After the death of Giotto in 1337, Daddi was the most outstanding
painter in Florence. Daddi supervised an industrious bottega which favoured the
production of small devotional panels and mobile altarpieces; he was never
comfortable with fresco painting. Daddi’s signed and dated works include
a polyptych of The Crucifixion with Eight
Saints (Courtauld Institute, London, 1348), and other works attributed to him
include frescos of the
Martyrdoms of SS. Lawrence and Stephen in Santa
Croce. Daddi was heavily influenced by Maso di Banco, whose monumental
treatment of figures can be detected in the
St Julian panel, in the Met.
We are told by Cennino Cennini that Taddeo Gaddi was a pupil of Giotto for
twenty four years, though we can’t determine when he was in the workshop as his
birth date is not known. In addition to being part of a workshop, Taddeo must
have been working on independent commissions, and Cole speculates that Taddeo
may have joined Giotto after the Arena chapel frescoes until the latter’s
death.
His most famous commission, for which no documentations exist, was the cycle of
the Virgin in the Baroncelli Chapel, in Santa Croce. Cole puts it later than
Giotto’s Bardi frescoes, which are in Taddeo’s debt. It would be a mistake to
see the Baroncelli frescoes as “Giotto-lite”; perhaps it is better to see them
as a domestication of Giotto’s style, to use Cole’s word, “homely” in nature.
Moreover, Taddeo stamps his own artistic personality on the Baroncelli frescoes
with striking “special effects” such as the blinding light of the angel in the
Annunciation
to the Shepherds.
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Taddeo Gaddi, Annunciation of the Shepherds, 1327-30, Fresco, Cappella Baroncelli, Santa Croce, Florence.
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View of the Baroncelli Chapel, Santa Croce,
Florence.
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