ANDREA DA FIRENZE. – Florentine painter, identified by Bonaiini with Andrea Ristori of the people of S. Pancrazio (1333–92), but identified by Milanesi, Berenson, van Marle, and Toesca with Andrea di Buonaiuto or Bonaiuti; the latter, enrolled as early as 1343 in the guild of physicians and apothecaries, drew up the contract in 1365 for the frescoes of S. Maria Novella, in 1366 took part in the commission for the construction of the Cathedral, and received payments in 1377 for the paintings in the Camposanto of Pisa; his will is dated 2 November 1377.
Sirén attributed to the master, as a youthful work, the panel depicting s. Maria Maddalena, formerly in the Beckerath collection in Berlin, although critics do not unanimously recognize it as his. The great cycles by A. in the Spanish Chapel at S. Maria Novella in Florence and in the Camposanto of Pisa show how, in the second half of the fourteenth century, A. in particular was receptive to the Giottesque heritage under Sienese influence. Nevertheless, A. succeeded in creating a style of his own, decorative and pleasing for its liveliness of color.
Beginning work at S. Maria Novella around 1365, A. was certainly a well-known and mature master. The Chapel, simple and square in form, was entirely decorated by A., probably with the help of pupils, as shown by some inferior sections. The program is unified in style; the subject represents the glorification of the Dominican order and is influenced by the Specchio di vera penitenza of the convent’s prior Jacopo Passavanti (d. 1357), in accordance with the scholastic ideas of s. Tommaso and with reminiscences of Dante’s Paradiso. The altar wall is decorated with the Andata al Calvario, the Crocefissione, and the Discesa al Limbo. On the entrance wall are scenes from the Storia di s. Pietro martire. On the right wall is the Attività e il trionfo dell'ordine dei Domenicani; on the left, the Trionfo di s. Tommaso d'Aquino; and in the vault of the chapel, the Resurrezione, the Ascensione, the Navicella (after Giotto’s mosaic in S. Pietro in Vaticano), and the Pentecoste.
The three frescoes in the upper register, with the stories of s. Ranieri, in the Camposanto of Pisa – now badly damaged – surpass those in the Spanish Chapel in decorative and chromatic terms. The surface becomes even more crowded with figures, without any order among the characters. It seems that the artist died after completing the three scenes, since the pictorial cycle was finished by Antonio Veneziano. – Vedi Tav. CII.
rentine Painters, Nuova York 1909, p. 21; R. van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, III, l'Aja 1924, p. 425; P. Toesca, Pittura fiorentina del Trecento, Verona 1929, p. 60.