These three panels formed the cuspidi of the Baptism of Christ (579). In the centre is the Almighty, on the left the Virgin, on the right Isaiah, holding a scroll with the words (in Latin), "Behold a virgin shall conceive."
580, 580a and b. THE ASCENSION OF ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST.
Jacopo Landini (Florentine: about 1310-1390).
Jacopo Landini was born at Prato Vecchio, in the Casentino; whence his common designation, Jacopo da Casentino. This picture was formerly in the Church of St. John at the painter's native place. He was a pupil of Taddeo Gaddi, and the master of Spinello Aretino.
Another of the altar-pieces (cf. 579, above), which aimed at giving the whole story of some subject, and thus recall the time when sacred pictures were (as it has been put) a kind of "Scripture Graphic." In the predella pictures (580b) are, on the left, (1) St. John distributing alms and baptizing, (2) his vision of Revelation in the island of Patmos, (3) his escape from the cauldron of boiling oil; and then, as the subject of the principal picture, his ascension to heaven, for, "according to the Greek legend, St. John died without pain or change, and immediately rose again in bodily form and ascended into heaven to rejoin Christ and the Virgin." In the central picture, Mr. Gilbert finds "a glimpse of true landscape feeling in the brown platform of rock, carefully gradated in aerial perspective, in the colouring, coarse though it be, and especially in the long dark sea-line beyond" (Landscape in Art, p. 184). In the other small pictures and in the pilasters are various saints, and immediately over the central picture are (1) the gates of hell cast down, (2) Christ risen from the dead, (3) the donor of the picture and his family, being presented by the two St. Johns. Of the cuspidi, or upper pictures (580a), the centre piece is a symbolic representation of the Trinity (seen best on a large scale in 727); at the sides are the Virgin and the Angel of the Annunciation, divided as explained under 1139.
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.