Photo Alinari
CORONATION OF OUR LADY, BY TADDEO GADDI; PART OF AN ALTAR-PIECE IN SANTA CROCE, FLORENCE
On the other hand we must point out that the Munich pictures, in spite of the roughness of their execution, indicate a richer imagination, a greater energy of dramatic presentment, than can be claimed for the Highnam piece. There is nothing in the latter which can compare, for instance, with the inexpressible tenderness with which the Virgin contemplates the Child in the Munich picture. In our picture, the attempt to infuse life into the older formula is evident, but the persons of the drama still remain somewhat coldly self-absorbed and aloof; that flash of mutual interaction and sympathy which both Giovanni Pisano and Giotto realized so intensely is still lacking. ¶ In the present state of our knowledge, which leaves open so many unsuspected possibilities, it is, perhaps, unsafe to go further; but at least this can be said, that we have here no Giottesque work in the ordinary sense of the word, which might be more appropriately termed Gaddesque, but a work executed either by Giotto himself, or more probably by some contemporaneous artist who was elaborating at the same time with him the new idea; or if by a pupil, one who came under his influence at a very early date, before Giotto’s own style was fully matured. Certainly this work has none of the academic qualities of the followers who, like Taddeo Gaddi, accepted the formulæ of Giotto’s later style; it has in it, like Giotto’s own work, the spring and vitality which come with the germination of a new and fruitful conception. And among the works of this fascinating period of Italian painting, we know of none which surpass this in the polished perfection of the technique nor in the marvellous preservation of its surface. ¶ The next important picture ([Plate II]), keeping to the chronological order, is one of the most magnificent of the many noble altarpieces which have come down to us from the fourteenth century. Even in Florence itself it would be hard to find an altarpiece in which the religious sentiment of the time is expressed in more imposing forms, or in which the decoration is more sumptuous and the execution more refined. It is, moreover, in wonderful preservation, and the pale flat tints of pure heliotrope, dull scarlet and blue, and white flushed with pink, relieved upon a background of elaborately stamped gold, produce an effect of brilliance and variety toned to a perfect harmony which the artists of Florence rarely surpassed. Indeed, in the pallor and brilliance of the colour scheme, as also in the atmospheric tonality and the absence of vigorous relief in the figures, we are reminded of Sienese art. The forms, however, are essentially Florentine. The inscription at the base leaves us in no doubt about the author of this masterpiece; it runs: ANNO DNI MCCCXLVIII BERNARDVS PINXIT ME QUEM FLORENTIE (sic) FINSIT. The original notion that this Bernardo was the same as Nardo the elder brother of Orcagna has been exposed by Milanesi, to whose researches we owe all that is known of Bernardo da Firenze or Bernardo Daddi, whose chef d’œuvre is the Highnam altarpiece. Bernardo Daddi was almost overlooked by Vasari, who makes him, by an anachronism of more than half a century, a pupil of Spinello Aretino; nor did Crowe and Cavalcaselle realize his importance in their ‘History of Painting.’ Milanesi has, however, discovered many facts about Daddi, who, though inferior in the vitality and freshness of his imagination to Giottino, was perhaps a finer artist than any other of the immediate successors of Giotto. Certainly Taddeo Gaddi, who somehow came to be regarded as the capo scuola, has left nothing comparable to this as regards the variety and self-consistency of the types, the nobility of the design and spacing of the figures, or the research for beauty in the execution. Even in the Crucifixion, though it is only a variation of Giotto’s inventions, there survives, in spite of a tendency to a more sentimental treatment, something of the great master’s dramatic feeling. There is much here, moreover, that seems already to suggest Orcagna, and Daddi may perhaps be regarded as the connecting link between him and Giotto. ¶ What is known of the life of Daddi may be found at length in Milanesi’s commentary to Vasari’s life of Stefano Fiorentino and Ugolino Sanese. Milanesi champions eloquently the cause of this great but curiously neglected artist—that his pleading has not been altogether successful may be due in part to the fact that he endeavours to establish Daddi’s authorship of the frescoes of the Triumph of Death, in the camposanto at Pisa. The improbability of such a view will be apparent to anyone who compares them with the Highnam altarpiece. Daddi, who was born at the close of the thirteenth century, died either in 1348 according to Crowe and Cavalcaselle, or in 1350 according to Milanesi. This picture must therefore be one of his latest, as it is also one of his finest works. It came originally from the church of St. George at Ruballa, whence it passed into the Bromley collection. It is referred to as being in that collection by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and is mentioned as being in England by Milanesi. ¶ To a considerably later period of the fourteenth century belongs the Coronation of the Virgin ([Plate III]), which is ascribed in the catalogue to Giotto. It is, however, clearly a fine work by the last great Giottesque master of Florence, Agnolo Gaddi, whose characteristic qualities and defects are here admirably displayed. The weak lines of the boneless fingers with their rounded ends, the long thin noses imperfectly articulated with the mask, and the want of life and character in the figures, betray the facile exponent of a stock formula which made but small demands upon the artist’s observation or his feeling for reality. It was, indeed, due to the cleverness and, if we are to believe Vasari, the commercial astuteness of the Gaddi family that Giotto’s style was crystallized into so lifeless a system of design. But Agnolo, though he inherited too much from his father, was more of an artist. Where, as at Sta. Croce, he depicts a stirring narrative, his line, at other times mechanical and slow, becomes alert and expressive of at least the more obvious dramatic effects, while at all times he shows a refined taste and originality as a decorator in the more limited sense of the word. Judged as an imaginative rendering of a supreme event, this picture is certainly cold and inadequate, but as a piece of elaborate decoration it is charmingly designed and brilliantly executed. The brocade hanging, which reminds one of Orcagna’s school, is painted with the utmost skill; on a ground of brilliant orange red, the symmetrical pattern of birds and flowers is relieved in intensest blue and gold. The draperies and flesh are for the most part in that beautiful pale key which Agnolo affected; the opposition of pale grey, blue, and saffron yellow, with stronger notes of mauve and pink, forms one of those complex and sumptuous harmonies of colour which were unfortunately abandoned by the artists of the succeeding century. The general likeness of this to Taddeo Gaddi’s version of the same subject in the sacristy of Sta. Croce ([Plate III]) (there attributed to Giotto) is apparent. Agnolo has even repeated, though in a modified form, the peculiar double sleeve which is not unfrequent in Taddeo’s pictures. The influence of Orcagna is, however, to be seen in the more rectilinear folds and the attempt at structural design in the draperies.
ADORATION OF THE MAGI, BY LORENZO MONACO; IN THE COLLECTION OF SIR HUBERT PARRY
THE VISITATION, BY LORENZO MONACO; IN THE COLLECTION OF SIR HUBERT PARRY
MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH ANGELS, BY A FLORENTINE PAINTER OF THE EARLY FIFTEENTH CENTURY IN THE COLLECTION OF SIR HUBERT PARRY