Of Celino and Valente our knowledge is less—­perhaps because there was never any friction between the master and his assistants, which gives so unenviable a record to the relation of Michael Angelo with his pupils.[207] The two inscriptions on the background of the Miracle of the Miser’s Heart, read as follows:  “S.  ANT.  DI GIOV DE SE E SUOR[=U]”:  and “[=S] DI PIERO E BARTOLOMEO E SU[=O].”  They have been variously interpreted.  Some have suggested that they indicate the names of donors, or that the letter s means sepulchrum, and that they are in the nature of epitaphs.  It would seem more probable that they are signatures of those who were occupied in giving final touches to the chiselling of the background.

[Footnote 203:  7, xii. 1549.  Printed in Bottari, ii. 70.]

[Footnote 204:  19, x. 1451.  Milanesi, ii. 271.]

[Footnote 205:  17. x. 1457; ibid. 295.]

[Footnote 206:  Marble, No. 149.]

[Footnote 207:  The rules of the Sienese guild of painters provided against strife within their own circles by imposing a fine upon whoever dicesse vilania o parole ingiuriose al retore:  Art. 55.  Milanesi, i. 25.]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Alinari

TOMB OF GIOVANNI, SON OF GENERAL GATTAMELATA

PADUA]

[Illustration:  Alinari

TOMB OF GENERAL GATTAMELATA

SANT’ ANTONIO, PADUA]

[Illustration:  SHRINE OF ST. JUSTINA

LONDON]

[Sidenote:  Bellano and the Gattamelata Tombs.]

One other sculptor, Bellano, is said by Vasari to have been so much affected by Donatello’s influence that the work of the two men was often indistinguishable.  This places Bellano too high.  Scardeone, it is true, says he was mirus coelatura;[208] but Gauricus is more accurate in calling him ineptus artifex.[209] He was really a lugubrious person, though on rare occasions he made a good thing, such, for instance, as the statuette of St. Jerome, belonging to M. Gustave Dreyfus.  But his large bas-relief of St. Anthony and the Mule[210] is stiff and laboured.  The tomb of Roycelli, the monarcha sapientie in the Santo, with its wealth of poverty-stricken decoration, shows that Bellano was a man who could work on a large scale, but whose sense of fitness and harmony was weak.  So also the Roccabonella fragments, in spite of a rugged, rough-hewn appearance, show an absence of ethical and intellectual qualities; while the fussy and breathless reliefs round the choir of the Santo are farcical in several respects.  There was another man influenced by Donatello, who must be nameless pending further investigation:  his style cannot be identified with anything on the great altar, but he was a sculptor of immense power.  He made the so-called shrine of Santa Giustina in