DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61542#0096
68
THE GIOTTESCHI
[1330
two subjects, the Duomo, Baptistery and leaning
Tower are all introduced. Antonio Veneziano
executed several other works in the Cathedral, and
remained at Pisa till August 1387, after which we lose
sight of him, and are left to believe Vasari’s assertion,
that he became so much interested in chemical ex-
periments, that in his old age he abandoned painting
for the study of medicine. But he was a master of
considerable power, and as the pupil of Agnolo Gaddi
and the master of Stamina, he forms an important
link in the development of Florentine art.
Yet two more Giottesque masters were employed in
the Campo Santo during the last years of the fourteenth
century : Pietro di Puccio, of Orvieto—who painted
four frescoes of the Creation, the Fall of Man, Death
of Abel, and the Deluge, on the North wall, in the
year 1390—and Spinello Aretino. In his attempt to
represent the work of Creation, Puccio shows him-
self an inferior artist, as much influenced by Sienese
as Giottesque tradition, and quite unable to draw
nude forms correctly, but not without considerable
gifts of poetic invention, which find their happiest
expression in the fruit-trees and singing-birds, the
marble fountains and terraces of the Garden of Eden.
Spinello was a more popular and prolific artist, who
painted the five frescoes of the legend of the warrior
Saints, Efeso and Potito on the South wall, within
the space of seven months, and received 1032 lire for
his work in March 1392. Born at Arezzo about 1433,
and sprung from a family of goldsmiths, he became a
scholar of Jacopo da Casentino, and painted an im-
mense number of frescoes in Florence and Arezzo
during the course of his long life. His delight in
THE GIOTTESCHI
[1330
two subjects, the Duomo, Baptistery and leaning
Tower are all introduced. Antonio Veneziano
executed several other works in the Cathedral, and
remained at Pisa till August 1387, after which we lose
sight of him, and are left to believe Vasari’s assertion,
that he became so much interested in chemical ex-
periments, that in his old age he abandoned painting
for the study of medicine. But he was a master of
considerable power, and as the pupil of Agnolo Gaddi
and the master of Stamina, he forms an important
link in the development of Florentine art.
Yet two more Giottesque masters were employed in
the Campo Santo during the last years of the fourteenth
century : Pietro di Puccio, of Orvieto—who painted
four frescoes of the Creation, the Fall of Man, Death
of Abel, and the Deluge, on the North wall, in the
year 1390—and Spinello Aretino. In his attempt to
represent the work of Creation, Puccio shows him-
self an inferior artist, as much influenced by Sienese
as Giottesque tradition, and quite unable to draw
nude forms correctly, but not without considerable
gifts of poetic invention, which find their happiest
expression in the fruit-trees and singing-birds, the
marble fountains and terraces of the Garden of Eden.
Spinello was a more popular and prolific artist, who
painted the five frescoes of the legend of the warrior
Saints, Efeso and Potito on the South wall, within
the space of seven months, and received 1032 lire for
his work in March 1392. Born at Arezzo about 1433,
and sprung from a family of goldsmiths, he became a
scholar of Jacopo da Casentino, and painted an im-
mense number of frescoes in Florence and Arezzo
during the course of his long life. His delight in