Taddeo di BARTOLO - Lot 87

Taddeo di BARTOLO (Siena 1362 - 1422) Saint Anthony of Padua Panel, enclosed in a carved and painted wood frame 43 x 16.5 cm Bibliography Exhibition catalog, I colori del divino, Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, 2001, n°77, f. 63 ; G.E. Solberg, "Taddeo di Bartolo's altarpiece at San Francesco in Pisa: new discoveries and a reconstruction", The Burlington Magazine, March 2010, pp.144-151, pp. 13-14, reproduced fig. 12 Our painting is one of the elements of the left pilaster of the Sienese master's altarpiece painted (1395) for the chapel of the Sardi Campigli merchant family in the sacristy of the church of San Francesco in Pisa, depicting the Virgin of Humility between saints John the Baptist and Andrew, now preserved in Budapest, Szépmveszéti Múzeum (Solberg, 2010). A native of Siena, eldest son of the barber Bartolo di maestro Mino (and not of the painter Bartolo di Fredi, as Giorgio Vasari writes) and Francesca di Cino, Taddeo di Bartolo was probably born in 1362-1363. The marriage of his parents in 1361 and the news of his death at the age of fifty-nine (Vasari, 1568, 1878, p. 39) are other sporadic clues to the painter's life. Nor is the precise context of his training attested. His roots lie in the Sienese context of painters of the previous generation, in particular Jacopo di Mino del Pellicciaio (Siena, 1315/1319 - ante 1396). Throughout his career, he treasured the lessons of the great representatives of the Sienese school: Simone Martini, the Lorenzetti brothers and Barnaba da Modena. Taddeo was particularly active in the public life of his native city, holding important offices: executor of the Gabella will (1404), member of the Council Major on several occasions (1412, 1416, 1420), Captain of the People for the district of S. Salvatore (1418). In 1389, he signed his first surviving work, the Madonna and Child between Saints Sebastian, Paul, John the Baptist and Nicholas of Bari, for the oratory of S. Paolo a Collegarli near San Miniato al Tedesco (private collection). The painter's career took off when he was commissioned to decorate the collegiate church of San Gimignano, where he painted his famous Last Judgment fresco (1393). Our painting dates from the artist's Pisan period (1395).