FRATER ELIAS FIERI FECIT JESU CHRISTE PIE MISERERE, PRECAUTIS HELIC. GIUNTA PISANUS ME PINXIT A.D. 1236. IND. 9. Morrona has reproduced, by a copper engraving, a veritable work of Giunta's--a crucifix with the Holy Father above, and the Madonna and St. John at the sides, which was for many years left in the smoke of the kitchen of the Monastery of St. Anna at Pisa. There is a decided effort to overcome the stiffness of his first Byzantine teachers, and a good deal of lifelike expression in the smaller figures. The same leaning toward nature is visible in the figures of his _Fall of Simon Magus_ at Assisi. Del Valle and Morrona, judging by evidences of style, assert that Giunta di Pisa was the master of Cimabue. But as Giunta graduated as _Magister_ in 1210, and Cimabue was not born till 1240, this does not seem possible. It is more likely, in regard to time, that Guido of Siena, painter of the famous Madonna in San Domenico, may have learned something of Giunta; but as all three of these primary Masters, each of whom became the head of the painting school in his own lodge, were members of the great guild, the source of instruction might have been common to all, and moreover that source must have been originally or partly Byzantine. [Illustration: FROM PAINTINGS IN ASSISI BY MAGISTER GIUNTA OF PISA. _See page 271._] While mentioning that Giunta learned of Greek masters in Italy, we may note that Vasari, _à propos_ of Cimabue, tells a story of the Florentines calling in Greek masters to teach painting there. The assertion has been much derided by modern authors, but it might contain a grain of truth after all. Taking it with the fact (which becomes impressed on us the more we study early Comacine churches) that the architecture is Roman, and the ornamentation shows a Greek influence naturalized, we get at what may be the truth; that the Byzantine brethren who joined the guild after the edict of Leo the Isaurian, still had their descendants in it, among the ranks of the painters, as the Campionese and Buoni families had for centuries theirs among the architects. This would account for Andrea Tafi working, together with Apollonius the Greek, at the mosaics in the tribune of the Florentine Baptistery.[203] Del Migliore, in his _Aggiunte_ to Vasari's _Lives_, says that in a contract dated 1297 he read "Magister Apollonius pictor Florentinus." Here we get one of the very Greek masters Vasari has been derided for mentioning, and he is certainly connected with the Masonic lodge.