Page:Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters.djvu/204

SPAGNA— SPINELLO. 173 Entombment, in the Madonna delle Lagrime, near Trevi; the Coronation of the Virgin, in the convent of San Mardno, at Trevi (1512) ; the frescoes in the choir of the church of Sta. Maria degli Angeli, at Assisi ; and the Acts of St. James, in the church of San Jacopo, between Spoleto and Fuligno (1526), are all beautiful works. But ^e later productions of Lo Spagna are much inferior to his early pic- tures, showing a feebleness of manner through which his former excellence is hardly recognisable. Some portions of the frescoes in the church of San Jacopo, between Spoleto and Fuligno (executed between 1527 and 1530), are examples of this degeneracy. The small picture of the Virgin, Infant Christ, and St. John, in the National Gallery, has been attributed to Lo Spagna; but Petrus Peruginus is in- scribed in gold on the hem of the mantle of the Virgin. {Vasari, Pas- savant, Kugler,) SPAGNOLETTO. [Rtbera.] SPINELLO Abetino, b. at Arezzo about 1318, living in 1408. Tuscan School. He was the son of Luca Spi- nelli, the scholar of Jacopo di Casen- tino. Vasari praises this painter for his design, for the simple grace and holy expression of his figures, and notices that he surpassed Giotto in colouring. The works that have been preserved, for most of them have pe- rished, show great talent and powers of conception, but they are rather void of taste in form and composition, and are very unequal and sometimes care- less in execution; the greater part being extremely sketchy, as those of San Miniato especially. So far from surpassing Gtiotto, he compares rather unfayoiurably with the works attributed to him in the large compositions of the Campo Santo, painted in 1386. Dr. Forster has, however, apparently dis- covered from documents that these wall-paintings of the histoiy of Job are by Francesco da Volterra. Spinello's greatest excellence is in the draperies. In the sacristy of San Miniato, at Florence, he represented some scenes from the Life of St. Benedict; and some of these subjects perhaps belong, in point of conception, to the most spi- rited productions of the school of Giotto. They were carefully cleaned in 1840, and are on the whole well preserved. The Fall of the Rebel Angels, in Santa Maria degli Angeli, at Arezzo, has, with the church, only lately been destroyed. This is the work in which Spinello represents the devil so hideous, that, indignant, he appeared to the painter in a dream, and asked him where he had seen him so ugly, and why he had given him so frightful a form ; a vision which is said to have shortly afterwards caused the painter's death. Works» Florence, San Miniato, life of St. Benedict. Pisa, Campo Santo, the Histories of San Polito and Sant' Efeso, Spinello's master-pieces, com- pleted in 1302. Siena, pubUc palace in the Sala de' Priori, the Struggle between the Papacy and the Empire, under Pope Alexander III. and the Emperor Frederick II. (1408) ; San Giusto, in the sacristy. Marriage of St. Catherine, &c. In the Berlin Gallery is a picture of the Madonna and Joseph adoring the new-bom Child ; another of the last Supper; and an Annunciation. {Vasari, Bumohr, Forster,) SPINELLO, or SPINELLI, Pabbi, (Gaspasri), (. at Arezzo about 1386 (?). Tuscan School. The son of Spinello Aretino. He assisted his father in the pictures of Sala dei Priori, at Siena; and he was some time the assistant of Lorenzo Ghiberti, in the preparation of the gates of the Baptistery of Flo- rence, where he also became acquainted with Masolino da Panicale. After his father's death, says Vasari, he returned