of S. Dominic."[153] Simone’s first undisputed works are to be seen at Siena and at Assisi, where we learn what he could do as a frescante in competition with the ablest Florentines.  In the Palazzo Pubblico of his native city he painted a vast picture of the Virgin enthroned beneath a canopy and surrounded by saints;[154] while at Assisi he put forth his whole power in portraying the legend of S. Martin.  In all his paintings we trace the skill of an exquisite and patient craftsman, elaborately careful to finish his work with the utmost refinement, sensitive to feminine beauty, full of delicate inventiveness, and gifted with a rare feeling for grace.  These excellent qualities tend, however, towards affectation and over-softness; nor are they fortified by such vigour of conception or such majesty in composition as belong to the greatest trecentisti.  The Lorenzetti alone soared high above the Sienese mannerism into a region of masculine imaginative art.  We feel Simone’s charm mostly in single heads and detached figures, some of which at Assisi have incomparable sweetness.  “Molles Senae,” the delicate and femininely variable, fond of all things brilliant, and unstable through defect of sternness, was the fit mother of this ingenious and delightful master.

After the days of Duccio and Simone Martini, of Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti, were over, there remained but little for the Sienese to do in painting.  Taddeo di Bartolo continued the tradition of Duccio as the later Giottesques continued that of Giotto.  His most remarkable wall-painting is a fresco of the Apostles visiting the Virgin, the motive of which is marked by great originality.[155] Our Lady is seated in an open loggia with a company of holy men and women round her.  Descending from the sky and floating through the arches are three of the Apostles, while one who has just alighted from his aerial transit kneels and folds his hands in adoration.  Seldom have the longing and the peace of loving worship been more poetically expressed than here.  The seated, kneeling, standing, and flying figures are admirably grouped together; their draperies are dignified and massive; and the architectural accessories help the composition by dividing it into three balanced sections.

Such power of depicting movement was rare in the fourteenth century.  To find its analogue, we must betake ourselves to the frescoes of Spinello Aretino, a master more decidedly Giottesque than his contemporary Taddeo di Bartolo.[156] A Gabriel, rushing down from heaven to salute Madonna, with all the whirr of arch-angelic pinions and the glory of Paradise around him, is a fine specimen of Spinello’s vehemence.  The same quality, more tempered, is noticeable in his frescoes of the legend of S. Ephesus at Pisa.[157] Few faces in the paintings of any period are more fascinating than the profiles under steel-blue battle-caps of that godlike pair—­the knightly saint and the Archangel Michael—­breaking by the