NEW --- IN SEARCH OF BERNARDO DADDI AND CIVIC FLORENCE
Click on the image to find out more about Bernardo's fourteenth century Florence, and where and how to seek it out in Florence today!
Click on the image to find out more about Bernardo's fourteenth century Florence, and where and how to seek it out in Florence today!
IN SEARCH OF BERNARDO DADDI AND CIVIC FLORENCE
“Who?”, you may ask... The Florentine painter Bernardo Daddi is little known today beyond experts in Florentine fourteenth-century art. Bernardo may have been born sometime in the 1280s; having learned his craft and art probably under Giotto, or in “the school of Giotto”, he worked over the years about 1312/1320 to 1348, although his first dated work is of 1328; he almost certainly died in the catastrophic Black Plague of 1348. He flourished in the relatively forgotten valley overshadowed by the Florentine artistic heights of Giotto before and the early Renaissance masters later. Yet in his day Bernardo Daddi, Bernardo of Florence (Bernardus de Florentia), ran perhaps the city’s largest, most prolific and influential workshop.....
Almost every one of the great civic and religious monuments of Florence featured an important painting by Bernardo, to say nothing about smaller venues and familial patronage....
To seek out Bernardo Daddi today is to encounter Florence and Florentine pride in its fourteenth century piety and pomp, albeit with some effort of the imagination. Bernardo’s paintings for the popular public oratory of Orsanmichele, for the open audience hall of the Misericordia confraternity, and for the high altar of the beloved Florence cathedral, must have been among the most seen and best known public artworks in the city. Fortunately, Bernardo Daddi’s civic art -- art which was, in his day, of an intertwined religious and secular nature -- may be found and understood “dov’era, com’era” (to crib a phrase) in Florentine spaces and places which still today are amongst the most evocative of the vibrant late medieval and early renaissance city.
My purpose in this little article is enjoyment, my own and I hope others’, of Florence, art and history. I do not purport to break important scholarly ground in studies of Bernardo Daddi or fourteenth century Florentine art, although I do advance some interpretations and suggestions.
Comments and suggestions are welcome..... Above all, enjoy your own little excursion into fourteenth century Florence! Click here or on the image to open a PDF version.
“Who?”, you may ask... The Florentine painter Bernardo Daddi is little known today beyond experts in Florentine fourteenth-century art. Bernardo may have been born sometime in the 1280s; having learned his craft and art probably under Giotto, or in “the school of Giotto”, he worked over the years about 1312/1320 to 1348, although his first dated work is of 1328; he almost certainly died in the catastrophic Black Plague of 1348. He flourished in the relatively forgotten valley overshadowed by the Florentine artistic heights of Giotto before and the early Renaissance masters later. Yet in his day Bernardo Daddi, Bernardo of Florence (Bernardus de Florentia), ran perhaps the city’s largest, most prolific and influential workshop.....
Almost every one of the great civic and religious monuments of Florence featured an important painting by Bernardo, to say nothing about smaller venues and familial patronage....
To seek out Bernardo Daddi today is to encounter Florence and Florentine pride in its fourteenth century piety and pomp, albeit with some effort of the imagination. Bernardo’s paintings for the popular public oratory of Orsanmichele, for the open audience hall of the Misericordia confraternity, and for the high altar of the beloved Florence cathedral, must have been among the most seen and best known public artworks in the city. Fortunately, Bernardo Daddi’s civic art -- art which was, in his day, of an intertwined religious and secular nature -- may be found and understood “dov’era, com’era” (to crib a phrase) in Florentine spaces and places which still today are amongst the most evocative of the vibrant late medieval and early renaissance city.
My purpose in this little article is enjoyment, my own and I hope others’, of Florence, art and history. I do not purport to break important scholarly ground in studies of Bernardo Daddi or fourteenth century Florentine art, although I do advance some interpretations and suggestions.
Comments and suggestions are welcome..... Above all, enjoy your own little excursion into fourteenth century Florence! Click here or on the image to open a PDF version.