Artists and Diplomacy in Late Medieval Tuscany: The Case of Giotto, Simone Martini, Andrea Pisano,...

Artists and Diplomacy in Late Medieval Tuscany: The Case of Giotto, Simone Martini,Andrea Pisano, and OthersAuthor(s): Brendan CassidySource: Gesta, Vol. 51, No. 2 (September 2012), pp. 91-110Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the International Center ofMedieval ArtStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/670674Accessed: 03-11-2016 10:28 UTC

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91GESTA 51/2 © The International Center of Medieval Art 2012

Artists and Diplomacy in Late Medieval Tuscany: The Case of Giotto, Simone Martini, Andrea Pisano, and Others

bRENDAN CASSIDyUniversity of St. Andrews

Abstract

Although medieval artists traveled widely for work, political circumstances could determine where they went. The effects that war, peace, and diplomacy might have on artists’ move-ments and thus on the spread of artistic ideas have not been fully acknowledged in the literature. Endemic hostility among certain Italian cities in the later Middle Ages militated against cultural exchanges between them. Artists from predominantly Guelf towns such as Florence or Ghibelline towns such as Pisa tended to find employment in places of similar political persuasion. Occasionally, however, traditional enemies might reach a temporary accommodation, to combat a common threat, perhaps, or for their mutual economic benefit. These periods of rapprochement, although sometimes very brief, opened the way for artistic exchange. The Ghibelline lords of Milan used the occasion of a peace with Florence to call Giotto to their city. Simone Martini produced his most important altarpiece for Ghibelline Pisa during a period of truce between Pisa and his hometown of Siena. Florence, for its part, lacking a sculp-tural workforce of its own, took advantage of the opportunity offered by the decadelong peace with Pisa in the 1330s to em-ploy Pisan sculptors and to initiate building projects in which sculpted decoration played a prominent part. Andrea Pisano and Giovanni di Balduccio transformed the character of the Florentine Baptistery, the cathedral bell tower, and Orsan-michele and helped train a number of native craftsmen. The presence of these distinguished artists in foreign towns, made possible by truces and treaties, had a profound effect on local artistic developments.

Late medieval artists in Italy obtained commissions by various means. The most gifted of them, such as Giotto or Simone Martini, were in demand throughout the peninsula and beyond. News of their reputations was spread by word of mouth and, very occasionally, through the writings of their contemporaries.1 Then as now, personal recommendations were important.2 The religious orders with their extensive network of churches and convents provided incomparable opportuni-ties for favored artists. Simone Martini, for example, having impressed the Dominicans with his high altarpiece for Sta. Caterina in Pisa, which he completed in time for the meeting there of the Roman Province of the order (1320), was com-missioned to produce a comparable altarpiece for the friars’ church in Orvieto. In the 1260s Coppo di Marcovaldo enjoyed the patronage of the Servites.3 Giotto was a favorite painter of the Franciscans, executing work for their churches in Florence

and Pisa, in Assisi, Padua, and Rimini, and possibly also in borgo San Sepolcro.4 The webs of connectedness that existed between artists and particular religious orders have often been discussed, as have the relationships between artists and spe-cific families. Less research has been done, however, on the ways in which artistic patronage was influenced by the politics of the patron or on the effect that political circumstances had on artists’ careers. while there is no evidence for artists hav-ing been exiled as Dante was because of their political affilia-tions, their lives, nevertheless, were shaped in less radical ways by the ever-shifting political landscape of late medieval Italy.5 The commissions they received may have been determined, to some extent, by the diplomatic ties that existed between their native towns and other places.6 This is scarcely surprising; for then just as now, good relations between cities kept open the channels for cultural exchange, and enmity shut them down.7 The fact that the patterns of connection between politics and patronage in the duecento and trecento have gone largely unex-plored is undoubtedly owing to the complex and ever-changing diplomacy that marked communication between Italy’s numer-ous cities.8

Guelf and Ghibelline Art?

Any account of Italian politics and patronage in the thir-teenth and fourteenth centuries must consider the long and often violent divisions between the Guelfs and the Ghibel-lines, for, as will be suggested, hostilities between them might limit where artists were employed. The parties had emerged as political forces in Italy about 1230–50, when Frederick II of hohenstaufen, holy Roman Emperor and king of Sicily, attempted to reassert imperial authority in the territories of the old Italian kingdom (the regnum italicum). Some cities had ral-lied to his cause, whereas others, with support from the popes, had opposed him. when the emperor died in 1250, the papacy, which had the kingdom of Sicily in its gift, denied the succes-sion to Frederick’s heirs and entrusted it instead to Charles of Anjou, brother of king Louis IX of France (Fig. 1). Financed by Florentine bankers, Charles established a French monarchy in southern Italy by defeating the hohenstaufen claimants to the throne at the battles of benevento in 1266 and Tagliacozzo in 1268. The Guelf alliance thus formed between the Angevins, the papacy, and Florence would survive, if intermittently and at


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times only in name, until the fifteenth century. Ranged against it would be an assortment of hostile forces that had either pros-pered under the empire or had reason to oppose the alliance or some of its members.

Enmity between the parties, although an ever-present threat to the peninsula’s stability in the period 1240–1340 and even afterward, was most bitter at certain times. The late 1250s and 1260s were such a time when, during the contest for the kingdom of Sicily, the hohenstaufens and their Ghibelline supporters were repeatedly at war with the Angevins and the Guelfs. The battle of Montaperti in 1260, for example, saw the Sienese and their allies rout a numerically superior Guelf force led by Florence. Later, in the trecento, conflict between the fac-tions would be reignited whenever German emperors appeared in Italy. The years 1310–16, during and shortly after Emperor henry VII’s Italian sojourn (Fig. 2), saw an intensification of hostilities, as did 1327–29, when Emperor Ludwig of bavaria

again decided to take control of his Italian lands. betweentimes, however, there were also periods of comparative calm and occasions when traditionally rival towns attempted to repair their differences through peace treaties. The years from 1317 until the early 1320s witnessed a hiatus in the war between the Tuscan Guelfs (Florence and Siena) and Ghibellines (Pisa and Arezzo) before Castruccio Castricani, lord of Lucca, broke the truce. Likewise, the 1330s were largely peaceful owing to the policy of reconciliation pursued by the then lord of Pisa, Fazio della Gherardesca.

This waxing and waning of political tension were reflected in the itineraries of artists and the commissions they received. The places most likely to employ them for public works were, not surprisingly, either those with which their native towns shared long-standing political sympathies (were, in other words, either Guelf or Ghibelline) or were temporarily allied or at peace. The pattern was already established in the duecento.

FIGURE 1. Arnolfo di Cambio, Charles I of Anjou, Rome, Musei Capitolini (photo: author).

FIGURE 2. Tino di Camaino, Emperor henry of Luxembourg, Pisa, Museo del Duomo (photo: author).


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when Nicola Pisano, a native probably of Apulia and thus a subject in Emperor Frederick’s Sicilian kingdom, moved north to Tuscany, he was employed in the 1250s and 1260s in the pro-imperial cities of Pisa and Siena.9 we do not know whether Nicola shared the political views of his patrons or whether he held any political views at all, but in his sculpture he expressed the partisan interests of those who paid him. Quotations from Roman antiquities on his pulpit for the baptistery in Pisa (1259) alluded to the part played by that city in the ancient empire and, by implication, testified to its continuing fidelity to the impe-rial cause.10 his subsequent employment by Siena (1265–68) reflected the close diplomatic and, in consequence, artistic links between Tuscan Ghibellines in the 1260s, when the threat of a Guelf response to the battle of Montaperti was ever present.

Ghibelline patrons, it would seem, had an influence on each other’s taste. The San bernardino Master’s Madonna and Child of 1262, for example (Fig. 3), which was probably painted for a Franciscan confraternity in Siena, was reproduced almost exactly in a picture made shortly afterward for Arezzo, a Ghibelline ally (Fig. 4). Again, as with Nicola’s imperial allusions on his Pisa pulpit, there is a partisan element in the iconography of these panels of the 1260s, for the cloths of honor behind the Virgin are decorated with the eagle of the empire (Fig. 5).11

FIGURE 3. San Bernardino Master, Madonna and Child, Siena, Pinacoteca Nazionale (photo: Maginnis, The world of the Early Sienese Painter, Fig. 8).

FIGURE 4. Madonna and Child, Arezzo, Museo Statale di Arte Medievale e Moderna (photo: Maginnis, The world of the Early Sienese Painter, Fig. 9).

FIGURE 5. Madonna and Child, detail of Fig. 4.


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Given the political climate, it is no surprise that Florentine artists were not employed in Ghibelline towns. The only case of which I am aware is readily explained. when Coppo di Marco-valdo executed the Madonna del Bordone for the Servite church in Siena in 1261 (Fig. 6), he did so probably as a prisoner of war. Coppo is mentioned as a shield bearer (pavesarius) in the Florentine militia before the battle of Montaperti during which he was probably taken captive and later obliged to place his talent at the service of the victorious Sienese.12 To compound his humiliation, he was required to depict his Servite Madonna as a Ghibelline supporter by, once again, decorating her veil

with the symbolic eagle of the empire (Fig. 7).13 The eagle (the “sacred bird,” as Dante called it) would be ubiquitous in works of art commissioned by Ghibelline sympathizers until well into the trecento. we find it, for example, in the gable of the tomb of bishop Guido Tarlati in Arezzo (Fig. 8) and on the tombs of the Della Scala in Verona.

besides these symbols of imperial allegiance, the tombs of the signori in Arezzo, Verona, and Milan provide other evidence that the ruling clans in these Ghibelline towns had ideas in common about art and about its capacity to serve their political agendas. In life, the signori had plotted together and fought alongside each other, and the ideals and attitudes they shared were also reflected in the design and decoration of their tombs. Ambitious in scale and furnished with sculpture that proclaimed the lord’s military might, they are different from tombs erected elsewhere in Italy at the time. Designed to play their part in the cult of the ruler, they publicized in stone the achievements and virtues of the lord with a view to maintain-ing the dynasty in power. The most prominent feature of the monuments to the Della Scala, to bernabò Visconti in Milan, and most probably also to Guido Tarlati in Arezzo was an equestrian figure of the deceased shown alive and accoutred for war (Fig. 9).14 On the Tarlati tomb and those of Cangrande della Scala and Azzo Visconti were accompanying reliefs rep-resenting victories in battle and successful sieges and records in marble of lands conquered (Fig. 10).15 In addition to these bom-bastic assertions of power were other images that betrayed the anxieties of signorial rule. while some lords achieved power by force, coercion, or duplicity and others served at the pleasure of their people, most of them aspired to hold on to the power they had gained and sought ways to establish their legal right to rule. Scenes showing the transfer of authority from the commune to the signore or of his investiture by the emperor confirmed (in stone) his position de jure as well as de facto.16

FIGURE 6. Coppo di Marcovaldo, Madonna del bordone, Siena, Sta. Maria dei Servi (photo: Wikimedia Commons).

FIGURE 7. Coppo di Marcovaldo, Madonna del bordone, Virgin’s headdress, detail of Fig. 6.


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FIGURE 8. (above) Tomb of Bishop Guido Tarlati, Arezzo, Cathedral (photo: author).

FIGURE 9. (top right) Tomb of Cangrande della Scala, Verona, Sta. Maria Antica (photo: Courtauld Images).

FIGURE 10. (bottom right) Tomb of Bishop Guido Tarlati, detail of Fig. 8, Attacks on Fronzola and Caprese by Tarlati’s Troops (photo: Courtauld Images).


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Although the tombs of the signori are architecturally dis-similar, they are comparable in iconographic emphases. Their commemorative focus is on the accomplishments and quali-ties of the deceased in life rather than the fate of his soul. The religious iconography that had become conventional on Italian tombs (e.g., patron saints of the deceased, the Man of Sorrows, the commendatio animae) is combined with, and sometimes displaced by, imagery that is secular, militaristic, and self-serv-ing. This use of art to celebrate a local ruler or the politically powerful would have been anathema in the Guelf communes of Florence, Siena, or Perugia.17

In the communes, which were governed by elected repre-sentatives of the people, the ruling classes were almost never the subject of public imagery. Communal ideology eschewed the glorification of the individual, and legislation regulated per-sonal display.18 The emphasis was instead on community and the common good.19 The state, not the statesman, was deserving of praise, and to give form to the abstract concept of the state (or the body politic), to enable it to be visualized, the com-munes resorted to metaphor and mythology, to allegory and per-sonification.20 Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s fresco of Good and bad Government in the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, is only the most extensive surviving example of a work that celebrates the ideals and virtues, the history and achievements of the commune. Else-where, similar messages were expressed more concisely, but the underlying themes were much the same: the antiquity and glorious foundations of the city, the virtues it claimed for itself, and the civic ideals it sought to promote. On the Fontana Mag-giore (1278), the city of Perugia is personified as Abundance (Fig. 11) and her ancient origins are alluded to in the figure of the founder, Eulistes.21 Pisa is represented as a charitable and fertile mother supported by the Virtues on the pulpit and portal of her cathedral (Fig. 12), and Florence is symbolized as a lion and a new hercules in images throughout the city.22

The different emphases outlined here between a political art that glorified individual power in sculpted “portraits” and scenes of the ruler’s exploits and one in which an allusive visual language was devised to convey civic and ethical ideals are neither strictly Guelf nor Ghibelline. Rather, they are indicative of contrasting forms of government, the one totalitarian (signo-rial), the other quasi-democratic (communal). Nevertheless, it is the case that most signorial regimes were supportive of and were supported by the emperor and thus Ghibelline, and most central Italian communes, intent on preserving their indepen-dence from authoritarian emperors, were anti-imperial and thus Guelf. And the alliances that Guelfs and Ghibellines formed, for their mutual defense, for instance, led also to the exchange of artists and of artistic ideas.

Patronage and Politics in the Careers of Giotto and Simone Martini

After Siena converted to Guelfism in 1271 and became a partner with Florence in the Guelf alliance, cultural exchanges

between the two cities increased markedly.23 In the later duecento and early trecento, the most gifted Sienese painters regularly received commissions from Florentine patrons. In 1285 Duccio painted the Rucellai Madonna for the confrater-nity of laudesi that met in Sta. Maria Novella.24 In the 1320s Ugolino di Nerio (or da Siena) executed the high altarpieces for both Sta. Croce and Sta. Maria Novella.25 And Ambrogio Lorenzetti was frequently in Florence from 1319 engaged on a range of works.26

The itineraries of Giotto and Simone Martini may serve to illustrate how the careers of celebrated artists in the early trecento, and the patronage they enjoyed, evolved along politi-cal lines. both Giotto and Simone were political painters insofar as they had been employed by their respective governments and their allies to produce images to communicate political ideals or to serve as propaganda for the ruling class. In the Palazzo Vec-

FIGURE 11. Nicola Pisano and Workshop, Perugia Personified as Abundance, from Perugia, Fontana Maggiore (photo: author).


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chio in Florence, Giotto portrayed Duke Charles of Calabria, son of the Guelf party’s nominal lord, king Robert.27 his fresco of the comune rubato (commune plundered) in the palace of the podestà (chief magistrate), as far as it can be reconstructed from Giorgio Vasari’s description, issued a warning to those who put self-interest above the common good (bonum comune), a message comparable to that delivered by Lorenzetti’s more expansive cycle in Siena.28 Later, while working in Naples for the Angevins (1328–33), he painted in the Castelnuovo a series of uomini famosi with accompanying donne illustri, an unusual iconographic combination that was probably intended to endorse king Robert’s controversial decision to designate Joanna, his granddaughter, as heir to the throne.29

Simone was similarly employed to express through images the ideals and ideology of the rulers he served. his Maestà in Siena’s town hall celebrated the Virgin Mary, the city’s patron

and protectress. Enthroned under a canopy decorated with Angevin (and therefore Guelf) fleur-de-lis, the Virgin urges the city’s governors to give good and honest counsel and to ensure that the strong do not subjugate the weak.30 his frescoed life of St. Martin in the papal foundation of S. Francesco, Assisi, contains lightly veiled allusions to the primacy of ecclesiastical power at a time when the temporal authority of the Church was being challenged by the emperor and by imperialists such as Dante and Marsilius of Padua.31 his great altarpiece represent-ing St. Louis of Toulouse, besides celebrating the saint’s recent canonization (1317), provided an opportunity to reemphasize, in the face of lingering skepticism, the legitimacy of king Rob-ert’s right to the Neapolitan throne (Fig. 13).32

Giotto’s career exemplifies the partisan nature of patron-age at the time. his patrons (e.g., the Florentine government, members of the papal curia, and king Robert of Naples) and

FIGURE 13. Simone Martini, St. Louis of Toulouse, Naples, Museo di Capodimonte (photo: Wikimedia Commons).

FIGURE 12. Giovanni Pisano, Personification of Pisa above the Four Cardinal Virtues, from Pulpit, Pisa, Ca-thedral (photo: author).


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the towns in which he worked (e.g., Padua, Assisi, Rome, Naples, Rimini, and probably bologna) are distinguished by their impeccable Guelf pedigrees.33 Padua, for instance, after it had been liberated by papal troops from the tyranni-cal Ezzelino and Alberico da Romano (1260) and before it accepted the Carrara as signori (from 1318), was virulently anti-signorial and anti-imperial.34 Assisi, with the papal basil-ica of S. Francesco at its heart, was resolutely Guelf except for a brief period in 1319–24, when Ghibellines held power.35 And Rimini, although controlled by signori, was unusual in that the ruling clan, the Malatesta, was committed to the Guelf cause, with family members serving regularly as officeholders in the Florentine government and army.36 There is, however, one irregularity in Giotto’s itinerary. In April 1334 he was called home from Naples by the Florentine priors to become master of works (capomaestro) at Florence Cathedral, the most important project of the day.37 In July the cathedral bell tower was begun under his supervision.38 Soon afterward, however, according to the chronicler Giovanni Villani, with the project still in its early stages and just before his death, the priors dispatched Giotto to work for the rulers of Milan. “Master Giotto having returned from Milan, where our Commune had sent him to be of service to the signore of Milan, passed from this life on the 8th day of January 1336 and was buried by the Commune in Sta. Reparata with great honor.”39

There is no reason to doubt Villani’s testimony; his chron-icle was written at the same time as the events he describes, he was intimately involved in Florentine affairs, and he was a member of the committee responsible for commissioning the baptistery doors.40 Giotto’s Milanese assignment, then, is dif-ficult to understand, if only because relations between Florence and Milan were rarely cordial. Throughout most of the four-teenth century and into the early decades of the fifteenth cen-tury, the lords of Milan, the Visconti, were the greatest threat to the survival and security of the Florentine republic. They had been leading members of the Ghibelline league since the time of Emperor henry VII. Azzo Visconti (d. 1339) had fought alongside Castruccio Castracani in 1325 at the battle of Alto-pascio, when the army of Florence was roundly defeated.41 In the rhetoric of Florentine poets, chroniclers, and officials, the Milanese were regularly denounced as, among other things, tyrannous vipers.42 why, then, should Giotto, who had recently returned from Naples at the express request of the Florentine priors to become capomaestro at the cathedral, have been sent by these same officials to work for the Visconti? An explanation may lie in the diplomacy of the early 1330s.

In 1331 the city of brescia invited king John of bohe-mia to become its protector and lord.43 Other places followed its lead, and, by the end of the year, the king was in control, nominally at least, of all the major cities of Lombardy as well as Lucca.44 After offering support initially, however, the signori of the north (the Visconti, Della Scala, Gonzaga, and Este), fearful of the bohemian’s expanding power, united to oppose him. Florence joined their ranks, provoked by the loss of Lucca,

which the Florentines had long had in their sights.45 when John met secretly with the papal legate, bertrando del Poggetto, sus-picion arose that pope and king between them were planning to subject Tuscany and Lombardy to their authority.46 At Fer-rara in September 1332, Florence signed an agreement with the northern lords to defend their territories against attack.47 Such an alliance between Guelfs and Ghibellines was unprecedented and sufficiently extraordinary for Villani to remark on it:

And note reader, the new change in the century, that king Robert, head of the church party and of the Guelfs, and similarly the Commune of Florence, should be allied in company with the great tyrants and Ghibellines of Italy, and specially with Messer Azzo Visconti of Milan, who in the service of Castruccio had defeated the Florentines at Altopascio . . . but king Robert and the Florentines were driven to it by their apprehensiveness toward . . . king John and their scorn for the legate because of his association with king John.48

when news of the coalition reached the legate, he instructed the Florentines to break with the signori, those tyrants and enemies of the Church, and reminded them of the sorrows they had suf-fered at Ghibelline hands. Fear of a common threat, however, had brought these erstwhile adversaries together and allowed the political differences that historically had separated them to be temporarily ignored.49 In April 1333 a combined force of Milanese, Mantuans, Veronese, and Florentines went to the aid of Ferrara, which was then being besieged by a papal army.50 Some months later, a truce was reached, and in October 1333 John of bohemia returned to Germany and quit Italy for good.

The bonds of allegiance that had been forged between Guelfs and Ghibellines to meet the threat from king John sur-vived his departure and led to a period of unusual stability in Italy, one result of which is revealed in Galvano Fiamma’s chronicle of the Visconti:

Azzo Visconti, considering himself to have made peace with the Church and to be freed from all his enemies, resolved in his heart to make his house glorious, for the Philosopher says in the fourth book of the Ethics that it is the work of magnificence to construct a fine dwell-ing, since the people seeing marvelous buildings stand awestruck in fervent admiration, as is stated in the sixth book of the Politics.51

Relieved of the burden of war, Azzo’s thoughts turned to build-ing and to art, the patronage of which would redound to his reputation (for magnificenza) and would glorify the family name. beginning in the mid-1330s, he embarked on a num-ber of impressive ventures. The palace chap el of S. Gottardo in Corte was completed with “histories of the blessed Vir-gin and miraculous windows . . . two ivory pulpits . . . altars with ornaments of gold and silver . . . and vessels of porphyry


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ornamented with silver for holy water.”52 The magnificent marble shrine to St. Peter Martyr in S. Eustorgio, paid for in part by Azzo and Giovanni Visconti, was begun about 1335 by Giovanni di balduccio.53 And Giotto was invited to paint an allegory of worldly Glory (“gloria mondana,” as Galvano Fiamma calls it) in Azzo’s new palace.54 Milan’s unusual rap-prochement with Florence had given the Visconti access to Flo-rentine artists. we may assume that Azzo, as ambitious in his artistic patronage as he was in his pursuit of land, had requested the services of the great Florentine painter. we may equally suppose that the priors of Florence, as a token of their goodwill and despite Giotto’s having been contracted to work on their cathedral, agreed to his request in order to cement relations with a powerful new ally. Like Jan van Eyck and Rubens after him, Giotto was sent by his government to a foreign power as a diplomatic “gift.”

The career of Simone Martini was not dissimilar to Giot-to’s in that he also worked almost exclusively for patrons and in cities with unimpugnable Guelf credentials: for his native Siena, of course; for the Franciscans at Assisi; for king Robert of Naples; and for the papacy in Avignon.55 yet again, however, on a single occasion he found employment in a traditionally

Ghibelline town after a peace treaty had established the circum-stances that made this possible. Simone’s high altarpiece for the Dominican church of Sta. Caterina in Pisa (Fig. 14), the most elaborate and iconographically complex of the painter’s great polyptychs, was completed in 1319 or 1320, at a time when Tuscan Guelfs and Ghibellines were temporarily at peace after years of tension and war.56

The old hatreds had been reignited with the coming of the German emperor henry VII to Italy in 1310 and had culminated in the battle of Montecatini in August 1315. In that encounter, Uguccione della Faggiuola, lord of Pisa, with help from the Visconti of Milan and the Tarlati of Arezzo, routed the Tus-can Guelfs led by Philip of Taranto, brother of king Robert.57 Despite his victory, however, Uguccione’s increasingly tyran-nical behavior, warmongering, and high taxation soon alienated Pisa’s influential merchant class. Seizing the opportunity of Uguccione’s absence, the merchants organized a coup d’état, banished or murdered his officials, and replaced them with a mercantile administration that would be more supportive of trade.58 The new government in May 1317 agreed a peace with the Tuscan Guelfs, which, among other things, restored Pisan commercial links with Florence and Siena.59

FIGURE 14. Simone Martini, Sta. Caterina Altarpiece, Pisa, Museo di S. Matteo (photo: Wikimedia Commons).


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The brief period of stability that followed, until the early 1320s, provided the opportunity for artistic exchanges between cities that habitually had been hostile to one another. Simone Martini, as we saw, was invited to work for Sta. Caterina in Pisa. A second Sienese painter, Lippo Memmi, perhaps, or another close associate of Simone, executed the extraordinary altarpiece in the same church showing the Glorification of St. Thomas Aquinas, probably in or shortly after 1323, the year of St. Thom-as’s canonization.60 The Sienese sculptor Agostino di Giovanni signed a wooden statue of the Virgin Annunciate in 1321, which, presumably with a pendant figure of the Angel Gabriel, must also once have stood in a Pisan church.61 Ghibelline Arezzo similarly took advantage of the truce to employ artists from nearby Siena, a city that boasted more painters and a more developed artistic culture than its own.62 Segna di bonaventura is documented in Arezzo in July 1319, when, very probably, he painted the large crucifix that remains there in the badia.63 Pietro Lorenzetti, about 1320, executed the impressive polyptych that still stands on the altar of the Pieve as well as, probably, a Marian cycle in fresco, of which nothing now survives.64

The peace that followed the settlement of 1317, however, was an uneasy one. Circumstances conspired to limit its effec-tiveness and duration. when, in 1320, Castruccio Castracani, lord of Lucca, attacked Florentine territories bordering his land, his Ghibelline allies in Pisa and Arezzo were gradually drawn into the dispute.65 by 1322 hostilities had broken out between Florence and Arezzo, then under the rule of bishop Guido Tar-lati.66 Chinks in the relationship between Florence and Pisa also appeared, although the peace remained intact because of the desire of both parties to retain lucrative trade links.67 The battle of Altopascio in 1326 saw the Florentines soundly defeated by Castruccio, the Aretines, and the Milanese. The arrival then of another German emperor in 1327 served only to harden the divisions among cities.68 Ludwig of bavaria, like his predecessors, descended into Italy to impose his authority on his southern lands and to be crowned at St. Peter’s in Rome. The Guelfs, led by Florence, joined forces to oppose him. The Ghibellines, though with less enthusiasm than previously, reaf-firmed their allegiance to the empire. The pope declared the emperor excommunicate, and Ludwig responded by denounc-ing the Avignon pontiff as a heretic and appointing his own pope, a callow Franciscan who took the name Nicholas V. Pisa, the Italian city most loyal to the imperial cause, elected Ludwig as its signore. however, his brief period of rule was not suc-cessful. As soon as he left Pisa for Lombardy in April 1328, general discontent erupted into open rebellion. In June 1329 the Pisans, led by Fazio della Gherardesca, expelled the imperial vicar, Tarlatino Tarlati of Arezzo.69 Fazio was named captain general and quickly sought a rapprochement with Pisa’s Guelf neighbors and with the pope. In the face of opposition from diehard Ghibellines, he concluded the Peace of Montopoli with Florence in August 1329.70 Other treaties followed: with Siena in July 1330 and with king Robert of Naples in September 1330. Ambassadors were dispatched to Avignon to pledge obe-

dience to his holiness in September 1329, and in August 1330 the antipope, who had sought refuge in Pisa, was arrested and dispatched to the papal curia to stand trial.71

Political Entente and Artistic Exchanges between Florence and Pisa in the 1340s

The Peace of Montopoli ushered in a decade of concord between Florence and Pisa, which lasted until 1341, when, in the dispute over Lucca, the cities relapsed once more into their traditional adversarial roles.72 That period of peace, however, was to be crucial to the development of Florentine architecture and art. It would witness the construction or refurbishment of some of its most notable civic buildings, and, significantly, the craftsmen responsible were Pisans. by the terms of the 1329 treaty, Pisan and Florentine citizens enjoyed favored status in each others’ towns, and people and goods could move between the two places without hindrance.73 Florence took advantage of the peace to recruit craftsmen from Pisa with specialist skills that were underdeveloped in its native workforce.

For all its distinction as a center of painting, Florence had no comparable tradition of sculpture and remained a backwa-ter in the practice of the craft. Unlike Pisa and Siena, it did not enjoy ready access to good marble quarries and throughout the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries relied on marble workers from elsewhere. The periods of sculptural activity at the cathedral and its related buildings, the baptistery and cam-panile, in the first half of the trecento coincide precisely with the residence of gifted foreign sculptors in the city, beginning with Arnolfo di Cambio in the years about 1300–1302.

Information on Arnolfo’s earlier career is patchy. he is recorded in Nicola Pisano’s workshop in 1265, after which he is not heard of again until 1277, when we have a documented instance of the Guelf network in action. In that year the Peru-gians wrote to the titular leader of the Guelfs, Charles I of Naples, to request the services of Arnolfo, who was then work-ing for the king. Charles not only gave permission for his sculp-tor to travel to Perugia but allowed him to take marble and other stones from Rome [opportuna marmora et lapides alios] for the work of a new fountain that the Perugians were keen to have made.74 Guelf or papal cities were to remain Arnolfo’s employ-ers for the remainder of his career. In 1282 he completed the tomb for Cardinal de bray in S. Domenico, Orvieto, and later in the 1280s and 1290s he was working in Rome, where he pro-duced, among other things, the tomb for Pope boniface VIII.75 From Rome he moved to Florence to take charge of the cathe-dral, a project in which the pope had taken an interest at a time when he was also deeply embroiled in the dispute between the city’s black and white Guelfs.76 During his brief term as capo-maestro of the duomo, Arnolfo initiated an ambitious program of decoration for the facade. besides a monumental figure of boniface, he carved statues of the Madonna flanked by SS. Zenobius and Reparata for the central portal and scenes of the Nativity and the Death of the Virgin for the side doors.77


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however, after his death, probably in 1302, work ground to a halt and little was done for almost two decades, until another foreigner, the Sienese Tino di Camaino, arrived in Florence, probably in 1319. During his five-year stay, the commissioning of major sculptural monuments was resumed. Tino produced a statue group of the baptism of Christ to go above the baptistery doors and elaborate wall tombs in Sta. Croce and the cathedral (Fig. 15).78 but after his departure for Naples, probably in 1324, sculptural activity languished once more.

Only with the Peace of Montopoli in 1329 was Florence in a position to return to the sculptural decoration of the build-ings on its piazza del duomo, because only then could it take advantage of the talent that Pisa could provide.79 Although the 1330s were economically buoyant compared with the cata-strophic 1340s, they were not especially prosperous. Never-theless, in this decade the commune embarked on a number of ambitious building initiatives in which, unusually, sculpture figured prominently. On 6 November 1329, only months after the peace treaty, the officials of the Calimala, the merchants’ guild, decided to commission a set of doors for the baptistery, “di metallo e ottone piu belle che si puo” (of metal and bronze as beautiful as can be) (Fig. 16). The local goldsmith Piero di

Jacopo was dispatched to Pisa to make sketches of the bronze doors there and to Venice to find a competent bronze worker “to work on the form of said door” [a lauorare la forma di detta porta].80 Two months later, in January 1330, Andrea Pisano began work on the doors.81 born in Pontedera, the son of a Pisan notary, the “maestro delle porte,” as he is called in the documents, designed and modeled the scenes from the life of St. John the baptist and the eight personifications of the Vir-tues. Completed after six years’ work, the doors were installed in 1336 with much fanfare. Simone della Tosa recorded the excitement that their unveiling occasioned:

The whole of Florence ran to see the bronze portal made by Andrea Pisano . . . and the members of the Signoria, who usually did not leave their palace unless on the most solemn occasions, came to see it . . . and in compensation for his work they gave Andrea citizenship of Florence.82

Andrea the Pisan was given the highest accolade: he was made an honorary Florentine.

The commission for the doors, although an extraordinarily expensive undertaking, was not the only guild initiative of the

FIGURE 15. Tino di Camaino, Tomb of Bishop Orsi, Florence, Cathedral (photo: Hirmer).

FIGURE 16. Andrea Pisano, bronze doors, Florence, Baptistery (photo: author).


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early 1330s. In 1334 the Calimala undertook to build a bell tower next to the cathedral and to decorate it with sculpture (Fig. 17). Although supervision of the project was entrusted to Giotto, as has been noted, the sculptural decoration was in large part carried out yet again by Andrea Pisano. he and his workshop executed most of the reliefs celebrating the virtues of labor on the lowest tier of the campanile as well as full-length figures of prophets for the niches above. A bell tower so lib-erally decorated with sculpture was unprecedented in Italy.83 The idea is generally assumed to have been Giotto’s, and he has been credited with the design and even the execution of the first few reliefs.84 however, as far as we know, Giotto had no experience as a sculptor. Andrea Pisano, who was then also working for the opera del duomo, must surely have been con-sulted, and later he would assume the role of capomaestro when Giotto was sent to Milan. In any event, the campanile would scarcely have taken the form it did unless its designer knew he could rely on competent craftsmen to undertake the carving of the reliefs and statues that had been planned, and in the early 1330s that meant sculptors from Pisa.

The decade marked a high point for sculpture in Flor-ence, with yet a third major construction project begun. The silk guild, the Arte della Seta, oversaw the rebuilding in stone of the granary of Orsanmichele (Fig. 18). begun in 1337, the building

FIGURE 17. (top right) Florence, cathedral bell tower (photo: author).

FIGURE 18. (below) Florence, Orsan michele, detail (photo: Courtauld Images).


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was to provide a storage place for the city’s grain supply, a cov-ered loggia to be used as a market, and an appropriate location for a shrine to the Virgin, whose image in the old marketplace was reputed to have worked miracles.85 Once again sculpture was to assume a uniquely important role on a building, in this case, a warehouse and market hall, that typically would have been only modestly ornamented if at all. In 1339 the commune decided that the outer piers of the new grain market should have niches to house life-size statues of the guilds’ patron saints. The wool guild (Arte della Lana) set an example and commissioned from Andrea Pisano a marble statue of St. Stephen.86 Some decades later the Arte della Seta followed with its figure of St. John the Evangelist.87 The apothecaries and doctors (Arte dei Medici e Speziali) commissioned their Madonna and Child in 1399, after which the commune gave the other guilds an ulti-matum (1406): either furnish their statues within ten years or lose the rights to their niches.

Inside the new loggia, Orcagna’s splendid tabernacle was erected between 1352 and 1366 to house bernardo Daddi’s

large-scale painting of the Virgin Mary, a free copy of that which had been credited in the late thirteenth century with miraculous powers.88 Orcagna’s was the latest in a succession of shrines to be made for the miraculous Madonna and its later copies. before his, there was evidently another marble tabernacle, only frag-ments of which survive but whose appearance is preserved in a miniature of about 1340 from the biadaiolo Codex (Fig. 19).89 Made probably about 1334, this tabernacle seems to have been the work once again of a Pisan sculptor, Giovanni di balduc-cio.90 Sixteen marble reliefs with figures of the twelve apostles and four Virtues (Truth, Charity, Poverty, and Obedience) are all that survive from what must have been a monumental structure (Fig. 20).91 After Andrea Pisano, Giovanni di balduccio (born probably ca. 1300) was the most accomplished Pisan sculptor of the generation following Giovanni Pisano. Until about 1330 he might have been loosely described as a “Ghibelline sculp-tor,” since up to that date he had worked mainly for Ghibelline patrons, including various institutions in his hometown and Cas-truccio Castricani, lord of Lucca.92 In the later 1320s he carved

FIGURE 19. Biadaiolo Master, interior of Orsanmichele, from Specchio Umano of Domenico Lenzi, Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, MS Tempi 3, fol. 79 (photo: Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence).

FIGURE 20. Giovanni di Balduccio, Personification of Charity, from a dismantled shrine to the Virgin for Orsanmichele, Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art (photo: National Gallery of Art, Washington).


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in Pisa some figurative capitals for the cloister of Sta. Caterina and a Madonna for Sta. Maria della Spina as well as the tomb in S. Francesco, Sarzana (ca. 1327–28), for Castruccio’s infant son.93 but very soon after the Peace of Montopoli, he is found in Florence working for the baroncelli, whose family chap el in Sta. Croce was begun in 1328.94 Appropriately sumptuous, as befit-ted one of the richest families in Florence, it includes an altar-piece signed by Giotto and frescoes and stained-glass windows by Taddeo Gaddi.95 Parts of the double-sided tomb at the chap el entrance, however, are qualitatively inferior to the paintings on the altar and walls (Fig. 21). The pinched faces and boneless hands of the Man of Sorrows and accompanying saints on the sarcophagus, more painterly than sculptural, betray the hand of an only modestly gifted craftsman (Fig. 22). The recognition of his limitations by the patrons may have resulted in his being replaced (after the peace?) by Giovanni di balduccio, a Pisan of demonstrably greater skill. The upper parts of the tomb, with its canopy decorated with reliefs and statuettes, as well as a marble Annunciation group at the chap el entrance, were all carved by Giovanni (Fig. 23).96

The presence of Andrea Pisano and Giovanni di balduc-cio in Florence in the 1330s goes a long way toward explaining the unprecedented sculptural activity in the city in those years. would the baptistery doors, the campanile, Orsanmichele, and its shrine have been begun had not skilled craftsmen been avail-able to carry out the work? Some of them possibly would; but, even if the projects had proceeded, it is unlikely that they would have taken the form they did had not Andrea and Giovanni and their workshops been on hand to provide the figurative deco-ration that makes them so distinctive. whether the Florentines took the opportunity afforded by the treaty of Montopoli to invite Pisa’s most accomplished sculptors to work for them or whether the craftsmen traveled to Florence, a city then wealth-ier than their own, in the hope of securing well-paid work can-not be determined. with regard to the baptistery doors, the former seems more likely. In any event, it is not to exaggerate to claim that these Pisans had an unparalleled influence on the appearance of trecento Florence. Just as important, however, but less easily demonstrated, was the impact they probably had on Florentine craftsmen. Andrea Pisano and assistants, resident in the city for a decade and more, probably trained a number of local marble workers such as Alberto Arnoldi, who would con-stitute, if not a flourishing and independent Florentine school of sculpture, at least the beginnings of one.

The traffic was not all one way, however. If Pisa provided Florence with sculptors, Florence reciprocated by sending Pisa some of her most distinguished painters. Taddeo Gaddi was in Pisa working for the Gambacorti family when he wrote, at an unspecified date but probably in the late 1330s, to a certain Tomaso about undertaking some work for him.97 A document of 1336 records the presence in Pisa of “bonamicus pictor . . . de Florentia” when he is lodging in the chap el of Sta. Maria Maggiore, where the masters working for the opera del duomo were usually housed.98 This bonamicus was none other than

bonamico buffalmacco, a painter who figures prominently in the tales of boccaccio and Sacchetti, and the work on which he was probably engaged was the series of frescoes includ-ing the Triumph of Death and the Last Judgment in the Cam-posanto.99 An intriguing detail in the Last Judgment suggests the unusually hostile attitude of the Pisan government to the empire in the 1330s, when Fazio della Gherardesca was head of the commune. Among the damned in the Camposanto Inferno is a dismembered soul with a tonsure inscribed “NICCOL[O],” a reference, most probably, to Emperor Ludwig’s puppet pope, Nicholas V, the Franciscan whom Gherardesca had deported to Avignon in 1330 to face papal justice.100

Returning to Florence: Andrea Pisano is last documented in the city in April 1340, when he is referred to as capomaestro of the cathedral works (“maiore magistro dicte opere”). After that time he no longer appears in the Florentine records and probably returned to Pisa before moving to Orvieto.101 Various hypotheses have been advanced to explain why he should have left Florence and resigned a position of such eminence. Vasari claimed, on what grounds we do not know, that Andrea had been the favored architect of the Duke of Athens, signore of Florence briefly in 1342–43.102 when the tyrannical duke was expelled in 1343, so one theory goes, Andrea, too, would have been dismissed.103 Others have conjectured, on the basis of a remark in Antonio Pucci’s Centiloquio, that Andrea had fallen from grace because his designs for the cathedral bell tower had not been to Florentine taste.104 It might also have been the case that the economic collapse of the early 1340s made his previously lucrative position no longer affordable.105 however, there was another and perhaps more pressing reason why his continued residence in Florence from 1341 would have been uncomfortable for him and unwelcome to the civic institutions that employed him. beginning in that year, Florence and Pisa were at war. In the middle of 1341, while the Florentines were negotiating to purchase Lucca from its then lord, Mastino della Scala, the Pisans preempted them and occupied the town. In October they repelled a Florentine attack, and despite contin-ued Florentine pressure, Lucca finally fell to Pisa in July 1342. In the midst of escalating hostilities, Andrea would have been considered an enemy alien in his adopted city and may have decided to get out while the going was good.

Tino di Camaino, finding himself in similar circum-stances, had done precisely the same some twenty-five years earlier. Tino, who had been born and learned his trade in Siena, moved to Pisa sometime in the first decade of the trecento, before, that is, the deterioration of Guelf-Ghibelline relations resulting from the arrival of Emperor henry VII (1310). As a Sienese, he would have been more readily accepted than had he been a Florentine, and, indeed, he enjoyed a successful career in Pisa, being appointed capomaestro of the cathedral after Giovanni Pisano’s death (ca. 1314). In this role he was charged with “the construction of the monument of the Lord Emperor [henry VII]” (Fig. 2), a ruler who only a year before his death in August 1313 had officially anathematized Siena.


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FIGURE 22. Baroncelli Tomb, detail of Fig. 21 (photo: author).

FIGURE 21. Giovanni di Balduccio and anonymous mas-ter, Baroncelli Tomb, Florence, Sta. Croce (photo: Bar-talini, Scultura gotica, pl. 222).

FIGURE 23. Baroncelli Tomb, detail of Fig. 21 (photo: Bartalini, Scultura gotica, pl. 223).


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For his work Tino was to be paid 400 lira.106 The project proceeded swiftly. In April 1315 he was paid 200 lira for four weeks’ work, and thereafter he received a weekly payment of 25 lira. by 5 July 1315 he had been given 375 of the 400 lira originally agreed. however, he seems to have abandoned the work before receiving his final payment. On 26 July the cathe-dral bursar recorded that although Tino had money owing to him, he had not come to collect it. his name, thereafter, no longer appears in the cathedral accounts. he seems to have quit his position and left the tomb to be completed by others.107 we learn the reasons some seven years later from the records of a meeting of the communal elders (anziani) that took place in July 1322. After deliberation they decided to remove Tino officially from his role as capomaestro because, in the words of the document, “he is Guelf” [cum sit Guelfos] and at the battle of Montecatini he had been against the Pisans [contra Pisanos]. In addition, they decided that in the future no Guelf should be admitted to the said office.108

Tino seems to have left Pisa in July 1315, probably in response to the general muster of Guelf forces announced by the Florentines. he presumably joined the ranks of his com-patriots who marched north to Montecatini and the fateful battle that took place there in August. Although casualties on the Guelf side were considerable, Tino survived and escaped capture. however, his future in that summer of 1315 may not have looked promising. he had resigned a position of some standing in Pisa to join an army that had suffered a terrible defeat. In the event, however, his defection would prove the making of his career. his patriotism and commitment to the Guelf cause were handsomely rewarded in the form of several prestigious and lucrative commissions from members of the Guelf alliance. For his hometown of Siena he created about 1317 the extraordinary monument to Cardinal Petroni in the duomo.109 Then, moving to Florence, he was entrusted with several important civic projects, including the execution of two bishops’ tombs: one for Antonio degli Orsi in the cathe-dral (Fig. 15) and the other for Gastone della Torre in Sta. Croce. both bishops had reputations as Guelf firebrands. As archbishop of Milan, Della Torre had been an opponent of the Visconti before being driven out by them.110 Antonio degli Orsi, bishop of Florence, had become something of a local hero when, in 1312, as the troops of Emperor henry gathered under the walls of the city, he had organized the Florentine resistance and personally led his priests to the ramparts. For his efforts he was publicly denounced by the emperor, but when he died, he was given the rare honor of burial in a lavish tomb in Flor-ence Cathedral.111 After his stay in Florence, Tino, about 1324, went south to work for the leader of the Guelfs in Italy, king Robert of Naples, and over a period of about thirteen years he

created a succession of innovative tombs for members of the royal house.

In the period 1240–1340, then, artists from towns whose prevailing political tendency was either Guelf or Ghibelline tended to find work in other towns of similar political per-suasion. This is scarcely surprising. In a century blighted by endemic warfare, close diplomatic links were maintained among like-minded towns, and alliances were entered into for mutual defense. Those engaged in diplomacy, members of the political classes, were also those who were active as patrons of art, either on their own account or for the civic institutions of which they were leading members. In the history of late medi-eval Italian art, these diplomatic networks had observable (and not unexpected) effects. There is to a degree (although it should not be overstated) a certain commonality of form and iconog-raphy in the public art of cities that were politically allied. The tombs of the Ghibelline signori, as has been suggested, are distinguished by their emphatically secular imagery and their inclusion of equestrian statues of the lord and scenes of his military exploits.112 The Guelf communes, in contrast, favored political imagery that was allegorical and allusive in an attempt to give form to “the state” in ways that would encourage cer-tain kinds of behavior and promote a sense of civic identity. Changes (stylistic, iconographic, technical) in the practice of the arts spread more quickly from centers of innovation to other towns with which they had diplomatic links. The pictorial experimentation of the late thirteenth century is most apparent in towns that were Guelf, in Assisi and Rome, in Florence and Siena. These were the towns to which artists of the caliber of Giotto and Simone Martini could freely travel, and their work not only influenced the style of local artists but generally raised the threshold of their performance.

however, the patterns of allegiance among towns were nei-ther constant nor immutable. Allies one year might become ene-mies the next. Towns traditionally sympathetic to the emperor might become Guelf if they thought it was to their advantage. On occasion, long-standing political opponents might make com-mon cause when circumstances made it expedient or desirable to do so: to combat an outside threat, for instance, or because of economic considerations. During such periods of peace, artists could work in places that normally would have been closed to them. Some cities exploited these temporary truces to initiate major urban projects because they could secure the services of skilled foreigners to carry them out.113 The center of Florence would look quite different had not the decade of peace in the 1330s made it possible for Pisan sculptors to work there. Simi-larly, Milan would have been that much poorer artistically had not cordial relations with Florence in the same years allowed Giotto to work in the city for the Visconti lords.


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NOTES1. Dante’s reference to Giotto in Purgatorio 10 in connection with the tran-

sience of human fame doubtless had the effect, ironically, of publicizing the painter’s name throughout Italy. Giotto was one of the few artists to be mentioned in contemporary literature. See also n. 99 below.

2. when, in 1383, for example, the Pratese merchant Francesco di Marco Datini was considering having figures of the Madonna and St. John carved, he asked the painter Agnolo Gaddi to recommend a sculptor. Agnolo suggested Francesco Sellaio in Pistoia and one Giovanni, a painter who also carved figures; see the document in b. Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford, 1977), 61, no. 8. A document such as this, in which a pa-tron asks an acquaintance for recommendations, although a rare survival, probably reflects a common occurrence. we have only circumstantial evidence for other instances. when the Domincan Fra Jacopo Donati was Pisan ambassador to the court of king Robert in Naples from 1316, he may have admired Simone Martini’s St. Louis of Toulouse. It may have been through his good offices that Simone was later employed by Fra Jacopo’s confreres to paint the high altarpiece in their church of Sta. Caterina in Pisa; see J. Cannon, “Simone Martini, the Dominicans and the Early Sienese Polyptych,” JWCI, 45 (1982), 87–90.

3. The large Madonna del Bordone of 1261 for the Servites of Siena led to a commission about 1265 for a comparable panel for the order’s house in Orvieto; see R. w. Corrie, “The Political Meaning of Coppo di Marco-valdo’s Madonna and Child in Siena,” Gesta, 29 (1990), 61–75.

4. D. Gordon, “A Dossal by Giotto and his workshop: Some Problems of Attribution, Provenance and Patronage,” BM, 131 (1989), 524–31; and J. Gardner, “The Louvre Stigmatisation and the Problem of the Narrative Altarpiece,” ZfKg, 45 (1982), 217–47.

5. Dante was banished in perpetuity from Florence in 1302, falsely accused of corruption. The real reason was his association with the white Guelfs and his opposition to Pope boniface VIII; see S. bemrose, A New Life of Dante (Exeter, 2009), 51–63.

6. A Pistoian document of the 1340s hints at how artists might obtain commissions from allied towns. In considering a new altarpiece for S. Giovanni Fuorcivitas, the Pistoians drew up a list of the “best masters” [migliori maestri] to be approached to carry out the work; included were painters from Florence, Siena, and Lucca, Guelf cities with which Pistoia was then allied, but no artists from Pisa were mentioned. See the docu-ment in A. Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi: Critical Reappraisal and Catalogue Raisonné (Columbia, MO, 1982), 257, no. 49; and on Pistoiese Guelfism and art in the period, see F. boggi, “The Maestà of the Palazzo Comunale in Pistoia: Civic Art and Marian Devotion in the Pistoiese Commune of the Fourteenth Century,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 51 (2007), 251–66.

7. News of an artist’s achievements in one city would have spread more readily to other cities whose ruling classes were in communication be-cause of their shared political agendas. Conversely, during periods of political conflict and in times of war, citizens from enemy towns were treated with suspicion. when in 1260, for instance, the Florentines, dur-ing a period of mounting tension, planned an attack on Siena, they first expelled the Sienese then resident in their town or imprisoned them on various pretexts; see R. Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, trans. G. b. klein, 8 vols. (Florence, 1972), 2:679.

8. In this context, see, for example, the section “The Sienese Abroad” in h. b. J. Maginnis, The World of the Early Sienese Painter (University Park, PA, 2001), 152–56.

9. In two Sienese documents of 1266 Nicola is referred to as “de’Apulia”; see M. L. Testi Cristiani, Nicola Pisano architetto scultore: dalle origini al pulpito del battistero di Pisa (Pisa, 1987), 9, 304n1.

10. On Nicola’s classicism and Pisa’s sense of its Roman and imperial past, see M. Seidel, “Nicola Pisano’s Dialogue with the Artists of Antiq-uity,” in Seidel, Italian Art of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,

2 vols. (Venice, 2003–5), 2:133–200; and E. M. Angiola, “Nicola Pi-sano, Federigo Visconti, and the Classical Style in Pisa,” AB, 59 (1977), 1–27; and now b. Cassidy, Politics, Civic Ideals and Sculpture in Italy, c. 1240–1400 (London, 2007), 96–99.

11. Maginnis, The World of the Early Sienese Painter, 91, 152, figs. 8, 9.12. For the document listing Coppo as a conscript in the Florentine army

before Montaperti, see G. Coor-Achenbach, “A Visual basis for the Docu-ments Relating to Coppo di Marcovaldo and his Son Salerno,” AB, 28 (1946), 233–47, at 234.

13. Corrie, “The Political Meaning of Coppo di Marcovaldo’s Madonna and Child in Siena”; but see against Corrie’s political reading of the image, G. A. Mina, “Coppo di Marcovaldo’s Madonna del bordone: Political Statement or Profession of Faith,” in Art, Politics and Civic Religion in Central Italy, 1261–1352, ed. J. Cannon and b. williamson (Aldershot, 2000), 237–94.

14. It is likely that the large vacant niche above Tarlati’s effigy once held an image of the deceased, and possibly on horseback. See the discussion in Cassidy, Politics, Civic Ideals and Sculpture, 153, 264n17.

15. Ibid., 162–70.16. Ibid., 170–76.17. Exceptions were made for the titular heads of the Guelf league, as a Flo-

rentine decree of 1329 makes clear. It prohibited officials from placing coats of arms or images in their offices except those representing Christ, the Virgin, the Roman Church, the king of France, or king Charles of Anjou. The decree is published in M. Seidel, “‘Castrum pingatur in pala-tio’: I, Ricerche storiche e iconografiche sui castelli dipinti nel Palazzo Pubblico di Siena,” Prospettiva, 28 (1982), 41.

18. On the extensive sumptuary legislation enacted in the communes and the personal excesses at which it was aimed, including funeral ceremonial, see C. k. killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy, 1200–1500 (Oxford, 2002); and S. T. Strocchia, Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence (balti-more, 1992).

19. On the theme generally, see M. S. kempshall, The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Thought (Oxford, 1999).

20. Cassidy, Politics, Civic Ideals and Sculpture, 87–147, 234–35.21. Ibid., 90–92, 115.22. Ibid., 90–122.23. As was the case in most other central Italian towns in the middle de-

cades of the duecento, Siena’s allegiance oscillated depending on cir-cumstances. Up until the 1260s, it had espoused a militant Ghibellinism. however, with the defeat of the hohenstaufen and their replacement in the kingdom of Naples by the French king Charles, Siena transferred its support to the winning side, and obdurate Ghibellines were banished. On Sienese Ghibellinism and subsequent Guelfism, see D. waley, Siena and the Sienese in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1991), 114–26. Arezzo also turned Guelf after the Angevin victory at benevento, but only tem-porarily. by 1287 Guelf supremacy in the city was over; see M. Falciai, Storia di Arezzo dalle origini alla fine del Granducato Lorense (Arezzo, 1928), 101–9.

24. La Maestà di Duccio restaurata, Gli Uffizi, Studi e Ricerche, 6 (Florence, 1990).

25. For Ugolino’s dismantled altarpiece for Sta. Croce, see N. E. Muller, “Reflections on Ugolino di Nerio’s Santa Croce Polyptych,” ZfKg, 57 (1994), 45–74; and for that of Sta. Maria Novella, see Cannon, “Simone Martini, the Dominicans and the Early Sienese Polyptych,” 87–90.

26. his Madonna for Vico l’Abate near Florence is dated 1319, a document of 1321 refers to property belonging to him in the city, and in 1327 he enrolled in the Florentine painters’ guild. Lorenzo Ghiberti, a gener-ally reliable witness and an admirer of Ambrogio, lists works by him in the chapter house of S. Agostino, frescoes and a panel in S. Procolo


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(fragments of the latter and other works survive in the Uffizi), and an An-nunciation for the Florentine counterpart of the Sienese Ospedale della Scala; see L. Ghiberti, I commentarii, ed. L. bartoli (Florence, 1998), 89; and Maginnis, The World of the Early Sienese Painter, 153.

27. N. Rubinstein, Palazzo Vecchio, 1298–1532: Government, Architecture and Imagery in the Civic Palace of the Florentine Republic (Oxford, 1995), 47–48.

28. The fresco, which no longer survives, was described by Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori, ed. G. Milanesi, 8 vols. (Florence, 1906), 1:399–400. See also S. Morpurgo, Un affresco perduto di Giotto nel Palazzo del Podestà di Firenze (Florence, 1897).

29. C. L. Joost-Gaugier, “Giotto’s hero Cycle in Naples: A Prototype of ‘Donne Illustri’ and a Possible Literary Connection,” ZfKg, 43 (1980), 311–18.

30. The inscriptions on the fresco take the form of an address to the city officials gathered in the council chamber. The canopy over the Virgin may reflect those that were made to welcome Angevin princes to Siena on several occasions between 1310 and 1327, on which see D. Norman, “‘Sotto uno baldachino trionfale’: The Ritual Significance of the Painted Canopy in Simone Martini’s Maestà,” Renaissance Studies, 20 (2006), 147–60.

31. b. Cassidy, “Simone Martini’s St Martin and the Emperor and Contem-porary Italian Politics,” ZfKg, 70 (2007), 145–58.

32. Cassidy, Politics, Civic Ideals and Sculpture, 55; and J. Gardner, “Saint Louis of Toulouse, Robert of Anjou and Simone Martini,” ZfKg, 39 (1976), 12–33.

33. For the documents on Giotto, see M. V. Schwarz and P. Theis, Giottus Pic-tor, vol. 1, Giottos Leben: Mit einer Sammlung der Urkunden und Texte bis Vasari (Vienna, 2004), 96–101. The poet Francesco da barberino in his Documenti d’amore (ca. 1313) and the chronicler Riccobaldo da Ferrara in his Compilatio Chronologica (ca. 1313) both mention Giotto as having painted at the Arena; on Riccobaldo, see A. T. hankey, “Ric-cobaldo of Ferrara and Giotto: An Update,” JWCI, 54 (1991), 244. For the painter’s presence in Assisi, besides the testimony of Riccobaldo and Ghiberti in the fifteenth century, there is a document of 1309 in which a certain Palmerino Guidi (probably the “Palmerino pintore” mentioned in an Assisan document of 1307) is recorded paying off a debt that he and Giotto had incurred in Assisi; see the document in Schwarz and Theis, 102–3. Riccobaldo records Giotto’s employment by the Franciscans at Rimini (see Gordon, “A Dossal by Giotto and his workshop”), and a letter addressed to Rome on the painter’s behalf in 1313 requests the return of some belongings, including a bed, that he had left in the city; see Schwarz and Theis, 105. The earliest reference we have for Giotto painting in bologna is provided by an anonymous commentator on Dante, writing probably in the 1390s, who speaks of Giotto “dipigniendo a bo-logna una cappella” for the then cardinal legate; see the text in Schwarz and Theis, 365–66. Although the anecdotal quality of the report under-mines its reliability, there is also the evidence of the bologna polyptych (bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale, no. 284), signed by Giotto, even if, as is generally believed, it was executed largely by members of his workshop. On Giotto and bologna, see bologna, Museo Civico Medievale, Giotto e le arti a Bologna al tempo di Bertrando del Poggetto (Cinisello balsamo, 2005), ed. M. Medica; and M. Medica, “Giotto e bologna,” in Rome, Complesso del Vittoriano, Giotto e il Trecento: “Il più sovrano maestro stato in dipintura,” 2 vols. (Rome, 2009), ed. A. Tomei, 1:225–39.

34. See J. k. hyde, Padua in the Age of Dante (Manchester, 1966).35. Among other outrages, they ransacked the papal treasury; see A. For-

tini, Assisi nel Medio Evo: leggende, avventure, battaglie (Rome, 1940), 270–87.

36. See P. Jones, The Malatesta of Rimini and the Papal State (Cambridge, 1974), and for their virulent Guelfism, see esp. 49–56. The Malatesta had close connections with Florence. The head of the family, Malatestino

dall’Ochio, was with Charles of Valois when the latter went to Florence as papal emissary in 1301, and in 1303 he was appointed military leader of the Tuscan Guelf League (ibid., 49). It is highly probable that it was through Malatestino that Giotto was contracted to work in Rimini. his painted cross that still hangs there in the Tempio Malatestiano (S. Fran-cesco) has been dated on the basis of style to 1302–3; see, for example, M. boskovits, “Giotto: un artista poco conosciuto?” in Florence, Gal-leria dell’Accademia, Giotto: bilancio critico di sessant’anni di studi e ricerche (Florence, 2000), ed. A. Tartuferi, 82–83. Another member of the family, Ferrantino Malatesta, was podestà of Florence in 1307 and leader of the Guelf troops that defended the region from Ghibelline attack in that year (Jones, 50). In 1312 the Malatesta sent reinforcements to Florence when the city was being threatened by Emperor henry VII (ibid.), and in 1324 Ferrantino was again made captain general of the Tuscan Guelfs (ibid., 52).

37. G. Villani, Nuova cronica, XII, xii, ed. G. Porta, 3 vols. (Parma, 1990–91), 3:52–53: “e soprastante e proveditore della detta opera di Santa Li-perata fue fatto per lo Comune maestro Giotto nostro cittadino, il più sovrano maestro stato in dipintura che·ssi trovasse al suo tempo.”

38. See the document of April 1334 in C. Guasti, Santa Maria del Fiore: la costruzione della chiesa e del campanile (Florence, 1887), 43–44; Schwarz and Theis, Giottus Pictor, 267–68. he was given a salary by the commune, “per remunerazione della sua vertù e bontà” (in remuneration for his virtue and excellence).

39. Villani, Nuova cronica, XII, xii, 3:52–53: “Il quale maestro Giotto tornato da Milano, che’l nostro Comune ve l’aveva mandato al servigio del seg-nore di Milano, passò di questa vita a dì VIII di gennaio MCCCXXXVI, e fu seppelito per lo Comune a Santa Reperata con grande onore.” 8 Janu-ary 1336, Florentine style, is actually 1337. Sta. Reparata is the old name for the cathedral. See the commentary on this passage by Schwarz and Theis, Giottus Pictor, 285–86.

40. The accuracy of his dating for both the laying of the campanile’s founda-tions and Giotto’s death also inspires trust.

41. Villani, Nuova cronica, X, ccciii–cccvi, 2:468–77.42. The emblem of the Visconti was a coiled snake with a man in its mouth;

see E. Galli, “Sulle origini araldiche della biscia Viscontea,” Archivio storico lombardo, 46 (1919), 363–81.

43. For king John in Italy, see C. Dumontel, L’impresa italiana di Giovanni di Lussemburgo Re di Boemia (Turin, 1952); and Storia di Milano, ed. F. Cognasso, 17 vols. (Milan, 1953–66), vol. 5, La signoria dei Visconti (1310–1392), 230–53.

44. For king John and Lucca, see Villani, Nuova cronica, XI, clxx, 2:733–38; and Dumontel, L’impresa italiana, 58–59.

45. They were also generally suspicious of the king as the son of the hated Emperor henry VII (d. 1313).

46. Villani, Nuova cronica, XI, clxvii, 2:743–44; and Dumontel, L’impresa italiana, 65–67.

47. Villani, Nuova cronica, XI, ccxiii, 2:778–79: “se.lla detta lega non fosse fatta e mantenuta la nostra città portava grande pericolo.” On the treaty and subsequent league, see Dumontel, L’impresa italiana, 99–103.

48. Villani, Nuova cronica, XI, ccii, 2:767: “E nota, lettore, nuova mutazione di secolo, che il re Ruberto capo di parte di Chiesa e de’Guelfi, e simile il Comune di Firenze, allegarsi in compagnia col maggiori tiranni e Ghibel-lini d’Italia, e spezialmente con Messer Azzo Visconti di Milano, il quale fue al servigio di Castruccio a sconfiggere i Fiorentini ad Altopascio . . . ma a.cciò condusse il re Ruberto e’Fiorentini la dubitazione del bavero e del re Giovanni, e lo sdegno preso col legato per la compagnia fatta col re Giovanni.”

49. As Villani explains, ibid., XI, ccxiii, 2:778–79: “non fu follia se’Fiorentini s’allegarono col minore nemico per contastare al maggiore e più possente.”

50. Ibid., XI, ccxiv, 2:779–81; and Dumontel, L’impresa italiana, 118–20.


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51. G. Fiamma, Opusculum de Rebus Gestis ab Azone, Luchino et Johanne Vicecomitibus ab Anno MCCXVIIII usque ad Annum MCCCXLII, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 12, pt. 4, ed. C. Castiglioni (bologna, 1938), 15–16; see also L. Green, “Galvano Fiamma, Azzone Visconti and the Revival of the Classical Theory of Magnificence,” JWCI, 53 (1990), 98–113.

52. The description is that of Galvano Fiamma, Opusculum de Rebus Gestis, 16; see also Green, “Galvano Fiamma, Azzone Visconti,” 102.

53. On the Visconti contribution to the shrine, see V. Alce, “La tomba di S. Pietro Martire e la Cappella Portinari in S. Eustorgio di Milano,” Memorie Domenicane, 69 (1952), 15, 19–21; and A. Franci, “Le arche dei santi: evoluzione e continuità nei monumenti sepolcrali di S. Domenico, S. Pietro Martire e S. Agostino,” Arte cristiana, 83 (1995), 157.

54. C. Gilbert, “The Fresco by Giotto in Milan,” Arte Lombarda, 47–48 (1977), 31–72; and R. Cassanelli, “Milano,” in La pittura in Lombardia: il Trecento (Milan, 1993), 23–27. The allegorical image itself seems to have been strikingly novel and the cycle of uomini famosi that accom-panied it equally unprecedented insofar as it included a portrait of Azzo himself in the company of celebrated rulers and heroes of the past (her-cules, hector, Aeneas, Attila, and Charlemagne).

55. he may also have produced an altarpiece for Sta. Maria Novella in Flor-ence, for Vasari (Vite, 1:549) records seeing a work by him (“col nome suo”) representing Our Lady, St. Luke, and other saints in the chap el of the Gondi family.

56. For the early references to the altarpiece and discussion of whether it was placed on the high altar in 1319 or 1320, see Cannon, “Simone Martini, the Dominicans, and the Early Sienese Polyptych,” 69–75; and A. Mar-tindale, Simone Martini (Oxford, 1988), 198–99.

57. On the battle, see Villani, Nuova cronica, X, lxxi–lxx, 2:273–76. The losses on the Guelf side were catastrophic. Some two thousand Floren-tines died together with five hundred Sienese, and another four hundred were captured; see w. M. bowsky, A Medieval Italian Commune: Siena under the Nine, 1287–1355 (berkeley, 1981), 167; and G. benvenuti, Storia della Repubblica di Pisa (Pisa, 1982), 180–81.

58. For Uguccione’s expulsion, see Villani, Nuova cronica, X, lxxviii, 2:281–82; and benvenuti, Storia della Repubblica di Pisa, 182–83.

59. The reestablishment of good relations with her Tuscan Guelf neighbors was the central focus of Pisan foreign policy after the ousting of Uguc-cione; see G. Rossi-Sabatini, Pisa al tempo dei Donoratico (1316–1347) (Florence, 1938), 80–96; and benvenuti, Storia della Repubblica di Pisa, 184.

60. J. Polzer, “The ‘Triumph of Thomas’ Panel in S. Caterina, Pisa: Meaning and Date,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 37 (1993), 29–70, attributes it to Memmi about 1323.

61. The statue is now in the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa; see R. bar-talini, Scultura gotica in Toscana: maestri, monumenti, cantieri del Due e Trecento (Cinisello balsamo, 2005), 215–22.

62. For Arezzo’s treaties with Siena and other Guelfs at this time, see F. Paturzo, Arezzo medievale: la città e il suo territorio dalla fine del mondo antico al 1384 (Cortona, 2002), 329. For an example of Ghibelline architectural connections, see Vasari, Vite, 1:435, who records that when Guido Tarlati began rebuilding the walls of Arezzo, he secured help from distant Milan, which sent him four hundred stonemasons.

63. J. h. Stubblebine, Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School, 2 vols. (Prince-ton, 1979), 1:133–34.

64. G. Freni, “The Aretine Polyptych by Pietro Lorenzetti: Patronage, Ico-nography and Original Setting,” JWCI, 63 (2000), 59–110.

65. both cities sent troops to supplement Castruccio’s forces. See Villani, Nu-ova cronica, X, cvi, 2:308–10; L. Green, Castruccio Castracani: A Study on the Origins and Character of a Fourteenth-Century Italian Despotism (Oxford, 1986) 127–29, 135; and benvenuti, Storia della Repubblica di Pisa, 186–87.

66. Villani, Nuova cronica, X, cli, 2:349–50. See also E. Droandi, Guido Tarlati di Pietramala: ultimo principe di Arezzo (Cortona, 1993), 111–13.

67. Villani, Nuova cronica, X, clxv, 2:361, explains: “Come i Pisani in certa parte ruppono la pace a’Fiorentini” in August 1322 by imposing new import taxes. See also benvenuti, Storia della Repubblica di Pisa, 187.

68. On Altopascio, see Green, Castruccio Castracani, 162–78; and on Em-peror Ludwig in Italy, see A. Chroust, Die Romfahrt, 1327–1329: Bei-träge zur Geschichte Ludwigs des Bayers und seiner Zeit (Gotha, 1887).

69. M. L. Ceccarelli Lemut, “Della Gherardesca, bonifazio,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome, 1989), 37:17–20; and benvenuti, Storia della Repubblica di Pisa, 194–98.

70. On the treaty, see Villani, Nuova cronica, XI, cxxxv, 2:690–92; and ben-venuti, Storia della Repubblica di Pisa, 199.

71. Villani, Nuova cronica, XI, cxliii and clxi, 2:699–700 and 723–24.72. On the Pisan-Florentine dispute over Lucca, see benvenuti, Storia della

Repubblica di Pisa, 204–6.73. For the terms of the treaty, see P. Tronci, Annali pisani, 4 vols. (Pisa,

1828–29), 2:138–40.74. The documents have been published several times. See, for example,

V. Martinelli, “Arnolfo a Perugia,” in Storia e arte in Umbria nell’età comunale: atti del VI convegno di Studi Umbri, 2 vols. (Perugia, 1971), 1:39–40; and G. Cuccini, Arnolfo di Cambio e la fontana di Perugia “pe-dis platee” (Perugia, 1989), 20–21, 33–36; and, recently on the fountain, Perugia, Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Arnolfo di Cambio: una rinas-cita nell’Umbria medievale (Cinisello balsamo, 2005), ed. V. Garibaldi and b. Toscano, 102–47, 206–25.

75. On the tomb, see G. Ladner, Die Päpstbildnisse des Altertums und des Mittelalters, vol. 2, Von Innozenz II. zu Benedikt XI, Monumenti di Antichità Cristiana, ser. 2, vol. 4 (Vatican City, 1970), 302–13; and J. Gardner, The Tomb and the Tiara: Curial Tomb Sculpture in Rome and Avignon in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1992), passim. Arnolfo also made the altar ciboria for Sta. Cecilia and S. Paolo fuori le Mura.

76. In 1296 boniface contributed three thousand florins for the building; see the document in Guasti, Santa Maria del Fiore, 8. The pope sided with the black Guelfs who banished the whites, among whom was Dante.

77. See most recently Florence, Museo dell’Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, Arnolfo: alle origini del rinascimento fiorentino (Florence, 2005), ed. E. Neri Lusanna, 200–276.

78. For Tino’s work in Florence, see F. baldelli, Tino di Camaino (Morbio Inferiore, 2007), 166–226; w. R. Valentiner, Tino di Camaino, trans. J. walther (Paris, 1935), 57–82; and G. kreytenberg, Die Werke von Tino di Camaino, Liebighaus Monographie, 11 (Frankfurt, 1987).

79. Intriguingly, two of the four Florentine signatories to the treaty of Mon-topoli were leading members of the Calimala, which would be the major patron of public art and architecture in Florence in the 1330s. The am-bassadors acting for Florence were Forese Rabatta, Donato dell’Antella, Simone della Tosa (a relation of the chronicler of the same name), and Taldo Valori. The last two were members of the Calimala.

80. See the relevant part of the document in G. kreytenberg, Andrea Pisano und die toskanische Skulptur des 14. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1984), 179, no. 4.

81. Ibid., 179, no. 6.82. Quoted in G. Richa, Notizie istoriche delle chiese fiorentine: divise

ne’suoi quartieri, 10 vols. (Florence, 1754–62), 5:xx: “Corse tutta Fi-renze a vederla la porta di bronzo fatta da Andrea Pisano a San Giovanni, che fu collocata alla porta di mezzo, e la Signoria non mai solita di andar fuori di palazzo, se non nelle maggiori solennità vennero a vederla alzare con gli ambasciatori delle due corone di Napoli e di Sicilia, e donarono ad Andrea per ricompensa di sue fatiche la cittadinanza di Firenze.”

83. See M. Trachtenberg, The Campanile of Florence Cathedral (New york, 1971), 151–79 for a survey of Italian bell towers.


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84. Pucci in his Centiloquio (1373) says that Giotto “made the first reliefs in good style” [Il qual condusse tanto il lavorio / Ch’e primi intagli fe’ con bello stile]; see Trachtenberg, The Campanile, 23, 206. Ghiberti, I commentarii, 84–85, claims that the early reliefs “furono di sua mano scolpite e disegniate” (were designed and sculpted by his own hand).

85. For what follows, see D. Finiello Zervas, ed., Orsanmichele a Firenze, 2 vols. (Modena, 1996). It has been suggested that Andrea Pisano may have been the designer of Orsanmichele; see, for example, Trachtenberg, The Campanile, 76–77.

86. E. Neri Lusanna, “Andrea Pisano’s Saint Stephen and the Genesis of Monumental Sculpture at Orsanmichele,” in Orsanmichele and the His-tory and Preservation of the Civic Monument, ed. C. b. Strehlke (New haven, 2012), 53–74; kreytenberg, Andrea Pisano, 79–80; and A. Mos-kowitz, The Sculpture of Andrea and Nino Pisano (Cambridge, 1986), 57–58.

87. Neri Lusanna, “Andrea Pisano’s Saint Stephen,” 56; and G. kreytenberg, “Lo scultore Simone Talenti,” Antichità viva, 32 (1993), 35.

88. G. kreytenberg, Orcagna’s Tabernacle in Orsanmichele, Florence (New york, 1994); and b. Cassidy, “Orcagna’s Tabernacle in Florence: Design and Function,” ZfKg, 61 (1992), 180–211.

89. On the miniature, see S. Partsch, Profane Buchmalerei der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft in Spätmittelalterlichen Florenz: Der “Specchio Umano” des Getreidehändlers Domenico Lenzi (worms, 1981).

90. On this monument, see F. Caglioti, “Giovanni di balduccio at Orsanmi-chele: The Tabernacle of the Virgin before Orcagna,” in Strehlke, Or-sanmichele and the History and Preservation of the Civic Monument, 75–110; and G. kreytenberg, “Un tabernacolo di Giovanni di balduccio per Orsanmichele a Firenze,” Boletín del Museo Arqueológico Nacional (Madrid), 8 (1990), 37–57.

91. The fact that the biadaiolo miniature shows a man behind a parapet in balduccio’s shrine suggests that in scale it was comparable to Orcagna’s. The reliefs of the apostles and those of Truth and Obedience are now set into the walls of Orsanmichele itself. The Charity is in the National Gal-lery of Art, washington, DC (Fig. 20), and the Poverty is in the bargello in Florence; see Caglioti, “Giovanni di balduccio at Orsanmichele”; and kreytenberg, “Un tabernacolo di Giovanni di balduccio,” 44–46.

92. For a survey of balduccio’s works, see kreytenberg, “Un tabernacolo di Giovanni di balduccio,” 39–40; and Dictionary of Art, s.v. “Giovanni di balduccio,” by G. kreytenberg, accessed 6 February 2012, http://www .oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T032516.

93. For balduccio’s work at Sta. Caterina, see M. Seidel, “The Sculptures by Giovanni di balduccio from Santa Caterina in Pisa: An Attribution for the Capital of the Evangelists in the Liebighaus,” in Seidel, Italian Art of the Middle Ages, 2:645–62.

94. An inscription records the beginning of construction as “MCCCXXVII del mese di febbraio,” that is, February 1328 in modern style.

95. On the chap el generally, see Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi, 22–36, 88–112.96. See R. bartalini, “Monumenta laicorum: i sepolcri della cappella bardi

in Santa Croce a Firenze,” in bartalini, Scultura gotica, 180, 189–92.97. The letter is signed, “Taddeo dipintore tuo, da Pisa.” See Ladis, Taddeo

Gaddi, 14, 255, who transcribed the letter from the illustration published by C. Pini and G. Milanesi, eds., La scrittura di artisti italiani (sec. XIV–XVII), 3 vols. (Florence, 1876), 1: no. 1. Vasari, Vite, 1:575–76, records frescoes by Gaddi in the Gambacorti Chap el of S. Francesco, Pisa, which he says were signed and dated August 1342. his account, however, is unreliable; see Ladis, 14.

98. L. bellosi, Buffalmacco e il Trionfo della Morte (Turin, 1974), 54. buf-falmacco is documented as also having worked in Arezzo, the other major

Ghibelline town in Tuscany, sometime before 1341; see bellosi, 25–26; and M. boskovits, “Marginalia su buffalmacco e sulla pittura aretina del primo Trecento,” Arte cristiana, 86 (1998), 165–76.

99. buffalmacco as wit and prankster appears in boccaccio, Decameron, 8.3, 6, 9; 9.5; and Sacchetti, Il Trecentonovelle, 136, 161, 169, 191, 192. On the Camposanto frescoes, see bellosi, Buffalmacco; and L. battaglia Ricci, Ragionare nel giardino: Boccaccio e i cicli pittorici del Trionfo della Morte (Rome, 1987).

100. A point made by J. Polzer, “Aristotle, Mohammed and Nicholas V in hell,” AB, 46 (1964), 464, fig. 13.

101. he is documented in Orvieto in May 1347, when he is referred to as capo-maestro of the cathedral. For the documents, see kreytenberg, Andrea Pisano, 181, nos. 35, 37.

102. Vasari, Vite, 1:491–92.103. See the outline of this theory in Trachtenberg, The Campanile, 52.104. This is the suggestion of Trachtenberg, ibid., 52–53. Pucci remarks (ibid.,

206): “Ma per un lavorio che mosse vano / Il qual si fè per miglioramento / Il maestro gli fu tratto di mano.” This ambiguous passage, written thirty years after the event, suggests that something that Andrea had done for the improvement of the tower was judged “vain” and led to his removal from office. It seems hardly credible, however, that the authorities would have given Andrea such a free rein as not to know what he was planning.

105. between 1340 and 1347 stonemasons’ wages fell by 25 to 45 percent relative to those in the decade before; C. M. de la Roncière, Florence centre économique regional au XIVe siècle, 5 vols. (Aix-en-Provence, 1976), 1:296, 343; and C. M. Cipolla, The Monetary Policy of Fourteenth-Century Florence (berkeley, 1982), 14.

106. what follows is taken from Cassidy, Politics, Civic Ideals and Sculpture, 215–18. For a critical reading and transcription of the documents relating to the tomb, see S. Masignani, “Tino di Camaino e Lupo di Francesco: precisazioni sulla tomba dell’imperatore Arrigo VII,” Prospettiva, 87–88 (1997), 112–19; see also Valentiner, Tino di Camaino, 36–37.

107. At the end of July, seven painters working for eight days decorated the walls around the tomb with an ornamental pattern comprising the em-peror’s coats of arms. On 2 August there were payments “for the work of the window of the emperor’s altar,” and some three weeks later the monument was duly dedicated; see C. Nenci and P. Fabiani, “Gli intonaci dipinti recentementi scoperti nell’abside del Duomo di Pisa: analisi strati-grafica e iconografica,” Archeologia dell’architettura, 3 (1998), 185–96; and Valentiner, Tino di Camaino, 43.

108. See the document in P. bacci, “Monumenti danteschi: lo scultore Tino di Camaino e la tomba dell ‘alto Arrigo’ per il Duomo di Pisa,” Rassegna d’arte antica e moderna, 21 (1921), 77–78: “Cum sit guelfos et in exer-citu et prelio de Montecatino fuerit contra pisanos,” and “ipse [i.e., Tino] vel aliquis alius guelfus ad dictum oficium non admictatur, nec sit vel esse possit vel valeat ullo modo.”

109. For Tino’s work in Siena and Florence, see baldelli, Tino di Camaino, 141–226; Valentiner, Tino di Camaino, 43–82; and kreytenberg, Die Werke von Tino di Camaino, 20–26.

110. baldelli, Tino di Camaino, 170–89; and Valentiner, Tino di Camaino, 58–62.

111. baldelli, Tino di Camaino, 189–209; and Valentiner, Tino di Camaino, 62–74.

112. See Cassidy, Politics, Civic Ideals and Sculpture, chap. 4.113. There was also, of course, a simple economic reason why building work

was more likely to take place in peacetime. war, fought in the main by mercenaries, was expensive and consumed public funds that might have been spent on urban projects.


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