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Independently of Giotto, he performed at a stroke what Cimabue and his pupil had achieved for the Florentines, and bequeathed to the succeeding painters of Siena a tradition of art beyond which they rarely passed. Far more than their neighbours at Florence, the Sienese remained fettered by the technical methods and the pietistic formulae of the earliest religious painting.
The first, by a Madonna and a Thebaid; the second , in the two predella pictures for the altar-piece of S. Procolo, Sassetta, the best of the Sienese Quattrocento painters, is absent, and Vecchietta is only represented by a predella picture ; it is not till we came to Sodoma, whose famous St.
No young Sienese eyes rest upon anything youthful; they open into a world battered and befouled with long use. Everything has passed its meridian except the brilliant facade of the cathedral, which is being diligently retouched and restored, and a few private palaces whose broad fronts seem to have been lately furbished and polished.
Which operation being over, the mannerly Sienese courteously gave mine host a whole bushel of thanks, saying to him, Io ti ringratio, bel messere; cosi facendo tu m' ai esparmiata la speza d'un servitiale. I'll give you another example of Edward V., King of England.
The main strength of Sienese art went possibly into the erection of the Cathedral, and yet even here the strength is not of the greatest strain. If, however, there are more interesting temples in Italy, there are few more richly and variously scenic and splendid, the comparative meagreness of the architectural idea being overlaid by a marvellous wealth of ingenious detail.
The chief defects in the work are the overcrowding of the composition, and the bad values of distance, caused in a great measure by the gold background. Signorelli's treatment is too realistic, his figures are too solid and too true to life, to bear the decorative background so suitable to the flat, half-symbolic painting of the Sienese school.
From the windows of our bedrooms we looked into a broader street, though still not very wide, and into a small piazza, the most conspicuous object in which was a column, hearing on its top a bronze wolf suckling Romulus and Remus. This symbol is repeated in other parts of the city, and scours to indicate that the Sienese people pride themselves in a Roman origin.
He preserved only the altar of S. Pietro, and the old tribune, round which he made a most beautiful ornament of the Doric Order, all of peperino-stone, to the end that when the Pope came to S. Pietro to say Mass, he might be able to stand within it with all his Court and with the Ambassadors of the Christian Princes; but death prevented him from finishing it entirely, and the Sienese Baldassarre afterwards brought it to completion.
He had time to notice, however, the domed and decorated ceiling, the classical mantelpiece, with its medallions and its pillars of Sienese marble, a couple of bold Renaissance cabinets on either side, and a central table, resting on carved sphinxes, such as one might find in the sala of a Venetian palace.
"You shall call me nothing else, "said I then; but she shook her head, and hung it down as she whispered softly, "I like best Francesco," and then, so low as to be hardly audible, "Checho," the Sienese diminutive for my name of Francis. Old Nonna came in to hound me from the room. That night it was my last but one Aurelia came to the door with me, and let me kiss her two hands again.
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