CHAPTER III. DOMENICO DI BARTOLO AND THE SIENNESE OF THE XV th CENTURY. To one acquainted with the civil commotions which marked the decline of the Siennese republic during the fifteenth century, the absence of eminence in professors of painting will appear neither strange nor unexpected. Repeated changes, accompanied by violence, a constant renewal of governments in which the ambition of a few men invariably sought satisfaction at the expense of the masses, were necessarily productive of debility and languor. The historian of Sienna consequently follows the for tunes of. poor limners who laboured under the double disadvantage of hereditary errors, and a social dis location unfavourable to their pursuits. 1 Yet their weak ness did not preclude the exercise of a wide spread in fluence; and the close relation of Taddeo Bartoli to the chiefs of the Gubbian school was maintained after him by Domenico di Bartolo. It is difficult, indeed, to name a master, a picture, in the northernmost parts of the land bordering the Adriatic, that is not impressed with Siennese defects or peculiarities. The Boccati of Camerino, Matteo of Gualdo, even Bonfigli of Perugia display them; and the only exception is to be found in the great Umbro- Florentines, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Giovanni 1 Rumolir, speaking of the Sien nese painters from 1430 to 1500, says he neglects them, partly be cause Della Yalle and Lanzi have described them minutely, butchief- ly because he professes to deal | with the development of art, not with its diseased forms “ .. (Forseh. II. note to p. 313). Yet these “dis eased forms” had an influence on the development of Italian art.
