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Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death

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Andrea Da Firenze, Spanish Chapel of Santa Maria Novella, "Christian Learning" 1365-67. Fig. 95, Old and New testament figures mixed on top tier. Often Old Testament figures have a New Testament saint associated with them. 3 Figures of heretics at feet of St. Thomas Aquinas. 7 Virtues are floating above them. From left to right are,3 up top are Faith, hope, and charity. 4 below are temperance, prudence, justice and fortitude. Row below, left to right are 7 theological sciences, 7 liberal arts is: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, logic, rhetoric, grammar. Firenze is anal retentive painter and very orderly in his composition.

Painting by Andrea Da Firenze Florentine school active, 1343-77 painting entitled "The Way of Salvation." Triumph of the Dominicans. In chapel of Cappella Spagnuolo, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, it is Dominican whose habits are black and white. Has 4 beasts representing the Gospels. Dominicans portrayed as teaching to the masses, giving absolution, St.Peter at the gates. Nude people in trees represent lust in church art. Figures are sized to show status. 3 Kings to right of Pope, Cardinal to the left. 3 Jews shows how Dominicans are responsible for trying to convert Jews, dogs depicted black and white like the habits because they are known as Domini Cannae, "Hounds of God" which is what the word Dominican means, they are attacking wolves who represent heresy. From 1231 on Dominicans are in charge of the Inquisitions in Europe. This painting is done to celebrate and teach of their successes.

1498, picture of landscape of city square of Florence, plague kills 70% of population. Paintings "Palazio Vechio which is the city hall. Signori have 2-month terms, they live there and don't get visitors so that they can't be bribed. Housing is densely packed walled city. Florence is known for Sodomy. 14 century artist and most famous painter is Giotto. He worked in wet fresco. Arena chapel in Padua "Joachim Expelled from the Temple" Fig. 35. 1305-12. Figures are real, they have weight and are standing on a surface. Figures are full and not emaciated like Middle Ages figures. Still people not to scale to surroundings. Giotto is considered the "Master" by his contemporaries. Uses good skin tones, figures have depth. He shows emotion and physicality, it foreshadows Renaissance of man in image of God.

Giotto's "Madonna" Enthroned Uffizi, Florence Fig. 10. is more realistic, looks like she is sitting and not floating. People are looking at Madonna, real sense of depth. There is real veneration of Virgin before the plague. Panel painting is big in Italy. Tempura (egg yoke) painting is used on wood panels allot.

Giotto's "Death of St. Francis" 1330's Art historians say it may be first Rennaisance painting. Figures very real, full figures, expressive faces, lots of emotion in painting. St. Francis had stigmata, monks, kissing his wounds.

Giotto di Bondone (Colle di Vespignano, near Florence 1267 - January 8, Florence 1337), better known simply as Giotto, was a Florentine painter and architect. He is generally considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to and developed the Italian Renaissance.
Giotto was born in poverty in the countryside near Florence, the son of Bondone, a peasant, and was himself a shepherd. Most authors believe that Giotto was his real name, and not an abbreviation of Ambrogio (Ambrogiotto) or Angelo (Angelotto). Giotto's master work is the Arena Chapel cycle of the Cappella degli Scrovegni in Padua depicting the life of the Virgin and the passion of Christ completed around 1305. The scheme has 100 major scenes with the heavily sculptural figures set in compressed but naturalistic settings often using forced perspective devices. Giotto's major innovation was to conceive of a painted architectural framework or grisaille using trompe-l'oeil effects that directly influenced Masaccio and in turn Michelangelo in his scheme for the Sistine Chapel. Famous panels in the series include the Adoration of the Magi in which a comet like Star of Bethlehem streaks across the sky and the Flight from Egypt in which Giotto broke many traditions for the depiction of the scene. The scenes from the Passion were much admired by artists of the Renaissance for their concentrated emotional and dramatic force, especially the "Lamentation over the Dead Christ", and studies of the sequence by Michelangelo exist. The Ognissanti Madonna now in the Uffizi and the sole surviving major panel work by the artist also dates from this period. In the fourteenth century Pope Benedictus XII was selecting artists to work for the Vatican, requesting from each applicant a sample of his ability. Although the Florentine painter Giotto was known as a master of design and composition, he submitted only a circle drawn freehand, the famous "0 of Giotto." Yet he was awarded the commission. Giotto's simple circle has been described as an ideal of elegance and perfection. At the request of the Pope, Giotto spent ten years in Rome. He was then employed by the King of Naples but little work remains from this period.
After 1320 Giotto returned to Florence, where he completed two fresco cycles and a number of altar pieces for the church of Santa Croce. Both of the fresco groups were badly damaged, though they show that in later years Giotto's style had become more ornate, perhaps as a response to the emerging International Gothic style. In 1334 Giotto was appointed chief architect to Florence Cathedral of which the Campanile bears his name, but was not completed to his design.

In his final years Giotto became friends with Boccaccio and Sacchetti, who featured him in their stories. In The Divine Comedy, Dante acknowledged the greatness of his living contemporary through the words of a painter in Purgatorio (XI, 94-96): "Cimabue believed that he held the field/In painting, and now Giotto has the cry,/ So the fame of the former is obscure." Giotto died while working on a "Last Judgement", including a portrait of Dante, for the Bargello Chapel in Florence.

Giovanni da Milano- not as intimate as Giotto's. His pictures not as intimate as Giotto's. His "Expulsion of Joachim 1365, Fig. 36 in Santa Croce Florence, all the women look the same, figures have no heft. No realism, it is a hierarchial piece not intimate. Giotto's "Meeting at the Golden Gate" 1305-1312 Fig. 26. Anna and Joachim have real emotion, embrace and kiss. Milano's same work in 1365 Fig. 27., Anna and Joachim not even looking at each other.
Giovanni da Milano (Giovanni di Jacopo di Guido da Caversaccio) was an Italian painter, known to be active in Florence and Rome between 1346 and 1369.

His style is, like many Florentine painters of the time, considered to be derivative of Giotto's. Vasari misidentified him as a student of Taddeo Gaddi, a noted Giotto protégé.
Hailing from Lombardy, the earliest documentation shows Giovanni in Florence on October 17, 1346, under the name Johannes Jacobi de Commo, listed amongst the foreign painters living in Tuscany.

Amongst Giovanni's most significant works:
* A polyptych with Madonna and Saints (c. 1355), the oldest known signed work by Giovanni da Milano, painted for the Prato Spedale della Misericordia
* A polyptych made for the Ognissanti of Florence (c. 1363), now dismembered and scattered, depicting saints and scenes of the Creation
* Man of Sorrows panel (c. 1365, Accademia, Florence), the oldest known signed and dated work
* Frescoes decorating both sides of the Rinuccini Chapel in Santa Croce, Florence. Each side consists of five scenes - one side depicting the Life of the Virgin and the other the Life of Mary Magdalene. Giovanni is credited with the upper two registers of each cycle. The bottom register is credited to Matteo di Pacino.

The latest extent documentation of Giovanni's career comes in 1369, when he is known to be working in Rome for Pope Urban V with Giottino and the sons of Taddeo Gaddi
Andrea di Cione di Arcangelo altarpiece of The Redeemer with the Madonna and Saints (1354-57) in the Strozzi family Chapel. Fig. 1. Florence Meiss does a lot on this piece in his book. This work is very Byzantine in nature. No depth Jesus is iconic, flat. A lot of gold. Jrsus giving the keys to St. Peter, scripture to St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John the Baptist always with ratty clothes and hair, virgin Mary always in blue, she has crown making her "Queen of Heaven, painting has Trinitarian reference.
Andrea di Cione di Arcangelo (c.1308-1368), better known as Orcagna, was a Florentine painter, sculptor and architect. A student of Andrea Pisano as well as Giotto di Bondone, his brothers Jacopo and Nardo di Cione were also artists. His works include the altarpiece of The Redeemer with the Madonna and Saints (1354-57) in the Strozzi Chapel, Santa Maria Novella and the tabernacle in Orsanmichele (finished 1359 which was regarded as "the most perfect work of its kind in Italian Gothic". His fresco The Triumph of Death inspired Franz Liszt's masterwork Totentanz, by general consent the finest of his concerto works.

Taddeo Gaddi- Florentine, very surreal look in his work The Angelic Announcement to the Shepherds 1328-1330 very real and detailed.

Taddeo Gaddi (c.1300-1366) was an Italian painter and architect, active during the early Renaissance. As a painter, he created altar-pieces and murals and is primarily noted as a pupil and follower of Giotto. As an architect, he is credited with the design of the Ponte Vecchio.
Life and Art Son of Gaddo Gaddi, an artist of whom little is known, Taddeo's art education came primarily as a pupil of, and assistant to, the painter Giotto di Bondone. Cennino Cennini referred to Taddeo as Giotto's godson and claimed that their relationship lasted 24 years.
Early works such as the The Stigmatization of Saint Francis (c.1325-1330, tempera on wood panel) demonstrate a subtle recasting of Giotto's style. Perhaps his most famous works are the series of frescoes depicting the lives of the Virgin and of Christ in the Giugni Chapel (neé Baroncelli Chapel) at Santa Croce in Florence (1328-38). The Angelic Announcement to the Shepherds (depicted at right) illustrates Taddeo's interest in light and its effects. His study of solar eclipses in particular would eventually lead to serious eye injury in 1339. As an architect, Taddeo Gaddi is credited with the design of the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, as well as the Ponte Trinita, which was destroyed in the 16th century.

Two facts point to Taddeo Gaddi's importance as a Florentine artist:
1. Giorgio Vasari included a biography of Taddeo Gaddi in his Lives.
2. Taddeo's name appears atop a list of 'the best masters of painting who are in Florence'.

Styles of Florence vs. Sienna- Duccio most famous 14 century painter in Sienna. "Entrance into Jerusalem" 1308-11 Sienna painters were more conservative for a longer period of time. Face are not individualized, do more miniature works, no depth.

Duccio di Buoninsegna (c. 1255-1260, Siena - c. 1318-1319, Siena) was the most influential Sienese artist of his time and one of the key figures in the development of European painting. Duccio is considered to have had a major influence on the formation of the International Gothic style, and to have influenced Simone Martini and the brothers Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti, among others.

His works include the Rucellai Madonna (1285) for Santa Maria Novella (now in the Uffizi) and the fabled Maestà (1308-11), his masterpiece, for Siena's cathedral. Originally carried through the streets of Siena in a religious ceremony, the multipaneled Maesta represented a major step forward in painterly style and narrative storytelling through visual art. His Madonna and Child, painted on a wood panel around the year 1300, was purchased in November 2004 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City for an estimated sum in excess of 45 million USD, the most expensive purchase ever by the mueum. In 2006 James Beck, a scholar at Columbia University stated that he believes the painting is a nineteenth century forgery; the Metropolitan Museum's curator of European Paintings has disputed Beck's assertion.
Simone Martini- Sienna painter famous "Annunciation" 1333 is famous. International Gothic school. Slender figures.

Simone Martini (c. 1284 - 1344) was an Italian painter born in Siena.
He was a major figure in the development of early Italian painting and greatly influenced the development of the International Gothic style. It is thought that Martini was a pupil of Duccio di Buoninsegna, the leading Sienese painter of his time. His brother-in-law was the artist Lippo Memmi. Very little documentation survives regarding Simone's life, and many attributions are debated by art historians. Simone Martini died while in the service of the Papal court at Avignon in 1344. Simone was doubtlessly apprenticed from an early age, as would have been the normal practice. Among his first documented works is the Maestà of 1315 in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. A copy of the work, executed shortly thereafter by Lippo Memmi in San Gimignano, testifies to the enduring influence Simone's prototypes would have on other artists throughout the fourteenth century. Perpetuating the Sienese tradition, Simone's style contrasted with the sobriety and monumentality of Florentine art, and is noted for its soft, stylized, decorative features, sinuosity of line, and unsurpassed courtly elegance. Simone's art owes much to French manuscript illumination and ivory carving: examples of such art were brought to Siena in the fourteenth century by means of the Via Francigena, a main pilgrimage and trade route from Northern Europe to Rome. Simone's major works include the Maestà (1315) in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, St Louis of Toulouse Crowning the King at the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples (1317), the S. Caterina Polyptych in Pisa (1319) and the Annunciation and two Saints at the Uffizi in Florence (1333), as well as frescoes in the Chapel of St. Martin in the lower church of the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi. Francis Petrarch became friend with Simone while in Avignon, and two of his sonnets make reference to a portrait of Laura de Noves he supposedly painted for the poet.

Bonaventura Berlinghieri 1235 vs. Giovanni del Biondo 1366, styles are the same frontal figures conservative depictions.