The two panels presented here belonged to a signed and dated Marian altarpiece completed in 1395 by Taddeo for the sacristy chapel at San Francesco in Pisa, the second most important Franciscan location in Tuscany. The standing saints represent the culmination of Taddeo’s work in Pisa, where he produced some of his most beautiful paintings, and illustrate the combination of his Sienese heritage with his local traditions, for example in the inventive carpentry of the altarpiece from which these panels originated.

In the reconstructed altarpiece, the central panel, depicting a Madonna of Humility, is flanked by four standing saints: St. John the Baptist and the present St. Simon on the left, and St. Andrew and the present St. Francis on the right. Approximately ten smaller vertical standing saints would have formed buttresses or pilasters on the extreme edges of the polyptych The complete ensemble remained in situ until 1846, and since 1953 the Madonna and Sts. John and Andrew, along with a number of the smaller panels now (erroneously) reframed as a triptych with predella, have been housed at the Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest (fig. 1).¹ Thanks to several historical accounts of the altarpiece by writers including Giorgio Vasari and the Franciscan Ludovico Nuti as well as a 1652 engraving of St. Francis, the full composition of the altarpiece was never lost, and when the St. Simon and St. Francis panels reappeared in 2007, a complete visual reconstruction of the polyptych was possible and undertaken by both Gaudenz Freuler (fig. 2) and Gail Solberg (see Literature). While Freuler placed the two present panels closest to the Madonna, Solberg argues that St. Simon and St. Francis should instead be outermost lateral saints, as they are slightly lower in the hierarchy of saints than John the Baptist and the apostle Andrew.

An inscription running the entire width of the altarpiece is partially preserved today beneath the central panel, and names as Taddeo’s patron “the Venerable Lady Datuccia daughter of the deceased S[er] Berti de Sa[r]dis and wife of the deceased S[er] Andrea de Campiglis,” who commissioned the altarpiece for her deceased relatives. Nuti mentioned that the coats of arms of the Sardi and Campigli families originally appeared on the altarpiece, and in the lost section of the inscription, he was able to read Tadeus Bartholis de Senis pinxit hoc an(n)o D(omi)ni 1395. Solberg notes that the choice of this combination of saints would not have been obvious to any viewers without an inscription to explain, but can be explained by Lady Datuccia’s family. The altarpiece features the patron saints of the Franciscan order (Francis), of Datuccia Sardi’s deceased husband, Andrea da Campigli (Andrew), and, most unusually, of her brother Simone (Simon), with whom she probably lived when she became widowed because she apparently had no children.

In the years around 1400, the decoration of sacristies in Tuscany became very fashionable, and Taddeo completed not only this altarpiece but also painted a fresco cycle for the sacristy at San Francesco, which was also outfitted with stained glass windows with figures, making it one of the more detailed programs known today. Taddeo’s Marian altarpiece, featuring these two lateral saints, dates to the period just before his full maturity, and illustrates the elegant combination of his Sienese roots with foreign artistic influences.

1. The panels now framed as a predella were in fact buttress panels on the pilasters flanking the saints on either side.