llent in some art did not very often
have the thread of life cut by death in their best years, I have no
doubt that many intellects would arrive at that rank which is most
desired both by them and by the world. But the short life of men and the
bitterness of various accidents, which threaten them from all sides,
snatch them from us sometimes prematurely, as could be seen in poor
young Berna of Siena, who, although he died young, nevertheless left so
many works that he appears to have lived very long; and those that he
left were made in such a way, that it may well be believed from this
showing that he would have become excellent and rare if he had not died
so soon. In two chapels of S. Agostino in Siena there are seen some
little pictures with figures in fresco, by his hand; and in the church,
on a wall now pulled down in order to make chapels there, was a scene of
a youth led to execution, as well made as it could possibly be imagined,
there being seen expressed in it the pallor and fear of death, in so
lifelike a manner that he deserved therefore the highest praise. Beside
the said youth was a friar painted in a very fine attitude, and, in
short, everything in that work is so vividly wrought that it appears,
indeed, that in this work Berna imagined this event as most horrible, as
it must be, and full of most bitter and cruel terror, seeing that he
portrayed it so well with the brush that the same scene appearing in
reality would not stir greater emotion.

In the city of Cortona, also, besides many other works scattered in many
places in that city, he painted the greater part of the vaulting and of
the walls of the Church of S. Margherita, where to-day is the seat of
the Frati Zoccolanti. From Cortona he went to Arezzo in the year 1369,
exactly when the Tarlati, formerly Lords of Pietramala, had caused
Moccio, a sculptor and architect of Siena, to finish the Convent and the
body of the Church of S. Agostino in that city, in the lesser aisles of
which many citizens had caused chapels and tombs to be made for their
families; and there, in the Chapel of S. Jacopo, Berna painted in fresco
some little scenes of the life of that Saint, and especially vivid is
the story of Marino the swindler, who, having by reason of greed of gold
given his soul to the Devil and made thereunto a written contract in his
own hand, is making supplication to the Saint to free him from this
promise, while a Devil, showing him the contract, is pres