Gioteschi

GIOTESCHI. - Until the beginning of this century this term designated more or less all the Florentine painters of the fourteenth century. Today, with the progress of studies, the term is by now restricted to the collaborators and followers of Giotto active between the end of the 13th century and the middle of the 14th.

Among the painters of the older generation, who graft Giottism onto archaicizing experiences, sometimes called "paragiotteschi," apart from the almost mythical Buffalmacco, the MASTER OF ST. CECILIA (from the eponymous panel in the Uffizi) stands out for freshness; he collaborated on the Assisi cycle, executing the last three stories and, on a design by Giotto, the first. Inferior to him is PACINO DI BUONAGUIDA, with his meticulous and miniaturistic style.

From the Master of St. Cecilia depends in part the very refined MASTER OF FIGLINE, author, among other things, of the Assumption in S. Croce, often attributed to Giotto. In the lower church of Assisi there worked, in the first decade of the fourteenth century, the MASTER OF THE VAULTS, whose mediocre Franciscan allegories long usurped the name of Giotto, and other anonymous artists, among whom excels the supposed STEFANO, author of the Stories of St. Stanislaus, already thoroughly imbued with Sienese colorism. From Stefano descend on one side the great MASO DI BANCO, on the other the probable GIOTTINO (son of Stefano), that is, the author of the stupendous Pietà of S. Remigio in the Uffizi and perhaps of an Assumption (destroyed in the last war) in the Camposanto of Pisa and of frescoes at Chiaravalle Milanese (from which would descend, in the second half of the century, Giovanni da Milano). In the same lower church of Assisi the most faithful g., but not ignoble, is the MASTER OF THE CHAPEL OF THE MAGDALENE. Among the painters known by name, JACOPO DEL CASENTINO and BERNARDO DADDI (v.) belong to the ranks of the g., although the first is archaicizing and the second strongly influenced by Siena, and, by documented discipleship under the master and honest fidelity as a follower, TADDEO GADDI (v.). - See pl. XXXVII.

Roberto Salvini