d 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