," the delicate and femininely variable, fond of all things
brilliant, and unstable through defect of sternness, was the fit mother of
this ingenious and delightful master.

After the days of Duccio and Simone Martini, of Ambrogio and Pietro
Lorenzetti, were over, there remained but little for the Sienese to do in
painting. Taddeo di Bartolo continued the tradition of Duccio as the later
Giottesques continued that of Giotto. His most remarkable wall-painting is
a fresco of the Apostles visiting the Virgin, the motive of which is
marked by great originality.[155] Our Lady is seated in an open loggia
with a company of holy men and women round her. Descending from the sky
and floating through the arches are three of the Apostles, while one who
has just alighted from his aerial transit kneels and folds his hands in
adoration. Seldom have the longing and the peace of loving worship been
more poetically expressed than here. The seated, kneeling, standing, and
flying figures are admirably grouped together; their draperies are
dignified and massive; and the architectural accessories help the
composition by dividing it into three balanced sections.

Such power of depicting movement was rare in the fourteenth century. To
find its analogue, we must betake ourselves to the frescoes of Spinello
Aretino, a master more decidedly Giottesque than his contemporary Taddeo
di Bartolo.[156] A Gabriel, rushing down from heaven to salute Madonna,
with all the whirr of arch-angelic pinions and the glory of Paradise
around him, is a fine specimen of Spinello's vehemence. The same quality,
more tempered, is noticeable in his frescoes of the legend of S. Ephesus
at Pisa.[157] Few faces in the paintings of any period are more
fascinating than the profiles under steel-blue battle-caps of that godlike
pair--the knightly saint and the Archangel Michael--breaking by the
irresistible force of their onset and their calm youthful beauty through
the mailed ranks of the Sardinian pagans. Spinello was essentially a
warlike painter; among the best of his compositions may be named the
series of pictures from the history of the Venetian campaign against
Frederick Barbarossa.[158] It is a pity that the war of liberation carried
on by the Lombard communes with the Empire should have left but little
trace on Italian art; and therefore these paintings of Spinello, in
addition to their intrinsic merit, have rare historical interest.
Delighting in the gleam of armou