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Master of the Orcangesque Misericordia, Head of
Christ, c. 1380, tempera on wood, gold ground, 29.5 x 20.6 cm, Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York.
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It would be a mistake to think that Giotto’s achievement
marked the demise of the Dugento Byzantine- influenced style in Florence. For a
long time, the advent of Giotto was put on a par with the shifting of tectonic
plates, or a form of continental drift, but the situation was more complicated
than that. As Meiss pointed out, even though Giotto’s followers transcended and
denied the Dugento, they nonetheless assimilated some of it into their own art.
Reactionary artists like Orcagna attempted the recovery of the
thirteenth-century or Dugento, though his roots are still in Giotto. [1]
The residue of Pre-Giotto-esque painting is revealed by scrutiny of
iconography, expression and colour. For example, the colours of Dugento panels
and mosaics show up in the work of Florentine masters like Jacopo di Cione, one
of Orcagna’s brothers (though more sombre in hue), Giovanni di Milano (favoured
a light apple green), and Niccolo do Tomasso (light orange, especially in the
hair). A particularly revealing panel in the Met, once attributed to Bernardo
Daddi, a Holy Face, has flesh colours of dark red-brown, with terra verde underpainting, which is
known to have used in Byzantine art.[2]
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Niccolò di Tommaso, St Bridget and the Vision of
the Nativity, after 1372, Pinacoteca, Vatican, Tempera on wood, 44 x 54 cm.
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Giovanni di Milano, Madonna and Child with
Donors, c. 1365, tempera on wood, gold ground, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York.
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Jacopo di Cione, Coronation of the Virgin,
1370s, Panel, Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence.
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