Lot 11: Taddeo Gaddi (active Florence ?mid-1320s-1366)

Saint Anthony Abbot
on gold ground panel, the gable made-up
24 1/4 x 13 7/8 in. (61.8 x 35.4 cm.)

E.S. Skaug, Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico, Oslo, 1999, I, p. 93, II, no. 387.

Berlin; sale, Lepke, Berlin, 6-7 March, 1928, lot 74, as Florentine School.

Taddeo Gaddi was the most distinguished Florentine painter of the mid-trecento. The son of the painter Gaddo Gaddi (documented 1312-30) to whom no extant work has been attributed, Taddeo was a pupil of Giotto. He emerged as a significant artist in his own right in the 1320s, as is seen in the polyptych of The Man of Sorrows with four Saints from S. Croce, formerly in the Bromley Davenport collection, which was sold in these Rooms, 19 May 1991, lot 35.

Like Giotto, Gaddi had a strong association with S. Croce, his fresco cycle in the Baroncelli Chapel which, with its spatial subtlety and pioneering interest in light and narrative conviction, marks the high point of his early career: the subtle architecture in the fresco of the Presentation of the Virgin led Villani and Vasari to suppose, quite incorrectly, that Gaddi had himself been an architect. Giotto's death in 1337 marked a watershed in the Florentine artistic world, but Gaddi's remained an innovative spirit, the head of a successful workshop, within which his sons Giovanni (documented 1362-85) and the better-known Agnolo were to develop. Gaddi's distinction as a painter of frescoes was matched by the precision of his works of smaller format, and the very success of this example helps to explain the continuing vitality of the Giottesque tradition at Florence until the end of the trecento, a period conveniently marked by his son Agnolo's death in 1396.

As Richard Offner, who knew the picture from an old photograph, was the first to recognise, this panel comes from the same polyptych as the Saint Julian recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from the Heinemann collection, as the evidence of the meandering vine pattern of the borders of both panels confirms (see fig. 1). The New York panel, like that under discussion, was also cut at the gable. The Saint Julian, first recorded in the Abegg collection in 1949, was published by Roberto Longhi in 1959 ('Qualità e industria in Taddeo Gaddi', Paragone, 10, no. 109, pp. 37-40, fig. 15). He dated it to the early 1340s on the basis of similarities with the work of Maso di Banco. Longhi's attribution of the panel to Taddeo was endorsed by Parronchi, Donati, Ferretti and Nesi. Ladis qualified their views (A. Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi, Critical Reappraisal and Catalogue Raisonné, Columbia and London, 1982, p. 220, no. 49, illustrated 49-1), arguing that the 'awkward transition between the left arm and the sheathed sword in the saint's left hand as well as the clumsily drawn fingers betray the work of an assistant', before observing that 'the sensitive head which echoes the splendid red of the garment in the freely painted cheeks and in the neck and the illusionistic projection of the sword into the viewer's space suggest that Taddeo provided the design and perhaps helped with the painting.' In the present panel one could similarly point to the commanding volumetric form of the draped body, the calligraphic sensitivity of the flowing hair and the sophisticated handling of the Saint's flesh, darkened by the Saint's long exposure to the elements. Ladis has implied (e-mail of 29 March 2000 in the Metropolitan Museum files) that he would 'probably upgrade' the New York panel were he revising his catalogue.

Ladis' dating for the New York panel, towards 1345, was advanced on the grounds that the elaborate halo pattern is similar to those of other works, including the damaged Annunciation in the Museo Bandini, Fiesole, no. 22 (op. cit., no. 16), which he places in the period of circa 1345-50. As Longhi pointed out, the trailing vine motif mentioned above is also found in the Annunciation, and in the polyptych in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, no. 1097 (ibid., no. 14) as Ladis observed. Among the punches used in the panel, Ladis recognised a 'trefoliated shape' that only appears elsewhere in Gaddi's known production in the Fiesole picture.

The picture's authorship was recognised by Miklòs Boskovits in 1990, and the attribution has been endorsed, on the basis of photographs, by Everett Fahy, to whom we are indebted for additional information about both panels.

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.