BARTOLO di FREDI. — Sienese painter, born c. 1330. In 1353 he rented a workshop in Siena to practice his art together with Andrea Vanni (v.) and was inscribed in the statutes of 1355. He married in 1356, and from 1368 to 1400 he took an active part in the public life of Siena, being elected several times as captain of the people and prior for the third of Camollia. In 1376 he was appointed castellan of Massa; the will he dictated in 1407 dispels the belief that he was the father of Taddeo di Bartolo: his son was instead the painter Andrea (v.). He died in 1410.
Of the numerous works recorded in documents and contracts of "allogazione" (commission), not a single one remains; in compensation, we possess of him various panels and frescoes with signature and date, which not only allow us to follow the development of his art from the Madonna of Mercy in the museum of Pienza of 1364 (his first dated work), to the great altarpiece of 1388 now dispersed between the museum of Montalcino and the pinacoteca of Siena, but also enable us to attribute to him with certainty many others in Siena, Poggibonsi, San Gimignano, Torrita, Lucignano, and in the museums of Paris and Boston. A decisive element for reconstructing the chronology of B. has been provided by the very recent discovery of the date of the great cycle of frescoes with Stories of the Old Testament in the collegiate church of San Gimignano, the most important and extensive enterprise of the painter. Rather than 1356, as Vasari believed unanimously on the basis of tradition, these frescoes date to 1367 and thus conclude the first period of B.'s activity. The most significant works of the second period of B. are, besides the aforementioned dated work of 1388, the Deposition, signed and dated 1382, and other panels with Stories of St. Philip in the museum of Montalcino. Bartolo's painting, inspired by a refined eclecticism that enabled it to assimilate both the tradition of Simone Martini and that of the Lorenzetti, is distinguished by its narrative vivacity and perhaps finds its greatest merit in a clear and festive sense of color, typically Sienese.
Bartolo di Fredi - The Flight into Egypt to the Father's House. Siena, Pinacoteca.