(ASSISI)
]
Matteo di Giovanni, called also Matteo da Siena, is of a century and a
half later, and the Bambini of his paintings have in some examples the
affectation that all the Italian schools of the noblest ages shared
amongst them and in a measure taught in time to Germany and Flanders.
Moreover with him the “fineness” (to use the word in its strange
corruption), the fineness of the “fine child,” his superlatively good
physical estate, is in an extreme form, as in the case of the picture in
the Palazzo della Signoria, now called the Palazzo Comunale, at Siena.
But, again, we find a little movement observed from life in the
Accademia picture; the poor and puerile drawing of a work full of noble
feeling yet served the painter in his desire to give something of
childhood, besides fat, to the weak but thriving limbs. In another
Accademia painting, in which the Child holds a string of beads, it is
not only the action but the expression that has natural vitality. It is
simple, and we have seen, amongst a multitude of Bambini, how rare is
simplicity in the dealings of art with the figure of childhood. The
naturally parted lips have evidently been watched in a living child. In
this picture, too, there is a curious group of angels some ten years
old, all unchildish in the artificial employment of their hands; and yet
for these, four children of Siena may have been the models, for they
have character, and it is doubtless in obedience to the painter’s
commands that one of them holds his head too much on one side.
[Illustration:
_Matteo di Giovanni Pinx._ _Walker & Cockerell Ph. Sc._
_Virgin and Child with Angels._
(_Accademia, Siena_)
]
[Illustration:
_Alinari_