uction into Siena of the good method of
painting, giving light to the many beautiful intellects which have
flourished in that city in every age, Pietro was invited to Monte
Oliveto di Chiusuri, where he painted a panel in distemper that is
placed to-day in the portico below the church. In Florence, next,
opposite to the left-hand door of the Church of S. Spirito, on the
corner where to-day there is a butcher, he painted a shrine which, by
reason of the softness of the heads and of the sweetness that is seen in
it, deserves the highest praise from every discerning craftsman.

Going from Florence to Pisa, he wrought in the Campo Santo, on the wall
that is beside the principal door, all the lives of the Holy Fathers,
with expressions so lively and attitudes so beautiful that he equalled
Giotto and gained thereby very great praise, having expressed in certain
heads, both with drawing and with colour, all that vivacity that the
manner of those times was able to show. From Pisa he went to Pistoia,
where he made a Madonna with some angels round her, very well grouped,
on a panel in distemper, for the Church of S. Francesco; and in the
predella that ran below this panel, in certain scenes, he made certain
little figures so lively and so vivid that in those times it was
something marvellous; wherefore, since they satisfied himself no less
than others, he thought fit to place thereon his name, with these words:
PETRUS LAURATI DE SENIS.

[Illustration: PIETRO LORENZETTI: MADONNA AND CHILD WITH S.S. FRANCIS
AND JOHN

_(Assisi: Lower Church of S. Francesco. Fresco)_]

Pietro was summoned, next, in the year 1355, by Messer Guglielmo,
arch-priest, and by the Wardens of Works of the Pieve of Arezzo, who
were then Margarito Boschi and others; and in that church, built long
before with better design and manner than any other that had been made
in Tuscany up to that time, and all adorned with squared stone and with
carvings, as it has been said, by the hand of Margaritone, he painted in
fresco the apse and the whole great niche of the chapel of the
high-altar, making there twelve scenes from the life of Our Lady with
figures large as life, beginning with the expulsion of Joachim from the
Temple, up to the Nativity of Jesus Christ. In these scenes, wrought in
fresco, may be recognized almost the same inventions (the lineaments,
the air of the heads, and the attitudes of the figures) which had been
characteristic of and peculiar to Giot