COPPO DI MARCOVALDO

COPPO di MARCOVALDO. — Florentine painter. Taken prisoner by the Sienese during the battle of Montaperti (1260), he painted, to ransom himself from captivity, the Madonna del Bordone for the Church of the Servites in Siena (1261). On 22 July 1265 the Opera of S. Jacopo in Pistoia paid C. for the frescoing of a wall in the chapel of S. Jacopo in the Cathedral and for the gilding of the panels of a “testavangelo” made by Pace di Valentino, a Sienese goldsmith. With the destruction of the frescoes of S. Jacopo and other works, except for the Crucifix painted c. 1275, now preserved in the sacristy of the Cathedral, and which recent criticism tends to assign entirely to his son Salerno, the large painted Cross with Stories of the Passion in the museum of S. Gimignano, dated c. 1250, and a panel with the Madonna and Child in the church of the Servites in Orvieto, which follows the Madonna del Bordone, are unanimously attributed to C. A robust plasticity achieved through dense smoky shadows that incisively underscore the abstract formal signs and the scratches of the Byzantine tradition, giving them a new expressive and dramatic intensity, characterizes the style of this great master and makes him the most significant and lofty Florentine precursor of the painting of Cimabue.