Sienese painting in the fifteenth century is distinguished by its mystical tone and its exceedingly conservative, not to say retrogressive, spirit. No preoccupation with scientific researches, no problems of movement or anatomy, disturbed the calm of the Sienese painters; we meet with hardly any portraiture in their work, and even less mythology. These most turbulent of Italian people who, in De Commines' famous phrase, "are ever in division, and govern their commonwealth more fondly than any other town in Italy," chose that their painters should give them art that was exclusively the handmaid of religion. While foreign sculptors, such as Donatello and Ghiberti, were welcomed and employed in Siena, foreign painters were practically excluded until the last two decades of the century. Great spiritual beauty in faces, accuracy of drawing within certain limits, with a profusion and a lavishness in the use of gold and the most brilliant colours (this the Sienese particularly demanded of their painters), characterise the school at this epoch. Their strength and their weakness alike are shown in that their most typical painter is styled the "Sienese Fra Angelico," while there never was, at least to any good effect, a Sienese Masaccio. The chief painters whose work falls into this period are: Sano di Pietro (1406-1481), Domenico di Bartolo (whose few extant works are dated from 1433 to 1443), Giovanni di Paolo (died in 1482), the sculptor Lorenzo di Pietro, called Il Vecchietta (1412-1480), Stefano di Giovanni called Sassetta (died in 1450). And then, following after these, a second group: Matteo di Giovanni, who was born about 1435 and died in 1495; Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439-1502), Neroccio di Bartolommeo Landi (1447-1500), Benvenuto di Giovanni (1436-1518)--these three the pupils of Lorenzo di Pietro.