Exploration: Gothic
Era (Gothic
and Early Renaissance)
PAINTING
Maso di Banco
Taddeo Gaddi
Giotto and the Sienese Artists
The convincing three-dimensional style and illusion of space that
Giotto created in his painting through the use of receding planes
produced a naturalism in which dramatic themes predominated. The
composition and the actions and emotions of the human figure were
given full value. His work reveals an intellect open to all the
factors of reality, in search of a unifying meaning. The new
pictorial realism and its increasingly soft nuances of colour owed
much to the support of the monastic orders of the Dominicans and
Franciscans. Their attachment to city life explains the great wealth
of private commissions (in such buildings as Santa Croce in
Florence), which enhanced the success of the Giottesque school, and
that of its leading figures: Stefano, Maso di Banco, and Taddeo
Gaddi. The Gothic influences that penetrated the Giottesque
tradition had already marked Sienese painting. This is evident in
the refined linear and chromatic sensitivity of Duccio di
Buoninsegna, who transformed Sienese painting from the Byzantine
tradition to the Gothic. Due to the work of certain of its artists,
Siena was launched into a fruitful exchange of ideas with French
Gothic art, and, in particular, with the exiled papal court at
Avignon. Such work included the refined painting of Simone Martini
(c. 1284-1344), which quickly appealed to the humanistic taste of
Petrarch; and the warm expressiveness of Pietro Lorenzetti (c.
1280-1348). The long survival of the Giottesque school has been
interpreted as a symptom of artistic fatigue and indecision,
especially in Florence. In this respect, the Black Death of 1348 is
considered by some as a watershed between an age of progressive
renewal and a period of pessimistic contraction.
CENNINO CENNINI AND THE GIOTTESQUE ARTISTS
Probably written in the Veneto at the end of the 13th century, Cennini's
Il Libro dell'Arte is one of the last examples of medieval
artistic repositories, a technical manual containing the secrets of
the artist's studio and the traditions of the artisan. Moreover,
Cennini, who was a pupil of Agnolo Gaddi, confirms in his praise for
good fresco technique the greatness of the Giottesque school. During
the 14th century, it had influenced important figures, such as Taddeo Gaddi, who painted the Life of the Virgin in the Baroncelli
Chapel in Santa Croce, Florence (finished 1336), and Maso di Banco,
whose Legend of St Sylvester (1341-45) is in the Bardi Chapel, also
in Santa Croce. These were pupils of Giotto, who developed his
artistic precepts in the 13th century. Cennini records the long and
hard apprenticeship in the Florentine studios, where artists learned
how to paint frescos with subtle effects of light and shadow, works
that would withstand the test of time. Cennini explained how the
imaginative use of line and colour helped to create a more natural
realism in painting.
Maso di Banco
( fl 1335–50).
Italian painter. He was first identified
(as Maso) by Ghiberti, who claimed he was a pupil of Giotto and a
great master of painting, but the issue was complicated for many
centuries by Vasari, who confused Maso with an artist he called
Tommaso di Stefano, nicknamed GIOTTINO. Maso di Banco is mentioned
in several Florentine documents: in 1341 some of his paintings and
equipment were seized against an uncompleted commission; in 1346 he
joined the Arte de’ Medici e Speziali. Although none of the output
attributed to him is signed or dated, a major fresco cycle, other
more fragmentary frescoes and some panels of the 1330s and 1340s can
be firmly attributed to him on stylistic grounds.
Maso
Di Banco
(1320-1350) Legend of St Sylvester
Fresco, 1340
Taddeo
Gaddi
( fl ?mid-1320s; d 1366). Son of Gaddo Gaddi. He was a pupil of Giotto and one of the most inventive
and influential painters in 14th-century Florence.
According to Cennini, Taddeo stayed with Giotto for
24 years. Although the exact length of their
association is unverifiable, it probably ended only
with the latter’s death in 1337. Taddeo probably
occupied a still undefined but doubtless important
position in Giotto’s workshop during the master’s
busy last years, but such responsibility did not
prevent him undertaking work on his own as early as
the 1320s.
Taddeo Gaddi (1320-1366)
The Angelic Announcement to the Sheperds
1327-30
Fresco
Cappella Baroncelli, Santa Croce, Florence
Taddeo Gaddi (1320-1366)
Allegory of
the Cross
Santa Croce, Florence
Taddeo Gaddi (1320-1366)
Life of the
Virgin
1328-30
Cappella Baroncelli, Santa Croce, Florence
Taddeo Gaddi (1320-1366)Life of the Virgin
1328-30
Cappella Baroncelli, Santa Croce, Florence
Taddeo Gaddi (1320-1366)Life of the Virgin
1328-30
Cappella Baroncelli, Santa Croce, Florence
Taddeo Gaddi (1320-1366)Life of the Virgin
1328-30
Cappella Baroncelli, Santa Croce, Florence
Taddeo Gaddi (1320-1366)
Madonna and
Child
Enthroned with Angels and Saints
1355
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Taddeo Gaddi (1320-1366)
Stigmatization of St Francis
Stained glass window
Cappella Baroncelli, Santa Croce, Florence
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