Margaritone, Painter, Sculptor and Architect of Arezzo.

Among the other painters of old time, in whom the well-deserved
praise accorded to Cimabue and his pupil Giotto aroused a great deal
of fear, for their good workmanship in painting was hailed throughout
Italy, was one Margaritone, painter of Arezzo, who recognised equally
well with the others who previously occupied the foremost positions
in painting in that unhappy age, that the work of these two men would
probably all but obliterate his own reputation. Margaritone was
considered excellent among the painters of the age who worked in the
Byzantine style, and he did a number of pictures in tempera at
Arezzo. He worked in fresco also, painting almost the whole of the
church of S. Clemente, an abbey of the order of the Camaldolites, but
these occupied him a long time and cost him much trouble. The church
is entirely destroyed to-day, together with many other buildings,
including a strong fortress called S. dementi, because the Duke
Cosimo de' Medici not only here, but round the whole circuit of the
city, pulled down many buildings and the old walls which had been
restored by Guido Petramalesco, a former bishop and lord of the city,
in order to reconstruct them with curtains and bastions much stronger
and of less circuit than the former ones had been, and consequently
more easy to defend with a smaller number of men. Margaritone's
pictures in this church contained many figures both small and great,
and although they were executed in the Byzantine style, yet they were
admitted to show evidence of having been executed with good judgment
and with love of art, as may be inferred from the works of this
painter which are still extant in that city. Of these the principal
is a picture, now in the chapel of the Conception in S. Francesco,
representing a Madonna with modern ornamentation, which is held in
great veneration by the friars there. In the same church he did a
large crucifix, also in the Byzantine style, which is now placed in
the chapel where the quarters of the superintendent are situated. The
Saviour is delineated upon the axes of the cross, and Margaritone
made many such crucifixes in that city. For the nuns of S.
Margherita he painted a work which is now placed in the transept of
their church. This is canvas stretched on a panel, containing
subjects from the life of Our Lady and of St John the Baptist in
small figures, executed in a much better style, and wit