434 SCHOOLS OF PAINTING at Florence ; chief among them were Simone di Martino, Lippo Memmi, and especially Ambrogio Lorenzetti, a Fio. 3. Fresco in the church of Santa Croce, Florence, by Giotto the Disciples of St Francis discovering the Stigmata on his Body. painter of both panels and large frescos, which show rich and noble imaginative power and much technical skill. It is important to note that Ambrogio and probably other painters of his time were, like the ear- lier Pisan Niccola, beginning to study the then rare ex- amples of classical sculpture. Ghiberti, in his Commentary, speaks with enthu- , , , JCIG. 4. Fresco over a door in the cloister of beauty the convent O f g. Marco at Florence, by Fra of an antique statue Angelico Christ meeting St Domenic and which he knew only St Francis. from a drawing by Ambrogio Lorenzetti. In the second half of the 14th century Siena produced a large Fio. 5. Picture on canvas in the Uffizi, Florence, by Botticelli the Birth of Venus. number of more mediocre painters ; but these were suc- ceeded by an abler generation, among whom the chief were FIG. 6. The Annunciation, by Lippo Lippi. (National Gallery.) perhaps Sano di Pietro and Matteo di Giovanni, whose grand altarpiece (No. 1155), recently acquired, is one of Many ex- the glories of the English National Gallery, cellent masters were working at Siena throughout the 15th century and even later ; the last names of any real note are those of Peruzzi and Beccafumi. Sodo- ma, though he sett led in Siena in 1501, does not belong to the school of Siena ; his early life was passed at Milan, chiefly under the influence of Da Vinci. His talent was developed at Rome among the fol- lowers of Raphael. On the whole the FIG. 7. Portrait head, by Ghirlandaio, from Florer Florentine school one f ^ s fr escos i the retro-choir of S. surpasses in import- Maria Novella > at Florence ' ance all others throughout Italy. Cimabue, though he FIG. 8. The so-called School of Pau, by Signorelli, the most beautiful of his easel pictures. (Berlin Gallery.) did not emancipate himself from the Byzantine manner, was a painter of real ^^ genius (see fig. 2). Giotto is perhaps the most important painter in the his- tory of the develop- ment of art, for during the whole of the 14th century the painters of Flor- ence may be said to have been his pupils and imitators (see fig. 3). Orcag- na alone developed rather a different line, more richly de- corative in style and brighter in colour, a link between the art of Giotto and that of Siena. In the 15th century Flor-Fio. 9. ence reached its pe- Fresco of Isaiah, by Michelangelo, from the vault of the Sistine Chapel. riod of highest artistic splendour and developed an almost
