filled with straw by some foolish men who made use of it as a
barn or storehouse for straw. Attracted by the fame of this work, Messer
Barone Capelli, citizen of Florence, caused Spinello to paint in fresco,
in the principal chapel of S. Maria Maggiore, many stories of the
Madonna and some of S. Anthony the Abbot, and near these the
consecration of that very ancient church, consecrated by Pope Paschal,
second of that name; and all this Spinello wrought so well that it
appears made all in one day, and not in many months, as it was. Beside
the said Pope is the portrait of Messer Barone himself from the life, in
the dress of those times, made very well and with very good judgment.
This chapel finished, Spinello painted in fresco, in the Church of the
Carmine, the Chapel of S. James and S. John, the Apostles, wherein,
among other things, there is wrought with much diligence the scene when
the wife of Zebedee, mother of James, is demanding of Jesus Christ that
He should cause one of her sons to sit on the right hand of the Father
in the Kingdom of Heaven, and the other on the left; and a little beyond
are seen Zebedee, James, and John abandoning their nets and following
Christ, with liveliness and admirable manner. In another chapel of the
same church, which is beside the principal chapel, Spinello made, also
in fresco, some stories of the Madonna, and the Apostles appearing to
her miraculously before her death, and likewise the moment when she dies
and is then borne to Heaven by the Angels. And because the scene was
large and the diminutive chapel, which was not longer than ten braccia
and not higher than five, would not contain the whole, and above all the
Assumption of Our Lady herself, Spinello, with beautiful judgment,
caused it to curve round within the length of the picture, on to a part
where Christ and the Angels are receiving her. In a chapel in S. Trinita
he made in fresco a very beautiful Annunciation; and in the Church of S.
Apostolo, on the panel of the high-altar, he made in distemper the Holy
Spirit being sent down on the Apostles in tongues of fire. In S. Lucia
de' Bardi, likewise, he painted a little panel, and another in S. Croce,
larger, for the Chapel of S. Giovanni Battista, which was painted by
Giotto.

After these works, being recalled to Arezzo by the sixty citizens who
governed that place, by reason of the great name that he had acquired
while working in Florence, he was made by the Commune to paint