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When it was finished, he painted in an altar-piece, which was placed in the Pieve of Prato, Our Lady presenting the Girdle to S. Thomas, who is with the other Apostles.
Returning afterwards to Tuscany, he wrought a panel in distemper, which inclines to the manner of Ugolino Sanese, in San Gimignano; and this panel is to-day behind the high-altar of the Pieve, and faces the choir of the priests.
But in order that the rise of this craftsman may be better known, let me begin with his origin, and relate that, according to common report, there was born in the city of Perugia, to a poor man of Castello della Pieve, named Cristofano, a son who was baptized with the name of Pietro.
The church of Valdobbiadene, at Venice, contains "San Venanziano Fortunatus, Bishop." "Saint Louis" was painted as a commission of Brandolin da Pieve; "Comte Justinian Replying to Bonaparte in Treviso" was a subscription picture presented to Signor Zoccoletto.
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.
At this time one of two young men who were working under Jacopo that is, Giovan Maria Pichi of Borgo a S. Sepolcro, who was acquitting himself passing well, and who afterwards became a Servite friar, and executed some works in the Borgo and in the Pieve a S. Stefano while still working, I say, under Jacopo, painted in a large picture a nude S. Quentin in martyrdom, in order to send it to the Borgo.
Upon this rock were built a few gloomy-looking houses and a quaint, old-world mill. It was reached from the hither side by a widely-spanning one-arched bridge. It was called Val Savignone." Beyond this, at a small village called Balsciano, the hills begin to subside into gentler slopes, which gradually merge in the plain at the little town of Pieve San Stefano.
Finally, having reached the age of seventy-eight, Pietro finished the course of his life at Castello della Pieve, where he was honourably buried, in the year 1524.
For Pisa herself is soon lost in the vagueness of a world thus delicately touched by sun and cloud, and seemingly so full of ruinous or deserted things like the beautiful great Church of Settimo, whose tower you may see far away in the golden summer weather standing quite alone in a curve of the river; so that you leave the highway and following a little by-road come upon Pieve di S. Cassiano, a basilica in the ancient Pisan manner set among the trees in a shady place, and over the three doors of the façade you find the beautiful work of Biduino da Pisa, as it is said, sculptures in relief of the resurrection of Lazarus, the entry of Christ into Jerusalem, a fight of dragons, and certain subjects from the Bestiaries.
Filippo, being restored to health after some months, was standing one morning in the Piazza di S. Maria del Fiore with Donato and other craftsmen, when they began to talk of antiquities in connection with sculpture, and Donato related how, when he was returning from Rome, he had made the journey through Orvieto, in order to see that marble façade of the Duomo, a work greatly celebrated, wrought by the hands of diverse masters and held to be something notable in those times; and how, in passing afterwards by Cortona, he entered the Pieve and saw a very beautiful ancient sarcophagus, whereon there was a scene in marble a rare thing then, when there had not been unearthed that abundance which has been found in our own day.