As a pictorial representation of the finest mediæval ideas of statecraft, this fresco is of incomparable interest. As a decoration it is hardly successful. The theme has hampered the artist, the handling of the figures in several scales with the largest above, produces confusion and topheaviness. Beautiful in the parts, it is disappointing in the whole. Far better merely as decoration is the companion fresco which represents the Effects of Good Government, Figure 53. We have a peaceful city, the entrancing spectacle of Siena as she was about the year 1339. Girls are dancing a carol in the foreground with the quaintest dignity, mounted merchants are passing, and if the picture were better preserved, we should see the mechanics—or “artists” as they still call themselves in Italy—working cheerily in their shops. In its richness without confusion, this is the very triumph of the panoramic realism which Ambrogio made popular throughout Italy. There are many more frescoes in this series, mostly by imitators of Ambrogio. The Sienese region is full of works by him or by his faithful followers. His panel pictures are in many galleries of Europe and America. They all confirm the record of Ghiberti that Ambrogio had the habits of a nobleman—a great sympathy, a fine scrupulousness, a real magnanimity. Certain contemporaries seem greater, Giotto surely, Simone Martini perhaps, but no Italian painter until Raphael himself reveals so complete and harmonious a development. We find no trace of the brothers Lorenzetti after 1348. Presumably they perished in the great plague of that year. [Illustration: FIG. 52. Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Peace, from the Fresco of Good Government.—_Palazzo Pubblico, Siena._ ] [Illustration: FIG. 54. Luca Tommé. The Assumption of the Virgin.—_Jarves Coll., New Haven, Conn._ ] [Illustration: FIG. 53. Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Results of Good Government—The Peaceful City. Fresco.—_Palazzo Pubblico, Siena._ ]