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Chap. III. SANO DI PIETRO, 77 but that we find a lower, and Pietro di Giovanni Pucci is to be reckoned amongst the followers of Stefano di Giovanni. 1 One of his better pupils was Ansano or Sano di Pietro di Mencio, whose power of multiplication seems little short of miraculous. Born in 1406, 2 buried in 1481, 3 his life offers no very great variety of incident. He worked for most of the public bodies and religious in stitutions of Sienna, and there are not less than forty- seven panels by him in the Academy of that city. His style oscillates between that of Vecchietta and that of Sassetta, but he took mOst from the latter, rivalling the carefulness, improving the types and expression, of his predecessor. His frescos are as like arras as those of Simone or Lippo Meinmi. They are variegated, richly adorned, but almost shadowless. Round heads, deficient in the frontal projections, are heavy for frames that di minish feebly to the feet. Easy curves of meandering folds form the comparative attraction of draperies; and in panels, the colour is fused, transparent, and careful; nor is it possible to find, even in Simone, more exquisite tracery or more finely cut coigns for the stamping of at Sienna (ib. ib.). — 1450. Sasset- ta’s death (ib.II. 274). — 1452. Ar bitration for the price to be paid to Sassetta’s heirs for the Porta Romana frescos (ib. ib.). — 1459. Record that the frescos still remain unfinished III. 307. — No. 102. 103. 4—5. 137. in the Sienna Acad, seem to "be works of Sassetta or of his atelier. 1 He adds to the ugly types of Sassetta, rigidity and hard outlines and he substitutes to his master’s transparence of colour a disagre- able opaqueness. His extant works are: a life size S.Bernardino in the Academy of Sienna (No. 145) in scribed: “PetrusJohannis pinxit.” a similar figure, in the choir of the church of the Osservanza signed: “opus Petri.Tolianne Senis MCCCCXXXVIIIP’; — a third in S. Francesco of Lucignano, where the saint tramples on three epis copal mitres with the inscription: “Petrus Johannis de Senis p. MCCCCXLVIII.’’; — a dull and poor Adoration of the shepherds, with S. Galgano on the right is on an altar to the left of the portal in S.Agostino of Asciano. Della Valle (Lett. San.II. 197) records two fres cos painted by Pietro di Giovanni Pupci in the infirmary of the Spe- dale of S. M. della Scala. It is to Pietro (one should conjecture from the style) that we owe the repainted figure of the dead Emperor Bar- barossa in Spinello’s fresco at the Palazzo Pubblico at Sienna. 2 Doc. Sen. II. 279. 3 Ib. II. 388 — 90. His name is Sano di Pietro di Mencio, and he is not the son of Pietro Lorenzetti as Della Valle asserts (Lett. San. II. note to p. 229).
