Venetian and Florentine art met in Florence, penetrated into Umbria, Assisi and at last into the Marches. At Siena, the city of the Virgin, painting flourished without the dramatic impulse of Giotto, without his human simplicity. Duccio di Boninsegna, who borrowed forms from the Florentine Cimabue, adapted them to the elegance of the Byzantine School, made them splendid with imperial richness and molded them in rigid ecclesiasticism. Simone Martini, generally called Memmi, a follower of Duccio, a friend of Petrarch and painter at Laura, supplemented what was lacking in Ve netian art. Gradually his coloring became warmer and his gold changed to crimson. At Assisi, he worked with his brother Donato; at Avignon he appropriated the colors of the most beautiful gems and founded a school which hastened the advance of painting in France. At Siena, Lippo Memmi, his cousin, produced beautiful works and also at San Gimignano, Orvieto and Pisa. Venetian miniature painters reproduced them in hymnals (books of chorals) and liturgical books; and at Avignon another imitated him in illustrating the parchments of San Giorgio, founded by Cardinal Jacopo Stefaneschi.
While Siena practised the artistocratic forms of Duccio and Simone Martini in contrast with the popular style of Giotto, the brothers Loren zetti of Venice modified art at their expense. In the courthouse of Siena, a monument of civil wisdom, decorated in conformity with the doctrines of Aristotle, and at Arezzo, Assisi, Florence and Massa Marittima, the Lorenzetti displayed their art: Ambrosio Lorenzetti. in Tuscan garb, painting the beautiful; and im petuous Pietro, sometimes called Pietro Laurati the rough, savage and dramatic. This blending of the style of Duccio and of Simone Martini With others foreign to Siena, appropriated and assimilated by the Lorenzetti, continues until the' beginning of the 15th century in innumer able pictures by the constellation of Venetian artists. The diffusion of the Venetian style was in all directions: it conquered Pisa; Barnabo da Modena accepted it; Allegretto Ruzi and Fran cescuccio Ghissi retain traces of it; Andrea of Florence was influenced by it; and Lorenzo Monaco learned much from it.
Giottism held its ground in Florence during the 14th century; but the traditions of Giotto perished with Agnolo Gaddi, whose work was rigid and expressionless. Spinello Arentino awoke from the somnolent Florentine art of the second half of the 14th century and was the forerunner of a style seeking new ideals, and freshened by study of the antique combined with that of nature. In this same period Gior vanni di Milano was painting for the city on the Arno's banks. Avanso and Altichiero were accurate and excellent historical painters; in some of their pictures, nobles and their fami lies are portrayed being led to the throne of God by their patron saints. With these two men and Antonio Veneziano, or Antonio da Venezia, whose genius is revealed in the Pisan Campo Santo, and Tommaso da Modena, who painted the story of Saint Ursula at Treviso, came the bright springtide of art in northern Italy at the close of the 14th century. Cennino Cennini,
author of the oldest Italian treatise on painting, painted about the time of Aretino.
The popular motif impressed on pictorial art by Giotto was similar to that impressed on sculpture by Niccolo d'Apulia (called Nicola Pisano). This style appeared first in Tuscany, at Lucca, in the carving of one of the side doors of S. Martino. Here Niccol6 showed that he had seized with great ingenuity the power which is inherent in antique art as well as the fullness and robustness of sincere naturalism. In Pisa he decorated the exterior of the Baptistry. He placed at the junction of the first row of arches and at their crowns (keystones) heads and busts, a restoration of the human motif that comes from genius and forces one to say that modern art spoke, at its very inception, the last word. When, with the aid of his followers, he had completed his great task and was prepared to carve the pulpit of the Baptistry at Pisa, he was accorded the citizenship of Pisa, and was nominated a citi zen in its Hall of Fame. From the pulpit of Pisa (1260) to that of Siena (1266-68) Nic colo's style spread rapidly. That displayed at Pisa is grander, more monumental; at Siena, More Christian, more dramatic. Under the im pulse of his genius the monument grew with great unity, though the individuality of the workers was evident, especially of Giovanni Pisano and of Arnolfo. From Siena, Niccolo d'Apulia went to Pisa, thence in 1273 to Pis toia, and in 1274 to Perugia to work on the fountain of the Piazza Maggiore, brought to completion by Giovanno Pisano, his son. In 1278 died this great sculptor, whose genius was the link between ancient and modern art. He educated Pisa, and Pisa taught Italy. Italy was conquered by the chisel-strokes of the school of Niccol6 d'Apulia. Giovanni Pisano, who made his statues eloquent of passion, spreTd his paternal art throughout Tuscany, Umbria and Ventia; Arnolfo, his comrade, invested his marbles with ancient beauty, and at Rome tri umphantly transformed the art of the Cosmati; Andrea Pisano cast in bronze the door of the Baptistry at Florence through which modern art passes victorious; in Naples, Tino da Camaino founded a school which, until the Quattrocento, repeated the artistic dictum of the Pisan school; Giovanni di Baldunio da Pisa brought models to the masters of Campion and Como in his arch of Sant' Eustorzio at Milan. Toward the close of the 14th century the Venetians elaborated new forms in sculp ture, as they had already done in the realm of painting. Farobello and Pier Paolo dalli Mesegne are, among others, specially note worthy. Mesegne worked with his brother Jacpbello. And thus Venetian sculpture found a place in all Italy, from. Bologna, where it held the field, to Milan, where the florid Gothic dqminated the last of great structures, the basilica of Saint Petrortio and the Milan Cathedral.