e means obtained the likeness. In the chapel of St Michael, the
Archangel, in the same church in which the bells are rung, he painted
many scenes relating to him; and rather lower down, in the chapel of
M. Giuliano Baccio, he did an Annunciation, with other figures, which
are much admired. The whole of the works in this church were done in
fresco with great boldness and skill between the years 1334 and 1338.
In the Pieve of the same city he afterwards painted the chapel of St
Peter and St Paul, and below it that of St Michael the Archangel; for
the fraternity of S. Maria della Misericordia he did the chapel of St
James and St Philip; and over the principal door of the fraternity
which is on the piazza, that is to say, in the tympanum, he painted a
Pieta, with a St John, at the request of the rectors of the
fraternity. The foundation of the brotherhood took place in this way.
A certain number of good and honourable citizens began to go about
asking alms for the poor who were ashamed to beg, and to succour them
in all their necessities, in the year of the plague of 1348. The
fraternity acquired a great reputation, acquired by means of the
efforts of these good men, in helping the poor and infirm, burying
the dead, and performing other kindred acts of charity, so that the
bequests, donations and inheritances left to them became so
considerable that they amounted to one-third of the entire wealth of
Arezzo. The same happened in 1383, which was also a year of severe
plague. Spinello then being of the company, often undertook to visit
the infirm, bury the dead, and perform other like pious duties which
the best citizens have always undertaken and still do in that city.
In order to leave a memorial of this in his paintings, he painted for
the company on the wall of the church of S. Laurentino and
Pergentino, a Madonna with her mantle open in front, and beneath her
the people of Arezzo, comprising portraits of many of the earliest
members of the fraternity, drawn from life, with wallets round their
necks and a wooden hammer in their hands, like those with which they
knocked at the doors to ask alms. Similarly, in the company of the
Annunciation he painted the large tabernacle which is outside the
church, and part of a portico which is opposite it, and the picture
of the company, which is an Annunciation, in tempera. The picture
which is now in the church of the nuns of S. Giusto, where a little
Christ, who is at His mother's nec