Mariotto di Nardo

This charming early painting by the Florentine artist Mariotto di Nardo probably dates to circa 1390, when he worked most closely with Agnolo Gaddi. The use of floor tiles to create a sense of spatial recession and the inclusion of a crowned Madonna and a foreshortened figure of God the Father emerging from the Empyrean are characteristics shared with Mariotto’s Madonna and Child with Saints John the Baptist and Andrew (Lille, Palais des Beaux-Arts, inv. no. 810), painted at the same moment in his career. In terms of dress and pose, the Madonna and Child are most closely related to Mariotto’s similarly-dated Madonna and Child with Six Saints (Avignon, Musée du Petit Palais, inv. no. 369).

This panel, which is larger than most works intended for private devotion, may have originally decorated a family chapel or have been destined for an ecclesiastical order. The inclusion of two of the most popular saints in the Renaissance, John the Baptist (wearing his traditional camel shirt and red cloak and holding a cross) and Catherine of Alexandria (accompanied by the spiked wheel of her attempted martyrdom and holding a book and palm branch), may hold a clue to the painting’s original patron.

The son of the painter Nardo di Cione, Mariotto was a prolific artist who worked in fresco and on panel and illuminated manuscripts. During his career, which spanned the dawn of the fifteenth century, Mariotto enjoyed commissions from Florence’s most important civic and religious institutions, including the churches of Santa Maria del Fiore (the Duomo) and Santa Maria Maggiore as well as Orsanmichele, an important Marian shrine and the city’s granary. 

An attribution to an unidentified hand in the Workshop of Agnolo Gaddi, a studio in which many of the greatest artists of the next generation of Florentine painters trained, has also been suggested for this panel.

We are grateful to Christopher Daly for suggesting an attribution to the young Mariotto di Nardo.