shoulder, and carrying in his hand the wooden mallet with which the brethren knock at the doors, when they go to seek alms.[1] For the Company of the Annunciation, Spinello painted the large tabernacle which is on the outside of the church, with part of a portico opposite to it, and an altarpiece in distemper,[2] for the same Company, the subject of which is an Annunciation. The picture, which is now in the church of the nuns of San G-iusto, is also by Spinello; it represents the marriage of St. Catherine, with the infant Christ, whom the Virgin holds in her arms, with six stories, in small figures, from the life of St. Catherine. This work has been highly commended.[3]
Being afterwards invited to the celebrated abbey of Camaldoli, in the Casentino, Spinello painted the picture of the High Altar for the hermits of that place. This work was removed in the year 1539, when, the church having been entirely rebuilt, a new painting was executed by Giorgio Vasari, who likewise decorated the principal chapel of that abbey, in fresco, painted two pictures for the church, and adorned the cross aisle, also with fresco paintings, at the same period. Summoned thence to Florence by Don Jacopo d’Arezzo, abbot of San Miniato-sul-Monte, which belonged to the order of Monte Oliveto, Spinello painted stories in fresco from the life of San Benedetto on the ceiling and four walls of the sacristy belonging to that monastery, together with the altar-piece, in distemper. These works are executed with all that facility which the long and careful practice of Spinello had given him, and with a perfection of colouring resulting in like manner from the laborious and diligent study which this master gave to his vocation, and which is in truth needful to all who would acquire any art perfectly. [4]
- ↑ The church of SS. Laurentino and Pergentino, the patron saints of Arezzo, was rebuilt in the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the painting of Spinello was destroyed.— G. Montani.
- ↑ The tabernacle is still in existence; the fate of the picture in distemper is not known. The portico was taken down, and the work of Spinello was consequently destroyed.
- ↑ This picture was afterwards taken into the convent, and is now lost, as we have said above.
- ↑ The fresco paintings of the sacristy in San Miniato are still in good preservation. Forster informs us that there is also a Life of Christ, by Spinello, in the laboratory of Santa Maria Novella. See Kunstblatt for 1830, No. 17
