_Ambrogio Lorenzetti_ (Sienese: died about 1348).
Ambrogio, the younger brother of Pietro Lorenzetti (see 1113),
was the greatest of the early Sienese painters. His series
of frescoes in the Sala della Pace in the Palazzo Publico of
Siena, typifying good and bad government, are known to every
traveller. They are full both of artistic beauty and historical
interest (see the description by Symonds in his _Sketches and
Studies_, iii. 43). The heads of many of Ambrogio's allegorical
figures are of great beauty and grandeur--especially that of
Peace, which is of classical dignity and may possibly have been
modelled on the lines of some antique sculpture.
The work before us is a mere shattered fragment of fresco (from a
church in Siena), but it is enough to show the artist's feeling for the
true portraiture that identifies character with likeness. The nuns'
faces are typical of the strong yet tender qualities developed in a
life of seclusion and self-sacrifice.