Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/100

76 richly endowed by his royal patron, and highly skilled in his art, he found friends and work in abundance. Starnina acquired great renown by the frescoes which he painted in a chapel of the Carmine, in which he introduced many personages in Spanish costume, as well as a variety of life-like and humorous incidentsincidents. [sic] He died in 1408, and was lamented by his contemporaries as an artist of "profound invention and elegant execution." But since none of his works are in existence now, it is only by studying the paintings of his followers that we are able to form any idea of his style.

One of these was Antonio Vite, of Pistoia, whom Stamina sent to Pisa in 1403, in his stead, and who afterwards executed some curious frescoes in the Chapel of the Assumption at Prato. Vite was an artist of little power and importance, but in these paintings of the life of the Virgin and of St. Stephen we see a marked change of style. The composition, it is true, follows the old Giottesque lines; but the heads are shorter and flatter, the features more strongly marked, the lights are brighter and the shadows deeper. There is more realism in the draperies and costumes, the caps are wound round the head like turbans, as in Masolino and Masaccio's works, the faces are more individual, and there is a new sense of life and movement in the figures who crowd around the dying martyr. Besides Antonio Vite, Stamina numbered among his pupils two artists who attained high distinction in the coming century, and held an important place in the annals of Florentine art. These were Fra Angelico and Masolino, the master of Masaccio.