TADDEO di BARTOLO. — Painter, born in Siena around 1362, died there in 1422; son of Bartolo di Mino, a barber, and not of the painter Bartolo di Fredi (Vasari).
The oldest work signed and dated by him, a polyptych of 1389 formerly in S. Paolo at Collagarli (S. Miniato) and considered lost, reappeared at a London auction in 1950. In 1393, in Genoa, he undertook to paint two altarpieces in the church of S. Luca; after returning to Tuscany, he executed the frescoes of the Last Judgment in the collegiate church of S. Gimignano; in 1395 he painted an altarpiece in Pisa for the Sardi chapel in S. Francesco, later transferred to the Museum of Grenoble; in 1397, the Baptism of Christ for the baptistery of Triora; in 1400 he signed and dated the triptych in the Compagnia di S. Caterina della Notte in Siena, and in 1401 the very large triptych with the Assumption for the cathedral of Montepulciano, the largest panel painting of the entire Sienese school. From 1406 to 1408 he frescoed the Stories of the Virgin (now partly repainted) in the inner chapel of the Palazzo pubblico of Siena: the cycle is completed by the frescoes in the antechapel, executed in 1414. Dated 1409 is the Annunciation between ss. Cosma and Damiano in the Pinacoteca of Siena (no. 131), one of his most important works. His last dated work is the Madonna of 1418 in the Fogg Museum of Cambridge, Mass. (U.S.A.). T. brought to a noble conclusion, well into the Quattrocento, the pictorial tradition begun in the first half of the Trecento with the Lorenzetti: an artist lacking in inspiration, but always dignified and correct, he helped to spread Sienese painting once again beyond the confines of his city, in Liguria as well as in Umbria and Sicily.