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 Servi of Siena (1261). On 22 July 1265, the Opera di S. Jacopo of Pistoia paid C. for the frescoing of a wall of 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. Although the frescoes of S. Jacopo and other works have been destroyed, with the exception of the Crucifix painted ca. 1275, now preserved in the sacristy of the Cathedral, and which the most recent criticism tends to attribute entirely to his son Salerno, the large Cross painted with Stories of the Passion in the museum of S. Gimignano, for which a date around 1250 has been proposed, and a panel with the Madonna and Child in the church of the Servi of Orvieto, which would postdate the Madonna del Bordone, are unanimously attributed to C. A robust plasticity, achieved through dense smoky shadows that incisively emphasize the abstract formal conventions and graphic linearity of the Byzantine tradition, giving them an entirely new expressive and dramatic intensity, characterizes the style of this great master and makes him the most significant and lofty Florentine predecessor of the painting of Cimabue.