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CHAPTER VI. TADDEO BARTOLI AND HIS IMITATORS. The rapid and prolific hand of Taddeo Bartoli closed the fourteenth and opened the fifteenth century for Sien- nesg art. A cotemporary in Sienna of Spinello of Arezzo he rivalled the Florentine in boldness and speed. Disdaining to some extent the feeble masters -who immediately pre ceded him, emulation might prompt him to attempt the revival of the grandeur apparent in the Lorenzetti. But the energy and fire which animated Pietro did not pass unalloyed to him. Yet Taddeo Bartoli was not without great talents. It was not his fault that, inheriting from Duccio, from Simone and the Lorenzetti a certain class of defects, he was unable to strike the path leading to progress. In the end he carried into the fifteenth century the mould of the fourteenth without heeding the process of change which was taking place about and around him. His father Bartolo di Mino was a barber, whose mar riage with one Francesca di Cino in 1361, is registered in Sienna. 1 A record of 1386/1385 in which Taddeo con tracts to colour seventy eight figures in the choir of the cathedral 2 represents him as being still under age and therefore on the fair side of twenty-five. 3 It is thus clear that he was born shortly after 1362, equally apparent 1 Milanesi. Doc. Sen. Vol. II. p. 108. 2 And is paid ten gold florins for the work. 3 Ibid. Vol. I. p. 313. and Vol. II. p. 108. ITgurgieri states that Taddeo died aged 59. His death occurred in 1422. and thus he would necessarily date from 1363. Vide in Baldinucci. Vol. IV. p. 538.