copertino died, are, on a wall, frescos, now restored, of a crucifixion with figures of S.S. Paul, Peter, Louis, and Anthony of Pa dua, and at the foot of the cross, S. Francis. Six angels hover about the cross. In the arch, traces of saints appear. These paintings, much damaged by restoring are like those above the pulpit in the body of the Lower church of Assisi.