581. A GROUP OF SAINTS.
Spinello Aretino (Tuscan: about 1333-1410).
See also (p. xix)
Spinello di Luca Spinelli is commonly called Spinello Aretino, from Arezzo, his native town. As is the case with most of the early Tuscan painters, he is seen to greater advantage in his frescoes than in his panel pictures. Some fragments of frescoes by him are in our Gallery (1216). Important frescoes may be seen in the sacristy of S. Miniato above Florence (the life of St. Benedict); in the Campo Santo at Pisa (the histories of SS. Efeso and Potito); and in the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena (scenes in the life of Pope Alexander III.). Spinello "represents the spirit of Giotto at the close of the fourteenth century better than any other painter of the time." He belonged to a family of goldsmiths. It is interesting to note on an altar-piece executed by him for Monte Oliveto (now in the Gallery of Siena), that the names of the carver and gilder of the frame are inscribed as conspicuously as that of Spinello the painter of the picture. He was the pupil of Jacopo di Casentino.
Certainly not an adequate, and perhaps not an authentic, specimen of the master. The saints are St. John the Baptist, St. John the Evangelist, and St. James the Greater.