The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting : Volume V

## UMBRIA (1). Umbria is situated between the three towns, Siena, Florence and Rimini, each of which, in the qth century, produced an important school of painting, and as the Umbrian artists apparently were wanting in individuality, their works can be classed as dependent on, or at least influenced by, one of these three neighbouring centres. We must not forget, however, that in the very heart of Umbria, there existed one of the most important nuclei of Tuscan masters of the Trecento, namely at the Basilica of S. Francesco, Assisi, where Giotto, Simone Martini and Lorenzetti with their assistants have left us works of the utmost significance. Nevertheless in spite of their actual presence in the district, it (I) Umbrian painting has but rarely been fortunate in the authors who have recorded its history. The book by W. Rothes, Anfange u Entwicke- lungsgange der alt-Umbrische Malerschulen; insbesondere ihre Beziehungen zur fru-Sienesischen Kunst, Strassburg, 1908, is of no merit and is so full of mistakes that I shall not refer to it. At the outset of this work I thought it possible that I might have to lay down my pen at the end of the fifth volume, but it is with con siderable pleasure I learn that my readers have been in great enough number and sufficiently satisfied with the work for my editor and myself to continue the enterprise and undertake a study of the fifteenth century, similar to that which has already appeared on the fourteenth. The spontaneous manifestations of sympathy that I have received from many different countries give me the impression that there exists a group of readers who will not be disappointed to hear of my intention to continue this history of Italian painting, at least until the end of the fifteenth century which is a period not rn any way less glorious than those with which I have already dealt. I should like to give one word of warning to the authorities of galleries and to private collectors who of late have started buying pictures of the thirteenth century. Notwithstanding the fact that the interest in this form of art is of recent date, the amount of facticious paintings of this period is already very considerable. Many of them are half-length figures of the Madonna painted on late Byzantine panels of the same subject; Greek Madonnas of the sixteenth and seven teenth centuries are in this way transformed into Italian pictures of the thirteenth Front Matter....Pages N2-VIII Umbria....Pages 1-126 Painting in the Marches....Pages 127-198 Painting in Pisa, Lucca, Sardinia, Liguria and in Small Tuscan Centres....Pages 199-313 Trecento Painting in Naples and in the Neighbouring Regions....Pages 314-347 Fourteenth Century Painting in Lazio, the Abruzzi, Apulia and Sicily....Pages 348-404 Back Matter....Pages 405-518