To give an account of the frescoes of these painters would be to describe how the religious, social, and philosophical conceptions of the fourteenth century found complete expression in form and colour.

By means of allegory and pictured scene they drew the portrait of the Middle Age in Italy, performing jointly and in combination with the followers of Niccola Pisano what Dante had done singly by his poetry.
It has often been remarked that the drama of the life beyond this world--its prologue in the courts of death, the tragedy of judgment, and the final state of bliss or misery prepared for souls--preoccupied the mind of the Italians at the close of the Middle Ages.

Every city had its pictorial representation of the "Dies Irae;" and within this framework the artist was free to set forth his philosophy of human nature, adding such touches of satire or admonition as suited his own temper or the circumstances of the place for which he worked.

Dante's poem has immortalised this moment of Italian consciousness, when the belief in another world was used to intensify the emotions of this life--when the inscrutable darkness toward which men travel became for them a black and polished mirror reflecting with terrible luminousness the events of the present and the past.

So familiar had the Italians become with the theme of death artistically treated, that they did not shrink from acted pageants of the tragedy of Hell.