on that spot, he painted many figures and scenes,
with infinite diligence, and with such a manner of colouring that they
had remained very fresh up to our own day, when, not many years since,
they were ruined. But what was marvellous in that place, besides the
stories of S. Stephen made with figures larger than life, was to see
Joseph, in a story of the Magi, beside himself with joy at the coming of
those Kings, on whom he was gazing with most beautiful manner, while
they were opening their vessels full of treasures and were offering them
to him. A Madonna in that same church, who is handing a rose to the
Infant Christ, was and still is held in so great veneration among the
Aretines, as being a very beautiful and devout figure, that without
regard for any difficulty or expense, when the Church of S. Stefano was
thrown to the ground, they cut the wall away round her, and, binding it
together ingeniously, they bore her into the city and placed her in a
little church, in order to honour her, as they do, with the same
devotion that they showed to her before. Nor should this appear anything
wonderful, because, it having been something peculiar and natural to
Spinello to give to his figures a certain simple grace, which has much
of the modest and the saintly, it appears that the figures that he made
of saints, and above all of the Virgin, breathe out a certain quality of
the saintly and the divine, which moves men to hold them in supreme
reverence; as it may be seen, apart from the said figure, in the Madonna
that is on the Canto degli Albergotti, and in that which is on an outer
wall of the Pieve in the Seteria, and in one of the same sort, likewise,
that is on the Canto del Canale.

[Illustration: SPINELLO ARETINO: THE DEATH OF THE VIRGIN

(_Siena: Pinacoteca, 125. Panel_)]

By the hand of Spinello, also, on a wall of the Hospital of Spirito
Santo, is a scene of the Apostles receiving the Holy Spirit, which is
very beautiful; and so, too, are the two scenes below, wherein S. Cosimo
and S. Damiano are cutting off a sound leg from a dead Moor, in order to
attach it to a sick man, from whom they had cut off one that was
mortified; and likewise the very beautiful "Noli me tangere," which is
between those two works. In the Company of the Puraccioli, on the Piazza
di S. Agostino, in a chapel, he made an Annunciation very well
coloured, and in the cloister of that convent he wrought in fresco a
Madonna, a S. James, and a S. Anth