less visible, because of the glazes, but, as in Cimabue’s picturespainted with paler verde on the same principle, so in the altarpieces of Sienna, these light and fugitive tints were the first to disappear by abrasion, and the surface was left too green in shadow, too red in the lips and cheeks, too yellow in the highest places. The dra peries were produced in another way, where the nature of the colour allowed it, with a general tone, strengthened by deeper glazes of the same in shadow and lighter, pre parations for the highest lights. 1 In fresco, the Siennese never covered the white into- naco with a general verde tint in the flesh. They merely marked the contours and shadows with a reddish brown of a liquid texture, or with red lines and pale verde shadows, mapping out from the first distinct planes, so that light colour never came over dark, and thus Simone and the Lorenzetti produced frescos uniting power to brightness and clearness of surface. Rejecting in paintings on the wall the system which enabled them to be minute, because frescos need not be seen closely, they attained to great perfection, fusing the lights and semitones into the shadows, so that at times they had even the defect of flatness, obtaining relief by means exactly the reverse of those employed in tempera. True to the old and typical forms of composition which preceding ages had created, Siennese painters preserved also that vehemence of action which had been traditional, and failed to appreciate the decorous simplicity of the Florentine revival. Hence an absence of balance in pictures, superfluity or insufficiency in composition as in groups and figures. The intention was too frequently better than the result; and movements might usually be found bold to exaggeration. A stern, sometimes convulsed, 1 With lake reds the white ground acted as a repulser being allowed to peep through; and sometimes, transparent dark red shadows thus obtained, stood in juxtaposition with blue or yellow lights. The result was clearness and transparence in drapery con trasting advantageously with the flesh tints.
