collecting alms for the poor who were ashamed to beg,
and to succour them in all their needs: and in the year of the plague of
1348, by reason of the great name acquired by these good men for the
Confraternity in assisting the poor and the sick, in burying the dead,
and in doing other similar works of charity, so many were the legacies,
the donations, and the inheritances that were left to it, that it
inherited the third of the riches of Arezzo; and the same came to pass
in the year 1383, when there was likewise a great plague. Spinello,
then, belonging to this Company, it was often his turn to visit the
sick, to bury the dead, and to do other similar pious exercises, such as
the best citizens of that city have ever done and still do to-day; and
in order to make some memorial of this in his pictures, he painted for
that Company, on the facade of the Church of S. Laurentino e S.
Pergentino, a Madonna who, having her mantle open in front, has under it
the people of Arezzo, among whom are portrayed from life many of the
chief men of the Confraternity, with their wallets on their shoulders
and with wooden hammers in their hands, like to those that they use for
knocking at the doors when they go seeking alms. In like manner, for the
Company of the Annunciation he painted the great shrine that is without
the church, and part of a portico that is opposite to it, and the panel
of that Company, wherein there is likewise an Annunciation in distemper.
A work of Spinello's, likewise, is the panel which is now in the Church
of the Nuns of S. Giusto, wherein a little Christ, who is in the arms of
His mother, is marrying S. Catherine, together with six little scenes,
with small figures, of her acts; and it is much praised.

[Illustration: THE ANNUNCIATION

(_After the fresco by_ Spinello Aretino. _Arezzo: SS. Annunziata_)

_Alinari_]

Being next summoned to the famous Abbey of Camaldoli in the Casentino,
in the year 1361, he made for the hermits of that place the panel of the
high-altar, which was removed in the year 1539, when, that church having
been just rebuilt completely anew, Giorgio Vasari made a new panel, and
painted in fresco the whole of the principal chapel of that abbey, and
the tramezzo[2] of the church, also in fresco, and two other panels.
Summoned thence to Florence by Don Jacopo d'Arezzo, Abbot of S. Miniato
sul Monte, of the Order of Monte Oliveto, Spinello painted on the
vaulting and on the four walls of the sac