Taddeo Gaddi

Taddeo Gaddi (c. 1300 - 1366) was a 14th-century Italian painter belonging to the Gaddi family.

Because of his consistent work in Giotto's workshop, he has always held a place of prominence among the Giottesque painters of the first generation. However, this role has always implied an all-too-negative assessment of his activity, as an eternal "pupil" and never a "master."

In post-World War II studies, on the other hand, an attempt has been made to restore the proper prominence to his figure, as an interpreter who was himself original and rich in insights for later generations.

Taddeo Gaddi's Life and works

Son of Gaddo di Zanobi known as Gaddo Gaddi, he was in Giotto's workshop from 1313 to 1337, the year of the master's death. Father of the painters Giovanni, Agnolo and Niccolò Gaddi, he also had a fourth son, Zanobi, who did not pursue a career as an artist, but successfully engaged in mercantile work, later contributing to the economic and social growth of the family. A fifth son was Francesco.

Taddeo was probably, as on the other hand Vasari states, Giotto's most talented disciple or at any rate the one who best succeeded in carrying on the style of the great master. In 1347 he is mentioned at the head of a list of the best painters in Florence.

Among his works the most important is the cycle of frescoes with Stories of the Virgin in the Baroncelli Chapel of the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence (1328-1338). Soon afterwards he also had to attend to painting the Formelle dell'armadio in the sacristy of Santa Croce, now in the Accademia Gallery in Florence, Munich and Berlin.

In this prestigious work he showed that he had put Giotto's teachings to good use, arranging with considerable narrative freedom the figures in the scenes, which are more crowded than those of his master.

He also resumed experimentation with perspective in architectural backgrounds and arrived at even daring results, as in the oblique and broken staircase in the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple.

He was a collaborator, according to some, on the Stefaneschi Polyptych (Rome). Still to be remembered are the Madonna (Bern), the Adoration of the Magi (Dijon), the Stories of Job (Pisa, Camposanto), The Enthroned Madonna and Child with Angels and Saints (Florence, Uffizi), the Madonna del Parto (Florence), and the Polyptych (Florence, Santa Felicita).

He is also credited by Vasari with designing the reconstruction of the Ponte Vecchio, now questioned by scholars, who lean toward Neri di Fioravante.

Although in the "Giottesque" sphere, Taddeo Gaddi in his more mature works has an unmistakable style, with sometimes sought-after effects of night light, almost a unicum in central Italian fourteenth-century painting. The spatial arrangements sought in some of his works are often majestic and solemn, approaching Maso di Banco in this. The features of the delicate, soft faces are indicative of the late development of Taddeo's art.

Taddeo Gaddi's Critical fortune

Ancient sources dealing with Taddeo Gaddi include Franco Sacchetti (Trecentonovelle, CXXXVI), Cennino Cennini (Libro dell'Arte), Lorenzo Ghiberti (Commentari) and Giorgio Vasari, who included a biography of him in Lives.

Cennini himself, in the opening of his work, immediately clarifies his direct artistic descent from Giotto by specifying that "Agnolo di Taddeo da Firenze [was] my master, who learned the said art from Taddeo his father; who's father was baptized by Giotto and was his disciple years XXIIIIII."

What for Cennini is a vindication of his own artistic "license" (in controversy perhaps with the Orcagna brothers, who were going for the most but could not boast of such an artistic genealogy), in time turned, first and foremost for Taddeo himself, into a heavy inheritance from his master, to be handed down and handed over to his son as least corruptly as possible.

Also shedding a bad light on the entire second fourteenth-century Florentine period had been Sacchetti's novella 136, in which a group of Florentine painters and sculptors around 1360 find themselves dining together on the hill of San Miniato al Monte, having given artistic advice to estimate the work of some colleague.

Andrea Orcagna, the parvenu, ventures to ask who was the greatest painter "from Giotto on out" (perhaps hoping that it was his name that came out), and the colleagues lavish a series of names, from Cimabue to Bernardo Daddi, from Stefano to Buonamico Buffalmacco, until it is decided to give the floor to the eldest, Taddeo, the one who had known the great Giotto best.

The artist's answer is lucid and lapidary: "this art has come and is lacking every day": that is, none, because Giotto's artistic capacity is diminishing every day, in a panorama therefore of progressive decline.

Filippo Villani compared Taddeo to Dinocrates and Vitruvius, leading Vasari to believe that he had also been an architect. The historian from Arezzo thus assigned to him the Frescobaldi bridge, the Ponte Vecchio (given today to Neri di Fioravante), the upper part of Orsanmichele, and the completion of Giotto's campanile: the groundlessness of these attributions was later demonstrated by Gaetano Milanesi in his commentary on the Lives.

Probably Villani's assertion ("Taddeus insuper aedificia tanta arte depinxit, ut alter Dynocrates vel Victruvius qui architecturae artem scripserit, videretur") is only to be understood as a praise of his ability to draw architecture in his works.

The earliest modern contributions to criticism on Taddeo Gaddi go back to Cavalcaselle, Adolfo Venturi (1907), and Van Marle, who basically followed the traditional position of praising him as Giotto's principal pupil, but without considering him as a sufficiently independent master. Pietro Toesca also moved in this vein in his work Trecento.

For a deeper and more objective understanding of Gaddi's art one must wait for two articles by Roberto Longhi in Paragone in 1959 (nos. 109 and 111, Quality and Industry in Taddeo Gaddi).

This was followed by a series of contributions to the reconstruction of the catalog and to a more objective critical evaluation of the artist by Klara Steinweg (1964, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz), Ilaria Toesca (1950, Paragone no. 3), Boskovits (1964, Catalogue of the Museum of Esztergom), Luciano Bellosi (Paragone 187).

A complete list of the bibliography on the painter can be found in Gandolfo's article in La critica d'arte nuova, 13-14, 1956, pp. 32-55.

Major works

• Baroncelli Polyptych (with Giotto), c. 1328, tempera and gold on panel, 185×323 cm, Florence, basilica of Santa Croce
• Eterno e angeli (with Giotto), c. 1328, tempera and gold on panel, 76.2×71.1 cm, San Diego, San Diego Museum of Art
• Madonna Enthroned with Child, tempera and gold on panel, 169×79 cm, Castelfiorentino, Church of San Francesco
• Stories of Mary and Saints John the Baptist and Evangelist, frescoes, Poppi, Conti Guidi castle
• Madonna and Child Enthroned, tempera and gold on panel, Castiglion Fiorentino, Pinacoteca comunale
• Madonna and Child, c. 1328, fresco, Florence, basilica of Santa Croce, exterior of Baroncelli Chapel
• Christ among the Doctors, c. 1328, fresco, Florence, basilica of Santa Croce, exterior of the Baroncelli Chapel
• Stories of Mary, fresco, 1328-1338, Florence, basilica of Santa Croce, Baroncelli Chapel
• Triptych with Madonna and Child Enthroned and Saints, tempera and gold on panel, 63x83 cm, Berlin, Gemäldegalerie
• Triptych with Madonna and Saints, 1336, tempera on panel 66x57 cm, Naples, Museo di Capodimonte
• Panels of the sacristy cupboard of Santa Croce, c. 1335-40, tempera and gold on panel
• Ascension and Annunciation, 72x160 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Visitation, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Nativity of Christ, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Adoration of the Magi, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Dispute of Jesus with the Doctors of the Temple, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Baptism of Christ, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Transfiguration, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Last Supper, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Crucifixion of Christ with the Madonna and St. John the Evangelist, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Resurrection of Christ, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Appearance of the Risen Christ to Pious Women, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• 'Incredulity of St. Thomas,' 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• 'Pentecost,' 42.5x44 cm, Berlin, Gemäldegalerie
• Francis renounces his father's property, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Pope Innocent III sees Francis supporting the Lateran Basilica in a dream, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Pope Innocent III approves the Franciscan Rule, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Apparition of Francis on the Chariot of Fire, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Trial by Fire, 42.5x44 cm, Munich, Alte Pinakothek
• Nativity of Greccio, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Death of the Knight of Celano, 42.5x44 cm, Munich, Alte Pinakothek
• Francis preaches before Pope Honorius III, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Francis appears to the Chapter of Arles, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Francis receives the stigmata, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Death of Francis, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Resurrection of the Child, 42.5x44 cm, Berlin, Gemäldegalerie
• Martyrdom of the Franciscans in Ceuta, 42.5x44 cm, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia
• Tondi with martyrs and saints, frescoes, Florence, basilica of San Miniato al Monte, crypt
• Stories of Job, c. 1342, frescoes, Pisa, Camposanto monumentale
• Deposition from the Cross, detached fresco, Florence, Museo dell'Opera di Santa Croce
• Deposition in the sepulcher, fresco, Florence, basilica of Santa Croce, Bardi di Vernio chapel
• Annunciation, tempera and gold on panel, Fiesole, Bandini Museum
• Madonna and Child with Four Saints, tempera and gold on panel, Pistoia, church of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas
• Madonna and Child, tempera and gold on panel, 55.5x85 cm, Impruneta, church of San Lorenzo alle Rose
• Madonna Enthroned with Child, angels and saints, 1355, tempera and gold on panel, Florence, Uffizi Gallery
• Tree of Life, Last Supper and Sacred Stories, c. 1355, fresco, Florence, Museo dell'Opera di Santa Croce
• Crucifixion, fresco, Florence, basilica of Santa Croce, sacristy
• Crucifixion, fresco and sinopia, Florence, church of Ognissanti