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or frescos alike disclose absence of aerial and linear per spective, flatness of tone, poor composition, lean, with ered, and ill-proportioned figures of unselect shape, mov ing with a broken and fantastic action, involved dra peries, trivial, vulgar, or grimacing heads, so incom pletely modelled on nature that eyes take a triangu lar shape, and noses, in three quarter faces, are flattened down to profile; yet the contours and the technical finish are careful to a fault. The mere employment of Vecchietta in numerous un dertakings at Sienna would not be surprising, if it were granted that his talent might be considered cheap and pro lific, like that of Neri di Bicci at Florence. But Lorenzo, in spite of the poverty apparent in his works, held a high place in the estimation of his townsmen. He and Sano di Pietro were the chosen umpires of the municipality for the valuation of the frescos on the Porta Romana when Sassetta died, leaving his work unfinished, in 1452. * 1 Vecchietta complains, however, in an income-paper of 1453 that, although proprietor of small parcels of land and houses in Sienna and its vicinity, his ailing health and the infirmity of his wife contributed much to his discomfort and indebtedness, “and if fortune were to plague him long, as it had hitherto done, he should be forced to sell his movables for bread”; 2 -but we may partially mistrust the statements of a man de sirous to move the stern feelings of the tax-gatherer, and Vecchietta continued for many subsequent years to carve stone and bronze, and wield the brush. Amongst the altar- pieces furnished in those days, we notice the Madonna Gasparre d’Agostino, an artist fol lowing the manner of Giovanni d’Asciano, who laboured (1451—54. 55) in a style reminiscent of that which we shall find in Giovanni di Paolo (postea), hut more rational than his. The colour is fairj'tlio figures are long and lean, and in vehement action. To this Gasparre a small S. Bernardino, preaching, which hangs in the sacristy of the Sienna Duomo, is assigned. There is a record of Gasparre’s design for part of the pavement in the Duomo (1451) in Milanesi’s “Doc. Sen. (II. 269)”, and he is noticed by the annotators of Vasari in a commentary to the life of Gentile da Fabriano (IV. 163). 1 Doc. Sen. II. 274-5: 6. 7. 2 See the paper in Doc. Sen. III. 285.