WRITTEN BY F. LTHOUGH the name of Andrea Vanni is by no means unfamiliar to the student of Sienese painting, it is doubtful whether its mention ever calls up to any but a few the image of a definite artistic personality. What fame Andrea now has rests more upon tradition than upon acquaintance with his art. He was born in 1333, or thereabouts. An active participant in the popular uprising of 1368, which resulted in the expulsion of the nobles and the foundation of the new government of the reformatori, he played, during the twenty years that followed, a busy and not unimportant part in the affairs of the Sienese republic, leaving behind him a lengthy and honourable record of the various offices which he held. In later years a friend and warm admirer of his great townswoman Caterina Benincasa, he was the recipient of much good counsel from that gentle saint, in the shape of certain letters which have perhaps done more than all his political achievements to keep alive the memory of his name. But it is not with Andrea the diplomat, or Andrea the devotee, that we are here concerned. Those who would know him better in these characters need only examine the pages of Milanesi, of Banchi and Borghesi, and of St. Catherine's letters. Andrea has left behind him documents of a very different nature, and of a far deeper interest, than any of mere lettered parchment, and documents by no means so rare as has generally been supposed. With all his diplomatic and official celebrity, he was primarily an artist-perhaps not a great one in the superlative usage of the word, but sufficiently interesting to warrant an attempt to revive his memory as a painter by giving back to him a number of works which, in his native town and elsewhere,

MASON PERKINS

pass to-day under other, and sometimes greater, names. The works upon which Vanni's reputation as a painter has hitherto rested are only three in number, and are all in his native town :-a well-known portrait of St. Catherine, in the church of S. Domenico; a very little known polyptych, in the church of S. Stefano; and a fragmentary Crucifixion, once in the church of the Alborino, now in the Istituto delle Belle Arti. Of these three works, whose common authorship is evident, the altarpiece in S. Stefano and the Crucifixion in the Belle Arti are given to Andrea on sufficiently reliable documentary grounds; the likeness of St. Catherine, on the strength of a tradition of several centuries. Despite its historical interest, and its great decorative design, this portrait-fresco, in its present state, can help us to but a slight idea of its author's general style, and for this purpose the unimportant and somewhat coarsely-painted fragment in the Belle Arti can help us but little more. But the great polyptych of S. Stefano is happily a very different and vastly more important work, and of a nature to give us a satisfactory conception of Andrea's manner at the time in which it was executed. A glance at this huge painting, or the accompanying reproduction, reveals at once that Vanni belonged to that same group of late trecento painters of which Bartolo di Fredi is the best known representative. Like the work of that master, it shows the influence both of Simone Martini and of the Lorenzetti. But it displays the qualities of a strongly-marked individuality as well.

Let us examine it in detail, commencing with the central and most important panel of the Virgin and the Child. That which, apart from the colour, strikes us immediately and most forcibly, is the peculiar silhouette-like character of the design. The

The great figure of the Madonna is thrown out Burlington like a dark, clear-cut pattern against the Magazine, golden background of her throne. Except Number for the face and hands, there is little, if any, VI attempt at modelling or chiaroscuro. The whole effect is flat to a degree, reminding us somewhat of the coloured prints of Japan, with their sharply-defined outlines and broad fields of colour. In this feeling for flat design, Andrea gives witness to his being a follower-if an extreme one-of Simone's methods. But he has little or none of Simone's subtle contours and undulating flow of line. The drapery of Andrea's Virgin is severely simple-there is a remarkable economy of line and fold, reminding us in this rather of Ambrogio Lorenzetti than of Simone. Her stiff, upright pose, again, has none of the tender grace of Simone's Madonnas and saints, and is more akin to that of Ambrogio's statelier figures. In facial type Andrea's Virgin is, however, distinctly his own. The large rounded cranium, the narrow eyes and small half-covered iris, the delicately drawn mouth, the firm but not obtrusive chin, go to make up a set of features not easily forgotten. The Christ-Child, again, reveals decidedly the influence of Simone's models, and finds its prototype in the Child of Simone's great fresco of the Majestas in the Palazzo della Signoria, as well as in other works by him, by his close follower Lippo Memmi, and by their school. ¶Turning now to the other figures, we note in the Baptist a striking similarity, even in the smallest details, to Simone's figures of that saint at Pisa and at Altenburg, of which it is evidently a free copy. The St. Bartholomew shows like influences in a less degree. The figures of SS. James and Stephen are more Vanni's own-the head of the latter being a free repetition of the Virgin's. The Annunciation is severely vigorous and individual, the dark figure of the Virgin again showing, very clearly, Andrea's love of the silhouette. The side figures of saints, and the evangelists in the pinnacles, reveal a slightly

stronger sense of modelling and characterization, and remind us of Bartolo di Fredi and Luca di Tommé. The colour throughout is bright and clear, laid out in broad and simple masses, with a parsimonious use of shading and a lavish use of gold. ¶ If Tizio's notices of this altarpiece be correct —and there is no reason to doubt that they are so, especially as the style of the work itself supports rather than contradicts them -it was painted in or about 1400. It is, therefore, the production of a man already verging on his seventieth year, and must represent the later, if not the last, development of Vanni's style. As we have already noted, it has a family likeness to the work of Bartolo di Fredi and others of his school. Still, despite all superficial or general resemblances, these two painters are widely different in style and spirit. In pure grace and charm, Bartolo leaves Vanni far behind him. Andrea's work again, at least as we here see it, has none of the softly-graded colour, the delicate modelling, the freer line, the careful technical finish of detail-none of the bibelot quality in fact of Bartolo's at its best. But, for all that, it convinces us that his was the deeper, grander soul. For mere prettiness or elaborate technical refinement he displays little sympathy or care. Directness and simplicity of expression, staid dignity and great seriousness of purpose-these seem the salient characteristics of his nature, as we read it in his art; nor do they disagree with the conception which the written records convey to us of the man. ¶Taking this altarpiece, then, as a fairly characteristic example of Vanni's mature style, I shall bring before the reader's notice a series of works, at present under other names, one and all of which share with it, in a greater or a less degree, all the peculiarities which I have already pointed out, as well as others to which I have not yet drawn attention. Not the least Not the least among these works, in size and in importance, is a picture of the Enthroned Virgin and Child, popularly known as the Madonna