been spread abroad for many years, many, who were desirous of
obtaining fame and riches by means of the art of painting, began to
be animated by the hope of glory, and by natural inclination, to make
progress towards the improvement of the art, feeling confident that,
with effort, they would be able to surpass in excellence Giotto,
Taddeo, and the other painters. Among these was one Jacopo di
Casentino, who was born, as we read, of the family of M. Cristoforo
Landino of Pratovecchio, and was associated by the friar of
Casentino, then superior at the Sasso del Vernia, with Taddeo Gaddi,
while he was working in that convent, in order that he might learn
design and colour. In a few years he so far succeeded, that, being
taken to Florence in the company of Giovanni di Milano, in the
service of their master, Taddeo, where they were doing many things,
he was asked to paint in tempera the tabernacle of the Madonna of the
Old Market, with the picture there, and also the one on the Via del
Cocomoro side of the Piazza S. Niccolo. A few years ago both of these
were restored by a very inferior master to Jacopo. For the Dyers, he
did the one at S. Nofri, on the side of their garden wall, opposite
S. Giuseppe. While the vaulting of Orsanmichele, upon its twelve
pillars, was being completed, and covered with a low, rough roof,
awaiting the completion of the building of the palace, which was to
be the granary of the Commune, the painting of these vaults was
entrusted to Jacopo di Casentino, as a very skilled artist. Here he
painted some prophets and the patriarchs, with the heads of the
tribes, sixteen figures in all, on an ultramarine ground, now much
damaged, without other ornamentation. He next did the lower walls and
pilasters with many miracles of Our Lady, and other things which may
be recognised by their style. This done, he returned to Casentino,
and after painting many works in Pratovecchio, Poppi, and other
places of that valley, he proceeded to Arezzo, which then governed
itself with a council of sixty of the richest and most honoured
citizens, to whom all the affairs of the state were entrusted. Here,
in the principal chapel of the Vescovado, he painted a story of St
Martin, and a good number of pictures in the old Duomo, now pulled
down, including a portrait of Pope Innocent VI. in the principal
chapel. He next did the wall where the high altar is, and the chapel
of St Maria della Neve, in the church of S. Bartolommeo, for the
chapter of the canons of the Pieve, and for the old brotherhood of S.
Giovanni de' Peducci he did a number of scenes from the life of that
saint, which are now whitewashed over. He also did the chapel of St
Christopher in the church of S. Domenico, introducing a portrait of
the blessed Masuolo releasing from prison a merchant of the Fei
family, who built the chapel. This saint was a contemporary of the
artist, and a prophet who predicted many misfortunes for the
Aretines. In the church of S. Agostino, Jacopo did some stories of St
Laurence in fresco in the chapel and at the altar of the Nardi with
marvellous style and skill. Since he also practised architecture, he
was employed by the sixty chief citizens mentioned above to bring
under the walls of Arezzo the water which comes from the slopes of
Pori, 300 braccia from the city. In the time of the Romans this water
had been originally brought to the theatre, traces of which still
exist, and thence from its situation on the hill where the fortress
now is, to the amphitheatre of the city in the plain, the buildings
and conduits of this being afterwards entirely destroyed by the
Goths. Thus after Jacopo had, as I have said, brought the water
under the wall, he made the fountain, then known as the Fonte
Guizianelli, but is now called by corruption Fonte Viniziana. It
remained standing from 1354 until 1527, but no longer, because the
plague of the following year, and the war which followed, deprived it
of many of its advantages for the use of the gardens, particularly as
Jacopo did not bring it inside, and for these reasons it is not
standing to-day, as it should be.
Whilst Jacopo was engaged in bringing water to the city he did not
abandon his painting, and in the palace which was in the old citadel,
destroyed in our day, he did many scenes of the deeds of the Bishop
Guide and of Piero Sacconi, who had done great and notable things for
the city both in peace and war. He also did the story of St Matthew
under the organ in the Pieve, and a considerable number of other
works. By these paintings, which he did in every part of the city, he
taught Spinello of Arezzo the first principles of that art which he
himself had learned from Agnolo, and which Spinello afterwards taught
to Bernardo Daddi, who worked in the city and adorned it with many
fine paintings, which, united to his other excellent qualities,
brought him much honour among his fellow-citizens, who employed him a
great deal in magistracies and other public affairs. The paintings of
Bernardo were numerous and highly valued, first in St Croce, the
chapel of St Laurence and those of St Stephen of the Pulci and
Berardi, and many other paintings in various other parts of that
church. At length, after he had painted some pictures on the inside
of the gates of the city of Florence, he died, full of years, and was
buried honourably in S. Felicita in the year 1380.
To return to Jacopo. In the year 1350 was founded the company and
brotherhood of the Painters. For the masters who then flourished,
both those who practised the old Byzantine style and those who
followed the new school of Cimabue, seeing that they were numerous,
and that the art of design had been revived in Tuscany and in their
own Florence, created this society under the name and protection of
St Luke the Evangelist, to render praise and thanks to God in the
sanctuary of that saint, to meet together from time to time,
remembering the welfare of their souls as well as of the bodies of
those who might be in need of assistance at various times. This is
still the practice of many of the Arts in Florence, but it was much
more common in former times. Their first sanctuary was the principal
chapel of the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, which was granted them by
the family of the Portinari. The first governors of the company were
six in number, with the title of captains, and in addition there were
two councillors and two chamberlains. This may be seen in the old
book of the company begun then, the first chapter of which opens
thus:
"These articles and regulations were agreed upon and drawn up by the
good and discreet men of the art of the Painters of Florence, and in
the time of Lapo Gucci, painter; Vanni Cinuzzi, painter; Corsino
Buonaiuti, painter; Pasquino Cenni, painter; Segnia d'Antignano,
painter. The councillors were Bernardo Daddi and Jacopo di Casentino,
painters. Consiglio Gherardi and Domenico Pucci, painters, the
chamberlains."
The company being thus formed by the consent of the captains and
others, Jacopo di Casentino painted the picture of their chapel,
representing St Luke drawing a picture of Our Lady, and in the
predella, all the men of the company kneeling on one side and all the
women on the other. From this beginning, whether they meet or no, the
company has existed continuously from this time and has recently been
remodelled, as is related in the new articles of the company approved
by the Most Illustrious Lord, Duke Cosimo, the very benignant
protector of these arts of design.
At length Jacopo, overwhelmed with years and toil, returned to
Casentino and died there at Prato Vecchio, at the age of eighty. He
was buried by his relations and friends in S. Agnolo, an abbey of the
Camaldoline order, outside Prato Vecchio. Spinello introduced his
portrait into a picture of the Magi in the old Duomo, and his style
of draughtsmanship may be seen in our book.
Spinello, Painter of Arezzo.
Upon one of the occasions when the Ghibellines were driven from
Florence and when they settled at Arezzo, Luca Spinelli had a son
born to him there, to whom he gave the name of Spinello. This boy had
so much natural inclination to be a painter, that almost without a
master and while still quite a child he knew more than many who have
practised under the best teachers, and what is more, he contracted a
friendship with Jacopo di Casentino while the latter was working at
Arezzo, and learned something from him, so much so indeed that before
he was twenty years of age he was a far better master, young as he
was, than Jacopo, who was already an old man. Spinello's early
reputation as a good painter induced M. Dardano Acciaiuoli to employ
him to decorate the church of S. Niccolo at the pope's halls, which
he had just erected, behind S. Maria Novella in the Via dei Scala,
and there buried a brother who was a bishop. Here Spinello painted
scenes from the life of St Nicholas, bishop of Bari, in fresco,
completing the work in 1334 after two years of unremitting labour. In
it he exhibited equal excellence as a colourist and as a designer, so
that the colours remained in excellent preservation up to our own
day, and the excellence of the figures was well expressed, until a
few years ago when they were in great part damaged by a fire which
unfortunately broke out in the church at a time when it happened to
be full of straw, brought there by some indiscreet persons who made
use of the building as a barn for the storage of straw. The fame of
the work induced M. Barone Capelli, citizen of Florence, to employ
Spinello to paint in the principal chapel of S. Maria Maggiore, a
number of stories of the Madonna in fresco, and some of St Anthony
the abbot, and near them the consecration of that very ancient church
by Pope Paschal II. Spinello did all this so well that it looks as if
it had all been the work of a single day and not of many months, as
was actually the case. Near the pope is the portrait of M. Barone
from life, in the dress of the time, excellently done and with good
judgment. On the completion of this, Spinello worked in the church of
the Carmine in fresco, doing the chapel of St James and St John,
apostles, where, among other things, he has given a very careful
representation of the request made of Christ by the wife of Zebedee
and mother of James, that her sons should sit the one on the right
and the other on the left of the Father in the kingdom of Heaven. A
little further over one sees Zebedee, James and John leaving their
nets and following Christ, done with wonderful vigour and style. In
another chapel of the same church, beside the principal one, Spinello
also did in fresco some stories of the Madonna and the Apostles,
their miraculous appearance to her before her death, her death and
her being carried to Heaven by angels. As the scene was on a large
scale, and the chapel being a very small one of not more than ten
braccia in length and five in height, would not take it all,
especially in the case of the Assumption of Our Lady, Spinello very
judiciously continued the scene to the vaulting on one of the sides
at the place where Christ and the angels are receiving her. In a
chapel of S. Trinita, Spinello made a very fine Annunciation and for
the high altar picture of the church of S. Apostolo he painted in
tempera the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles in tongues
of fire. In S. Lucia de' Bardi he also painted a panel and did a
larger one for the chapel of St John the Baptist, decorated by
Giotto.
After these things, and on account of the great reputation which his
labours in Florence had procured for him, Spinello was recalled to
Arezzo by the sixty citizens who governed it, and was commissioned by
the Commune to paint the story of the Magi in the old Duomo outside
the city, and in the chapel of St Gismondo, a St Donate, who by means
of a benediction causes a serpent to burst. Similarly he made some
various figures on many pilasters of that Duomo, and on a wall he did
a Magdalene in the house of Simon anointing Christ's feet, with other
paintings which there is no need to mention, since that church is now
entirely destroyed, though it was then full of tombs, the bones of
saints and other notable things. But in order that the memory of it
may at least remain, I will remark that it was built by the Aretines
more than thirteen hundred years ago, at the time when they were
first converted to the faith of Jesus Christ by St Donato, who
afterwards became bishop of the city. It was dedicated to him, and
richly adorned both within and without with very ancient spoils of
antiquity. The ground plan of the church, which is discussed at
length elsewhere, was divided on the outside into sixteen faces, and
on the inside into eight, and all were full of the spoils of those
times which had originally been dedicated to idols; in short, it was,
at the time of its destruction, as beautiful as such a very ancient
church could possibly be. After the numerous paintings which he had
done in the Duomo, Spinello painted for the chapel of the Marsupini
in S. Francesco, Pope Honorius confirming and approving the rule of
that saint, the pope being a portrait of Innocent IV., he having by
some means obtained the likeness. In the chapel of St Michael, the
Archangel, in the same church in which the bells are rung, he painted
many scenes relating to him; and rather lower down, in the chapel of
M. Giuliano Baccio, he did an Annunciation, with other figures, which
are much admired. The whole of the works in this church were done in
fresco with great boldness and skill between the years 1334 and 1338.
In the Pieve of the same city he afterwards painted the chapel of St
Peter and St Paul, and below it that of St Michael the Archangel; for
the fraternity of S. Maria della Misericordia he did the chapel of St
James and St Philip; and over the principal door of the fraternity
which is on the piazza, that is to say, in the tympanum, he painted a
Pieta, with a St John, at the request of the rectors of the
fraternity. The foundation of the brotherhood took place in this way.
A certain number of good and honourable citizens began to go about
asking alms for the poor who were ashamed to beg, and to succour them
in all their necessities, in the year of the plague of 1348. The
fraternity acquired a great reputation, acquired by means of the
efforts of these good men, in helping the poor and infirm, burying
the dead, and performing other kindred acts of charity, so that the
bequests, donations and inheritances left to them became so
considerable that they amounted to one-third of the entire wealth of
Arezzo. The same happened in 1383, which was also a year of severe
plague. Spinello then being of the company, often undertook to visit
the infirm, bury the dead, and perform other like pious duties which
the best citizens have always undertaken and still do in that city.
In order to leave a memorial of this in his paintings, he painted for
the company on the wall of the church of S. Laurentino and
Pergentino, a Madonna with her mantle open in front, and beneath her
the people of Arezzo, comprising portraits of many of the earliest
members of the fraternity, drawn from life, with wallets round their
necks and a wooden hammer in their hands, like those with which they
knocked at the doors to ask alms. Similarly, in the company of the
Annunciation he painted the large tabernacle which is outside the
church, and part of a portico which is opposite it, and the picture
of the company, which is an Annunciation, in tempera. The picture
which is now in the church of the nuns of S. Giusto, where a little
Christ, who is at His mother's neck, is espousing St Catherine, with
six small scenes in little figures of the acts of that saint, is also
a work of Spinello and much admired. Being afterwards invited to the
famous abbey of Camaldoli in Casentino in the year 1361, he painted
for the hermits of that place the picture of the high altar, which
was taken away in the year 1539, when the entire church was rebuilt
and Giorgio Vasari did a new picture, painting the principal chapel
of the abbey all in fresco, the transept of the church in fresco and
two pictures. Summoned thence to Florence by D. Jacopo d'Arezzo,
Abbot of S. Miniato in Monte of the order of Monte Oliveto, Spinello
painted the vaulting and four walls of the sacristy of that
monastery, besides the picture of the altar, all in tempera, with
many stories of the life of St Benedict, executed with much skill and
a great vivacity in the colouring, learned by him by means of long
practice and continual labour, with study and diligence, such as are
necessary to every one who wishes to acquire an art perfectly. After
these things the said abbot left Florence and received the direction
of the monastery of S. Bernardo of the same order, in his native
land, at the very time when it was almost entirely completed on the
land granted by the Aretines, on the site of the Colosseum. Here the
abbot induced Spinello to paint in fresco two chapels which are
beside the principal chapel, and two others, one on either side of
the door leading to the choir in the screen of the church. In one of
the two, next the principal chapel, is an Annunciation in fresco,
made with the greatest diligence, and on a wall beside it, is the
Madonna ascending the steps of the Temple, accompanied by Joachim and
Anna; in the other chapel is a Crucifix with the Madonna and St John
weeping, and a St Bernard adoring on his knees. On the inner wall of
the church where the altar of Our Lady stands, he painted the Virgin
with the child at her neck, which was considered a very beautiful
figure, and did many other things for the church, painting above the
choir Our Lady, St Mary Magdalene and St Bernard, very vivaciously.
In the Pieve of Arezzo in the Chapel of St Bartholomew, he did a
number of scenes from the life of that saint, and on the opposite
side of the church, in the chapel of St Matthew, under the organ,
which was painted by his master Jacopo di Casentino, besides many
stories of that saint, which are meritorious, he did the four
Evangelists in some medallions, in an original style, for above the
bust and human limbs he gave St John the head of an eagle, St Mark
the head of a lion, St Luke that of an ox, while only St Matthew has
a human face, that is to say an angel's. Outside Arezzo, he decorated
the church of S. Stefano, built by the Aretines upon many columns of
granite and marble, to honour and preserve the names of several
martyrs who were put to death by Julian the Apostate. Here he did a
number of figures and scenes with great diligence and such a style of
colouring that they were in a wonderfully fresh state of preservation
when they were destroyed not many years ago. But the really
remarkable piece of work in that place, besides the stories of St
Stephen, in figures larger than life size, is the sight of Joseph, in
the story of the Magi, beside himself with joy at the coming of those
kings, and keenly watching the kings as they are opening the vessels
of their treasures and are offering them to him. In the same church
is a Madonna offering a rose to the Christ child, which was and is
considered a most beautiful figure, and so highly reverenced by the
Aretines that when the church of S. Stefano was pulled down, without
sparing either pains or expense, they cut it out of the wall,
ingeniously removed it and carried it into the city, depositing it in
a small church in order to honour it, as they do, with the same
devotion which they bestowed upon it at first. There is no wonder
that the work inspired such reverence, for it is a natural
characteristic of Spinello to endow his figures with a certain simple
grace, partaking of modesty and holiness, so that his saints and
particularly his Virgins breathe an indefinable sanctity and divinity
which inspire men with devotion. This may be seen also in a Madonna
which is on the side of the Albergetti, in one on an outside wall of
the Pieve in Seteria, and in another of the same kind on the side of
the canal. By Spinello's hand also is the descent of the Holy Spirit
on the Apostles, on the wall of the hospital of S. Spirito, which is
very fine, as are the two scenes below representing St Cosmo and St
Damian cutting a healthy leg off a dead Moor to attach it to a man
whose broken limb they have removed. In like manner the _Noli me
tangere_ between these two works is very beautiful. In a chapel of
the company of the Puracciuoli on the piazza of St Agostino he did a
very finely coloured Annunciation, and in the cloister of that
convent he painted a Madonna in fresco with St James and St Anthony
and the portrait of an armed soldier kneeling there, with these
words: _Hoc opus fecit fieri Clemens Pucci de Monte Catino, cujus
corpus jacet hic, etc. Anno Domini 1367 die 15 mensis Maii_. The
representations in the chapel of that church, of St Anthony and other
saints are known by their style to be by Spinello's hand, and he
afterwards painted the whole of a portico in the hospital of S.
Marco, now the monastery of the nuns of St Croce as their original
house, which was outside, was pulled down. The figure of St Gregory
the Pope, among the many represented in this work, standing beside a
Misericordia, is a portrait of Pope Gregory IX. The chapel of St
Philip and St James at the entry into the church of S. Domenico in
the same city, was done in fresco by Spinello in a fine and vigorous
style, as was also a three-quarter length figure of St Anthony,
painted on the wall of the church, which is so fine that it apes
life. It is placed in the midst of four scenes from his life, and
these and many other scenes of the life of St Anthony, also by
Spinello's hand, are in the chapel of St Anthony, in the church of
S. Giustino. On one side of the church of S. Lorenzo he painted some
stories of the Madonna, and outside the church he painted her seated,
doing the work very gracefully in fresco. In a small hospital
opposite of the nuns of S. Spirito, near the gate on the road to
Rome, the whole of the portico is painted by his hand with a
representation of the dead Christ in the lap of the Maries, executed
with so much skill and judgment that it proves him to have equalled
Giotto in the matter of design and to have far surpassed him as a
colourist. In the same place he has represented Christ seated, with a
very ingenious theological signification, having placed the Trinity
inside a Sun so that the same rays and the same glory issue from each
of the three figures. But the same fate has befallen this work as has
happened to many others, to the infinite loss of the lovers of this
art, for it was thrown down to make way for the fortifications of the
city. At the company of the Trinity may be seen a tabernacle outside
the church, by Spinello very finely worked in fresco, comprising the
Trinity, St Peter and SS. Cosmo and Damian dressed in the robes
habitually worn by the physicians of the time. During the production
of these works D. Jacopo d'Arezzo was appointed general of the
congregation of Monte Oliveto, nineteen years after he had employed
Spinello to do a number of things at Florence and at Arezzo, as has
been said above. Being stationed according to the custom of the
order, at Monte Oliveto the greater, of Chiusuri in the Siena
district, as being the principal house of that body, he conceived a
longing to have a beautiful picture made in that place. Accordingly
he sent for Spinello, remembering how well he had been served upon
other occasions, and induced him to do the picture for the principal
chapel. Here Spinello produced a large number of figures in tempera,
both small and great, on a gold ground, with great judgment, and
afterwards caused it to be framed in an ornament in half-relief by
Simone Cini of Florence, while in some parts he put an additional
ornament with stucco of a rather firm glue, which proved very
successful. It was gilded all over by Gabriello Saracini, who wrote
at the bottom the three names: Simone Cini of Florence did the
carving, Gabriello Saracini the gilding, and Spinello di Luca of
Arezzo the painting, in the year 1385.