studied him closely, as many eminent painters have often done with the best masters. This may account for his imitating Giotto so admirably in S. Peter's at Rome; a merit which procured him an invitation to the papal court at Avignon, where he died. The picture of the Vatican has perished; but some of his other works still exist in Italy; and they are not so numerous at Siena as in Pisa and Florence. In the Campo Santo of Pisa we find various actions of S. Ranieri, and the celebrated Assumption of the Virgin, amid a choir of angels, who seem actually floating in the air, and celebrating the triumph. Memmi was excellent in this species of composition, as I believe, from the numerous pictures of this subject which he painted at Siena, where there is one at the church of S. John, which is more copious but not more beautiful than that at Pisa. Some of his larger works may be seen in the chapter house of the Spanish Friars at Florence; several histories of Christ, of S. Domenico, and of S. Peter Martyr; and there the Order of the Preaching Friars are poetically represented as engaged in the service of the church, in rejecting innovators, and in luring souls to paradise. Vasari, to whom the inventions of Memmi appear "not those of a master of that age, but of a most excellent modern artist," especially praises the last: and, indeed, it might be supposed that it was suggested by Petrarch, did not a comparison of dates refute such an idea. The picture was painted in 1332, and Simone went not to France till 1336; what is said about the portrait of Laura in the chapterhouse is a mere fable. Taddeo Gaddi, an undoubted pupil of the improved and dignified school of Giotto, was there his competitor; and as far surpassed Memmi in the qualities of that school, as he was excelled by the latter in spirit, in variety of the heads and attitudes, in fancy of the draperies, and in originality of composition. Simone paved the way to more complex pictures, and extended them over a whole façade, so as to be taken in at one glance of the eye; whereas Giotto used to divide a large surface into many compartments, in each of which he painted an historical picture. Although I do not usually dwell on miniature painting, I cannot resist mentioning one which is to be seen in the Ambrosian library at Milan, which appears to me a singular production. In that place, there is a manuscript of Virgil, with the commentary of Servius, which formerly belonged to Petrarca. In the frontispiece is a miniature that is reasonably conjectured to have been suggested to Simone by the poet, who has subjoined the following verses: _Mantua Virgilium qui talia carmina finxit,_ _Sena tulit Simonem digito qui talia pinxit._