Taddeo di Bartolo

B. Berenson, Italian pictures of the renaissance: a list of the principal artists and their works, with an index of places, Oxford 1932, p. 554;

B. Berenson, Pitture italiane del rinascimento; catalogo dei principali artisti e delle loro opere, con un indice dei luoghi, Milan 1936, p. 476;

P. Toesca, Storia dell'arte italiana, Il Trecento, Turin 1951, p.602, n.120 (as dated before 1400);

S. Symeonides, Taddeo di Bartolo, Sienna 1965, pp. 35-36, 198, reproduced plate IIIa (as a late work by the artist);

B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools, London 1968, p. 423;

G. Chelazzi Dini, Il Gotico a Siena, exhibition catalogue, Siena 1982, p. 337, cat. no. 121 (as a late work comparable to the Crucifixion in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena, inv. no. 122);

G.E. Solberg, Taddeo di Bartolo his life and work, PhD. New York University, Ann Arbor, 1991, pp. 1352-1355, reproduced fig. 294 (known only from black and white photographs, as workshop of Taddeo di Bartolo, circa 1405-1410);

G. Solberg, Taddeo di Bartolo, exhibition catalogue, Milano, 2020, pp. 236-237, cat. no. 33, reproduced p. 237; English translation of the text, pp. 370-371 (as dated circa 1400);

G. Solberg, Taddeo di Bartolo: Siena’s Painter in the Early Quattrocento, Brepols 2021 (forthcoming). 

Taddeo di Bartolo was the leading painter in his native Siena in the opening decades of the 15^th Century, with a clientele that stretched across North Italy. Indeed, his early career was peripatetic, with a likely sojourn in Padua, as well as time in Genoa and Pisa, experiences that exposed the artist to a wide range of influences. His return to Siena in 1399 confirmed his position in the city, and he was soon given significant public commissions, including wall paintings in the Duomo, as well as from 1406 various frescoes for the Palazzo Pubblico, the republic’s seat of government. 

First published by Bernard Berenson in 1932, this spare and evocative Crucifixion has been considered a work by Taddeo di Bartolo by all subsequent scholars. Most recently, Gail Solberg proposed a dating of circa 1400, about the time of Taddeo’s homecoming.²  The size and format suggest that it is a predella for an altarpiece. Unlike other examples of this theme painted by the artist (such as those examples in Avignon, Paris and Copenhagen), this panel pares the narrative down to its key players, with Christ surrounded not by crowds but by his mother, the mourning Virgin, and his favored disciple, Saint John the Evangelist. Two mourning angels painted in blue materialize on either side of the cross, and the diminutive figure of a woman, no doubt the patron, is kneeling at left.

While it is at present not possible to securely connect this panel with a known commission, an old customs seal from Pisa on the reverse of the panel (“Dog[an]a di Pisa”) has lead Solberg to hypothesize a possible connection to a project in that city. The inclusion of a female donor figure is suggestive, as Taddeo had women patrons in Pisa, most significantly Datuccia Sardi, for whom he painted a polyptych of the Madonna of Humility in 1395 for the church of San Francesco, as well as frescoes. Taddeo also worked in the Sardi family parish church at San Martino and the nearby convent of the Poor Clares (Santa Chiara Novella) for whom he painted an altarpiece, circa 1397. Solberg suggests that this predella could also be connected to that complex, for which she has proposed the panel of the Madonna of Humility in the Lindenau-Museum, Altenberg (inv. 62) as the candidate for the central panel; however, the relative sizes of the two may argue against this. Thus, while all these connections must remain tentative at present, what is clear is that this Crucifixion dates the final years of the trecento or first of the quattrocento, during Taddeo’s period of greatest artistic achievement. 

This painting will be included by Gail Solberg, to whom we are grateful, in her forthcoming monograph Taddeo di Bartolo: Siena’s Painter in the Early Quattrocento, Brepols 2021. 

1. This is likely a seal for the Regie Rendite, the bureau overseeing the customs in the Granduchy of Tuscany, up until reunification 

2. In a private communication, she suggests a dating of 1395-1400.