n a
picture, and on one side of the predella the men of the Company, and on
the other all the women, kneeling. From this beginning, sometimes
assembling and sometimes not, this Company has continued up to its
arrival at the condition wherein it stands to-day, as it is narrated in
its new articles, approved by the most Illustrious Lord Duke Cosimo,
most benign protector of these arts of design.

Finally, being heavy with years and much fatigued, Jacopo returned to
the Casentino, and died in Pratovecchio at the age of eighty, and was
buried by his relatives and friends in S. Agnolo, the Abbey of the Order
of Camaldoli, without Pratovecchio. His portrait, by the hand of
Spinello, was in the Duomo Vecchio, in a story of the Magi; and of the
manner of his drawing there is an example in our book.

[Illustration: BERNARDO DADDI: THE MADONNA AND CHILD ENTHRONED

(_Florence: Accademia, 127. Panel_)]

SPINELLO ARETINO

LIFE OF SPINELLO ARETINO

PAINTER

Luca Spinelli having gone to dwell in Arezzo on one of the several
occasions when the Ghibellines were driven out of Florence, there was
born to him in that city a son, to whom he gave the name of Spinello, so
much inclined by nature to be a painter, that almost without a master,
while still a boy, he knew what many exercised under the discipline of
the best masters do not know; and what is more, having had friendship
with Jacopo di Casentino while he worked in Arezzo, and having learnt
something from him, before he was twenty years of age he was by a long
way a much better master, young as he was, than was Jacopo himself,
already an old painter. Spinello, then, began to be reputed a good
painter, and Messer Dardano Acciaiuoli, having caused the Church of S.
Niccolo to be built near the Sala del Papa, behind S. Maria Novella, in
the Via della Scala, and having given burial therein to one his brother,
a Bishop, caused him to paint the whole of that church in fresco with
stories of S. Nicholas, Bishop of Bari; and he delivered it completely
finished in the year 1334, having been at work on it two years without
ceasing. In this work Spinello acquitted himself so well, both in the
colouring and in the design, that up to our own day the colours had
remained very well preserved and the excellence of the figures was
clearly visible, when, a few years since, they were in great part spoilt
by a fire that burst out unexpectedly in that church, which had been
unwisely