a festive company of ladies and cavaliers, with hawks and
dogs, seated under orange trees, with rich carpets at their feet, all
splendidly dressed. A troubadour and a singing girl amuse them with
songs, _amorini_ flutter around them and wave their torches. On the
other side is another group, also a hunting party, on splendidly
caparisoned horses, and accompanied by a train of attendants. On the
mountains in the background are several hermits, who in contrast to the
votaries of pleasure have attained in a life of contemplation and
abstinence the highest term of human existence. Many of the figures are
traditionally supposed to be portraits.

The centre foreground is devoted to the less fortunate on earth, the
beggars and cripples, and also corpses of the mighty; and with these we
may turn to the allegorical treatment of the subject. To the first group
descends the angel of death, swinging a scythe, and to her the
unfortunate are stretching out their arms in supplication for an end to
their sorrows. The second group, it will be seen, are tracing a path
which leads to three open coffins in which lie the bodies of three
princes in different stages of decay, while a monk on crutches--intended
for S. Macarius--is pointing to them. The air is filled with angels and
demons, some of whom receive the souls of the dead.

A second picture is _The Last Judgment_, and a third _Hell_, the
resemblance between which and the great altar-piece in the Strozzi
Chapel in Santa Maria Novella at Florence, painted by Andrea Orcagna in
1357, was formerly considered proof of the same authorship. They are
now attributed to an unknown disciple of Pietro Lorenzetti, who was
painting in Siena between 1306 and 1348, and is assumed to have been a
pupil of Duccio.

The fourth picture, apparently by another hand--possibly that of
Lorenzetti himself--is _The Life of the Hermits_ in the wilderness of
Thebais, composed of a number of single groups in which the calm life of
contemplation is represented in the most varied manner. In front flows
the Nile, and a number of hermits are seen on its banks still subjected
to earthly occupations; they catch fish, hew wood, carry burdens to the
city, etc. Higher up, in the mountains, they are more estranged from the
world, but the Tempter follows them in various disguises, sometimes
frightful, sometimes seducing. As a whole this composition is
constructed in the ancient manner--as in Byzantine art--several series
r