ol
subjects, but he perfected details of form, such as the hands and
feet, and while retaining the long Byzantine face, gave it a
melancholy tenderness of expression. He possessed no dramatic force,
but had a refined workmanship for his time--a workmanship perhaps
better, all told, than that of his Florentine contemporary, Cimabue.
Simone di Martino (1283?-1344?) changed the type somewhat by rounding
the form. His drawing was not always correct, but in color he was good
and in detail exact and minute. He probably profited somewhat by the
example of Giotto.

The Siennese who came the nearest to Giotto's excellence were the
brothers Ambrogio (fl. 1342) and Pietro (fl. 1350) Lorenzetti. There
is little known about them except that they worked together in a
similar manner. The most of their work has perished, but what remains
shows an intellectual grasp equal to any of the age. The Sienna
frescos by Ambrogio Lorenzetti are strong in facial character, and
some of the figures, like that of the white-robed Peace, are beautiful
in their flow of line. Lippo Memmi (?-1356), Bartolo di Fredi
(1330-1410), and Taddeo di Bartolo (1362-1422), were other painters of
the school. The late men rather carried detail to excess, and the
school grew conventional instead of advancing.

TRANSITION PAINTERS: Several painters, Starnina (1354-1413), Gentile
da Fabriano (1360?-1440?), Fra Angelico (1387-1455), have been put
down in art history as the makers of the transition from Gothic to
Renaissance painting. They hardly deserve the title. There was no
transition. The development went on, and these painters, coming late
in the fourteenth century and living into the fifteenth, simply showed
the changing style, the advance in the study of nature and the technic
of art. Starnina's work gave strong evidence of the study of form, but
it was no such work as Masaccio's. There is always a little of the
past in the present, and these painters showed traces of Byzantinism
in details of the face and figure, in coloring, and in gold embossing.

Gentile had all that nicety of finish and richness of detail and color
characteristic of the Siennese. Being closer to the Renaissance than
his predecessors he was more of a nature student. He was the first man
to show the effect of sunlight in landscape, the first one to put a
gold sun in the sky. He never, however, outgrew Gothic methods and
really belongs in the fourteenth century. This is true of Fra
Angelico.