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Giotto e compagni (musée du Louvre, 18 April–15 July 2013). Catalogue byDominique Thiébaut, with essays by Donal Cooper and Andrea de Marchi,and contributions by Marianne Besseyere, Thomas Bohl, Sonia Chiodo,Marco Ciatti, Joanna Dunn, Myriam Eveno, Cecilia Frosinini, Giovanni Giura,Babette Hartwieg, Daniel Jaunard, Maire-Claude Léonelli, Patrick Mandron,Rosaria Motta, Linda Pisani, Élisabeth Ravaud, Claudia Sindaco and PaoloVitolo. Milan: Louvre/ Officina Libraria, 2013. 276 pp. with 200 colour and b& w illustrations. €39.00. ISBN: 978-8897737117 (pb).

Chapels are places of memory, spaces of commemoration and showcases of great art.On 18 February 1659, King Louis XIV attended the consecration of a new royal chapelin the Palais du Louvre. Dedicated to Notre-Dame de la Paix et Saint-Louis, it markedthe close of the Thirty Years’ War, celebrated French victory over Spain, and honouredthe sovereign’s patron saint. Three hundred and fifty years later, the palace hadbecome a museum and the faithful were not Christian worshippers but devotees ofRenaissance art who came to behold the accomplishments of the Florentine painterGiotto di Bondone (c. 1276–1337). ‘Giotto e compagni’, the Louvre’s first ever exhi-bition of Trecento art, gathered in the Salle du chapelle thirty-one objects by themaster, his workshop and followers. Easier said than done. Frescoes, like his world-famous cycles at Assisi and Padua, can only be experienced in person and the paintingson panel and vellum, drawings and sculpture displayed here, mostly from Frenchpublic collections, rarely travel. Replete with images of God, Christ, the Virgin and thesaints, these devotional works transformed the palace’s defunct royal chapel into ashrine. It evoked on an intimate scale the kind of all-encompassing experience onceenjoyed by Enrico Scrovegni and heeded the advice of Vasari, who opened his list ofGiotto’s works with a palace chapel, where readers were directed to seek out theFlorentine master’s revolutionary art in person.1

Originally conceived as a dossier show around the Louvre’s Stigmatization of SaintFrancis (cat. 3, Fig. 1), the exhibition was organized chronologically and divided intothematic sections. They began with Giotto’s early years in Florence (1285–1303) and

This review benefitted from discussions with Denise Allen, Lauren Jacobi, Scott Nethersole, Jessica Richardson,Neville Rowley and Xavier Salomon. I am grateful for their assistance.

1 ‘Là dove venuto, in poco tempo, si content che seco lo menasse a Firenza. Là dove venuto, in poco tempo,aiutato dalla natura et ammaestrato da Cimabue, non solo pareggiò il fanciullo la maniera del maestro suo, madivenne così buono imitatore della natura che sbandì affatto quella goffa maniera greca, e riuscitò la modernae buona arte della pittura, introducendo il ritrarre bene di natural le persone vive, il che più di dugento anninon s’era usato; e se pure si era provato qualcuno, come si è detto di sopra, non gli era ciò riuscito moltofelicemente né così bene a un pezzo come a Giotto. Il quale fra gl’altri ritrasse, come ancor oggi si vede nellacappella del Palagio del Podestà di Fiorenza . . . .’ Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettorinelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, eds. R. Bettarini and P. Barocchi, (Sansoni: Florence, 1967), Vol. 2, 97.

Renaissance Studies Vol. •• No. •• DOI: 10.1111/rest.12044

© 2014 The Society for Renaissance Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

continued into his maturity (1303–25). They addressed sticky questions of the bottega(1320s), considered his employment at the Court of Naples (1328–32), and concludedwith the reception of his art in France (1340s). Giotto travelled widely across the Italianpeninsula and the outstanding group of paintings assembled here offered a snapshotof his peripatetic career. Florence, Naples, Pisa and even Padua, with a remarkableloan of the Scrovegni Chapel’s God the Father in Majesty (cat. 5), were all representedunder one roof. Beyond his painterly abilities, the astonishing variety of types on

Fig. 1 Giotto, Stigmatization of Saint Francis of Assisi, c. 1298, on poplar panel, 313.5 × 162.5 cm, Paris, musée duLouvre, département des Peintures (© RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre)/ Michel Urtado)

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display – a crucifix, monumental gabled panels, a polyptych, reunited diptychs, and avariety of other small-scale works intended for private devotion – introduced the richvein of facture into our understanding of Giotto’s role as an innovator. Conservateurgénéral Dominique Thiébaut delivered it to visitors with sensitively designed installa-tions that highlighted construction, copious comparative images and carefully writtenlabels.

Softly lit behind clear glass entrance doors, like a gargantuan relic within its ownmonstrance, the Louvre’s Stigmatization was the star of the show. Vasari (1568)described the painting hanging from a pillar in San Francesco in Pisa but its originalfunction and location have long remained a mystery. New research by Donal Cooperand Linda Pisani, corroborated by the technical investigation of Élisabeth Ravaud,demonstrated that it was not intended for a chapel.2 Instead, as previously suggestedby Bram Kempers, this giant image towered over the congregation of San Francescoatop its tramezzo, where it broadcast a powerful and highly visible statement of alle-giance to the Franciscans who maintained this church. A tiny pair of imprese, perhapsadded after the painting arrived in Pisa, link the commission to the Cinquini and, itis argued, to two women of the family who belonged to a Franciscan penitentialconfraternity. In the gallery and catalogue, a comparative image of the Verification ofthe Stigmata fresco at Assisi, depicting a crossbeam full of painted panels, helpfullyevoked this painting’s original altitude and angle of installation. Three originalmounting rings, visible on the reverse thanks to its unprecedented display on afree-standing plinth, accepted chains and point to a degree of adjustability that couldbe exploited to achieve the maximum visual impact.

Monumental gabled panels were hardly revolutionary by circa 1300 but the impres-sive image that Giotto crafted fully articulated the potential of this substantial tavola.Even on his knees, Saint Francis is an overwhelming figure, towering above a smalloratory and dominating the penitential landscape which rises behind him but fitsneatly within the frame. His Stigmatization is the grand finale of a constituent narrativebeginning with the three small square compartments inscribed into the same goldground and depicting The Dream of Pope Innocent III, The Approval of the Franciscan Ruleand The Preaching of Saint Francis to the Birds. Kneeling before Innocent III, the littlefigure of Saint Francis echoes the position of his enormous counterpart receiving thestigmata above, dramatizing the Franciscan virtue of humility in monumental andminiature. But for whom? The looming Stigmatization projected the image of Francis asalter christus to the entire lay congregation but the saint’s relationship with Christ’s vicaron earth could only have been contemplated by devotees privileged (or interested)enough to get up close. Whether or not they understood that the artist’s signaturebeneath was no less than homage to Praxiteles,3 its metal (silver?) foil, now oxidized,

2 Élisabeth Ravaud, Donal Cooper and Linda Pisani in Giotto e compagni, 76–93. See also the recent article byDonal Cooper, ‘Redefining the Altarpiece in Early Renaissance Italy: Giotto’s Stigmatization of Saint Francis andits Pisan Context’, Art History 36, September 2013, 686–713. The fundamental study of this painting is JulianGardner, ‘The Louvre Stigmatization and the problem of the narrative altarpiece’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte45, 1982, 217–47. Gardner lately returned to the Pisa panel as an altarpiece in Giotto and His Publics (Florence:Villa I Tatti, 2011), 19–45.

3 Maria Monica Donato, ‘Memorie degli artisti, memoria dell’antico. Intorno alle firme di Giotto e di altri’in Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (ed.), Medioevo. Il tempo degli antichi, atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Parma,24-28 September 2003 (Milan: Electa, 2006), 528–30, cited by Linda Pisani in Giotto e compagni, 83.

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would have glistened in the candlelight (Fig. 2).4 Like that inscribed beneath theVirgin’s feet on his Bologna polyptych, it visibly signalled Giotto’s talents to a non-Florentine audience.5

Giotto’s ability to exploit the natural environment is not often discussed in theliterature but it was clearly on display in this painting. For example, he carefullydifferentiated between the grassy floodplain of Cannara where Francis preached to thebirds and the wilderness of La Verna, isolated on the slopes of Mount Penna in therugged Casentino. Just as the tiny oak tree appears to bend in salutation, offering upthe birds that roost within it, the mountainside above embraces Francis, echoing instone his bodily acceptance of the Stigmata and recalling a legendary rock face thatprovided him with shelter from the devil. Behind the saint, five trees of two differentspecies, signal the wilderness location of his miraculous encounter and suggest itsabundance with flourishing canopies constructed of the same individually depictedleaves found in the Louvre’s monumental Crucifix (cat. 11). The rocky escarpment theycling to not only evokes the defining geographical feature of La Verna but invites theviewer to ascend its precipitous slopes by following a route signposted by the trees,virtually partaking in the climb that Francis himself made.

Panel paintings both large and small encouraged the visitor to look beyond theartist’s mastery of the natural world, and to think about how he used it. Giotto gaveprominence to a rock ledge in the Stigmatization that situates the kneeling saint in aplausible space. As part of the landscape, it helps to locate Francis on La Verna and,like a parapet, this precipice functions as a threshold, opening up a reverent distancebetween miracle and the devotee. Yet Giotto revealed to the viewer a side of it that thesaint cannot see. The ledge is not simply a familiar rock feature but a deliberatelydeceptive pictorial device, enjoining the thoughtful participant in a potentially effica-cious tension between tangible world and virtuoso illusion, personalising our view of animage intended to aid in meditation or contemplation. It emerged as a signaturefeature in three versions of the Crucifixion (cat. 16, 17, and 18), all small-scale panelpaintings of the same narrative, made for personal devotion, and reunited for the firsttime since 1937.6 Even the compromised Troyes panel (cat. 18) tentatively ascribed to‘Giotto et Atelier?’ reveals a considerable fragment in the bottom right corner.

4 Élisabeth Ravaud, ibid., 79.5 An illustrated compendium of his signatures with relevant bibliography can be found in, Michael Viktor

Schwarz and Pia Theis, Giottus Pictor, Band I: Giottos Leben, (Vienna: Böhlau, 2004), 273–81. It has also beenargued that, with this signature, Giotto affirmed his authorship of the Assisi frescoes, three episodes of whichare glossed in the narrative scenes. See Carl Brandon Strehlke’s review of seven books on Giotto in Art Bulletin94, September 2012, No. 3, 464.

6 Mostra Giottesca. Onoranze a Giotto nel VI centenario della morte, exh. cat. (Florence: Palazzo degli Uffizi, 1937).

Fig. 2 Giotto, Stigmatization of Saint Francis of Assisi, detail of signature, c. 1298, on poplar panel, 313.5 ×162.5 cm, Paris, musée du Louvre, département des Peintures (© RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre)/Michel Urtado)

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The innate pictorial imagination that defines his surviving fresco cycles wasunmissable in the panel paintings assembled in Paris. Giotto’s exceptional ingegno wassingled out by Boccaccio and Petrarch, and its dynamics have been the subject of muchmodern study and scholarly debate.7 As argued by Mary Pardo for his frescoes, thepotentially recognizable gestures, expressions and material detail that constitutedGiotto’s visual vocabulary lent credibility to clever and original solutions developed inresponse to representational challenges.8 The result was a subtlety that was appreciatedby knowledgeable viewers, enabling humanists like Petrarch to discriminate betweeninformed and uninformed publics.9

Julian Gardner has carefully observed that in the Stigmatization of Saint Francis frescooutside the Bardi Chapel at Santa Croce, Giotto deliberately cut off the seraph’s upperwings, conveying the speed of this divine vision for the first time.10 Several years earlier,however, he had already achieved it in the Pisa version. Giotto cropped the hasteningseraph’s wing tip with all of the subtly befitting a panel painting, enhancing theimpression of an accelerated descent implicit in the fluttering drapery. On bendedknee, Francis beholds his vision and Giotto offers a view up his sleeves. This saint hasjust dropped to the ground and thrown both hands up in bewilderment, but sosuddenly that the sleeve of his habit has not yet begun to slide down his arms (unlikethe Bardi fresco or even his companion’s habit in the narrative scene below.) What weinterpret as immediacy might equally be described, in a devotional context, as a senseof the divine made present.

Even before he left Florence, it was already evident in Giotto’s paintings. Tassels atthe tips of a cylindrical bulging pillow beneath The Virgin of San Giorgio alla Costa (cat.2, Fig. 3) stand on end, conveying the heft of her massive body. Weight need not meaninactivity – the Virgin’s cloth of honour swings from the throne’s top edge attached byfour delicate rings. While such embellishments led Andrea de Marchi to argue forGiotto’s overlooked genius of ‘ornato’ (Roberto Longhi’s word), focusing on detailsalone overlooks the bigger picture.11 Its conspicuous mounting hardware emphasizesthe portability and empherality of this tapestry, implying that the two angels have justhung it up for her. Wings poised, they are not in flight but only recently arrived. Redribbons that secure their flowing locks terminate in loose ends, all of which are stillperched precariously aloft as if filled with air from a sudden landing. Giotto seems tosignal the Virgin’s recent enthronement with angels like attentive courtiers heraldingthe arrival of their monarch by duly preparing her honourable seat. It is a pity that theLouvre’s own Maestà by Cimabue could not be part of the exhibition, where the

7 ‘. . . [Giotto] ebbe uno ingegno di tanta eccellenzia . . .’. Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. Vittore Branca(Florence: Le Monnier, 1960), Vol. 2 149. See also Giovanni Boccaccio, Il comento alla Divina Commedia e gli altriscritti introno a Dante, ed. Domenico Guerri (Bari, 1968), Vol. 3, 82. Petrarch lauded the frescoes in Naples byGiotto for his ‘manus et ingenium’. Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971),51.

8 Mary Pardo, ‘Giotto and the Things Not Seen, Hidden in the Shadow of Natural Ones’, Artibus et historiae 18, n.36 (1997), 41–53. For a more general discussion of ingenium see, Baxandall, Giotto 15–17.

9 Baxandall, Giotto, 59–62.10 Julian Gardner, Giotto and His Publics (Florence: I Tatti, 2011), 70.11 Andrea de Marchi in Giotto e compagni, 50.

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monumental panel would have underscored their contrasting approaches to heavenlypresence – one indicated by awe-inspiring physical size and the other dramatized bythe devotee’s active participation.

God the Father in Majesty (cat. 5, Fig. 4), albeit damaged, conveyed a similar impres-sion. Painted on a hinged wooden panel whose function remains in dispute and

Fig. 3 Giotto, The Virgin of San Giorgio alla Costa, c. 1288–90, on panel, 180 × 900 cm, Florence, Museodiocesano di Santo Stefano al Ponte (© Studio Quattrone)

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executed with a subtly matte finish that imitated fresco technique, it was located at thepinnacle of the triumphal arch, surmounting the Scrovegni Chapel’s altar.12 Highabove, God presides in heaven and over earth, initiating the narrative cycle. Gazing ata crowd of angels through the right aperture of his throne, he raises his right hand tocommand Gabriel who waits on the step below it. God’s fingers are still unfolding, acombined act of dispatch and blessing rapidly approaching but not yet fully realized.Imminence achieved through multiple pictorial effects was the operative principle inGiotto’s capacity to orchestrate a heavenly encounter for the devotee or, as John

12 For one idea see, Andrea de Marchi, in Giotto e compagni, 102. For a very different opinion and attributionsee Laura Jacobus, Giotto and the Arena Chapel (London: Harvey Miller, 2008), 105–13.

Fig. 4 Giotto, God the Father in Majesty, c. 1303–05, on panel, 150 × 95 cm, Padua, Musei Civici, ScrovegniChapel

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Shearman might have put it, to connect with the beholder. Shearman called attentionto the remarkable way in which the Saint Francis cycle at Assisi defines and locates theviewer, making him present at the saint’s miracles, but attributed this brilliant conceitto one of three anonymous masters.13

The title ‘Giotto e compagni’ signalled that there was more than one hand at workin this room too. Authorship is the paramount of Giotto questions and the exhibitionconfronted it head-on. Ever since Richard Offner dismantled the master’s oeuvre byremoving the Assisi frescoes, casting into doubt the three paintings that bear hissignature, attributions to the giotteschi have been a growth industry.14 Clouds of schol-arly confusion subsequently obscured Giotto’s achievements. Following the lead of arthistorians including Luciano Bellosi and Miklós Boskovits, to whom the catalogue isdedicated, Thièbaut sought to remedy the situation by re-examining the artist’s panelpaintings and situating them within the wider context of his workshop practices.15

Almost half of the objects on display were identified as Giotto: nine were eitherattributed to or signed by him and three more were described as ‘Giotto et atelier’.This moniker denoted a work of art that revealed Giotto’s conception at the designstage and execution by painters working directly under his supervision, implicitlyidentifying the work as a commission from the master.16 By way of comparison, theywere displayed with paintings by unaffiliated artists who copied his motifs (Maestro diCesi, cat. 4) and style (Bernardo Daddi, cat. 7 and 8; imitators in Naples and Avignon,cat. 23–31), as well as those who resisted it (Lippo di Beniveni, cat. 9 and 10).

The catalogue, accessible to novices but written for specialists, nuanced this picture.Essays by Donal Cooper and Andrea de Marchi focused on his relationship with theFranciscans – who emerge as a driving force behind the pan-peninsular success ofGiotto’s firm – and his role in the development of canonical types like the monumentalcrucifix or polyptych. The Badia pentaptych, for example, is the earliest known altar-piece whose compartments are internally articulated by architectural features – atrilobe arch resting on two pilasters.17 That it is constructed of vertical boards eventhough Giotto subsequently returned to polyptychs carpentered with the more tradi-tional horizontal-plank dossal structure may have surprised De Marchi, but shouldremind the reader that progress is not a steady march forward.18 Substantial catalogueentries on each object featured the results of new technical analyses in the words of theconservators who performed them, proffering not just discoveries – such as the revela-tion through infrared reflectography that the terminal of a tiny crucifix in the Stigma-tization of Saint Francis once depicted Saint John the Evangelist rather than the Virgin

13 John Shearman, Only Connect . . . Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance, (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1992), 193.

14 Richard Offner, ‘Giotto, Non-Giotto’, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 74, No. 435 (June 1939,258–69; Richard Offner, ‘Giotto, Non-Giotto – II’, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 75, No. 438 (Sep-tember 1939), 96–113. Giotto’s signed paintings are the Louvre’s Stigmatization of Saint Francis from SanFrancesco, Pisa, and his polyptychs for the Baroncelli Chapel in Florence’s Santa Croce and Bologna’s SantaMaria degli Angeli (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna).

15 Luciano Bellosi, La Pecora di Giotto (Turin: Einaudi, 1985); Miklós Boskovits, ‘Giotto. Un artista pococonosciuto?’ in Angelo Tartuferi (ed.), Giotto. Bilancio critico di sessanti’anni di studi e ricerche (Florence: Giunti,2000), 75–96; Luciano Bellosi, with Giovanna Ragionieri, Giotto e la sua eredità (Milan: Il Sole 24 Ore, 2007).

16 Dominique Thiébaut in Giotto e compagni, 22.17 Andrea de Marchi in Giotto e compagni, 54.18 Andrea de Marchi in Giotto e compagni, 55.

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– but more importantly the building blocks for future scholarship. All of the contribu-tors tackled a vast literature and each object bibliography is annotated with previousattributions, useful for still contentious debates on Giotto and non-Giotto that willinevitably continue long after this exhibition closes.

Instead of seeking to identify his talented assistants,19 the catalogue invited us torethink the painter’s business. Both curator and contributors pictured the operation ofGiotto’s workshop as a large and multifaceted corporation with many overlappingresponsibilities whose director delegated extensively to a highly capable staff. Giotto’s‘compagni’, a tribute to the 1985 exhibition, ‘Simone Martini e “chompagni” ’, held atSiena’s Pinacoteca Nazionale, were designated as a close associates in the bottega whorigorously worked from the master’s designs.20

Confusingly, however, this is not its period meaning. Compagno derives from theword compagnia, the legal designation for a profit-sharing partnership. It was applied inFlorentine and Sienese legal statutes regulating painters’ guilds by the mid-1330s.21

Artists contracted compagnie to create financial stability by pooling their resources,either for fixed periods of time or individual projects.22 Long-term arrangementsprotected participants from bankruptcy in times of hardship. Although their talentswere often complementary, the compagnia was strictly a professional arrangement –contracts signed by one compagno did not entail the joint participation of all partners.23

Admittedly, most of the documented evidence post-dates Giotto, and the fact thatVasari later described collaborative works as executed ‘in compagnia’ leaves open thepossibility that it may have been used differently circa 1300.24 Whatever the case mayhave been in Giotto’s time, ‘compagno’ was never a pejorative term. Painters of thenext generation, however, were quickly cast in his shadow and the fact that they aretoday identified as his comrades continues to reinforce an ahistorical definition of theword in modern scholarship.25

Despite its apparently anachronistic application, the word compagno invited visitors torethink the workshop as a positive place of enterprise rather than as a marker of

19 The modern touchstone for this literature is Giovanni Previtali, Giotto e la sua bottega (Milan, Fratelli Fabbri,1967). It was republished in 1973 and 1993.

20 Dominique Thiébaut in Giotto e compagni, 22; Giovanni Previtali, ‘Introduzione’ in Alessandro Bagnoli andLuciano Bellosi (eds.), Simone Martini e ‘chompagni’, exh. cat. (Siena: Pinacoteca Nazionale, 1985), 11–32.

21 For Florence see, Raffaele Ciasca, Statuti dell’Arte dei Medici e speziali (Florence: Olschki, 1922); for Siena see,Gaetano Milanesi, ‘Breve dell’arte dei pittori senesi nell’anno MCCCLV’, Documenti per la storia dell’arte senese(Onorato Porro: Siena, 1854), Vol. 1, 1–56.

22 Groundbreaking research on the practical implications of compagnie was first published by, Ugo Procacci,‘Di Jacopo di Antonio e delle compagnie di pittori del corso degli Adimari nel secolo XV’, Rivista d’arte 35(1960), 3–70.

23 A textbook example is Pesellino’s Trinity altarpiece. When he was hired to paint it in 1455, Pesellino wasalready engaged in compagnia with a specialist painter of impresa. Piero di Lorenzo did not participate in thiscommission but, as partner, sued to recover half the profits when Pesellino died, leaving the altarpieceunfinished (it was completed by Fra Filippo Lippi). For a discussion see, Dillian Gordon, The Fifteenth CenturyItalian Paintings, (London: The National Gallery, 2003), 260–87.

24 Most examples date from the late Trecento and early Quattrocento. For a Trecento compagnia in Venicecontracted between two sculptor brothers see, Susan Connell, ‘The Employment of Sculptors and Stonemasonsin Venice in the Fifteenth Century’ (Ph.D. thesis, Warburg Institute, London, 1988), 47–8. For Vasari’s use ofthe term ‘in compagnia’ see the Life of Andrea Orcagna, Antonio and Piero Pollaiuolo or Dosso Dossi.

25 As early as the 1380s, Filippo Villani had already framed Taddeo Gaddi and Maso di Banco as Giotto’sfollowers. Filippo Villani De origine civitatis Florentiae et eiusdem famosis civibus (1381–2), quoted by Baxandall,Giotto, 147 (and translated, 71). See also the discussion on page 75.

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inferior craftsmanship. Some compagni became highly successful independent artists,like Taddeo Gaddi, who was represented by one scene from a predella (cat. 20) – stilla novelty at this time – and one of two drawings in the exhibition, the Presentation in theTemple (cat. 19). The opportunity to compare it with Two men holding swords, attributedto Giotto (cat. 6), was instructive. Both almost certainly relate to fresco cycles and eachillustrated a different goal – a full composition and a design for figures. Whether or notthese extraordinarily rare survivals from the Trecento were intended as preparatory orcontract drawings (we know next to nothing about the use of drawings in this period),they revealed the kinds of information communicated on paper by two highly success-ful painters of different generations who had once worked together – for example, aprofound concern with bold modelling in the design stages that is borne out inunderdrawing of paintings executed by Giotto and his workshop.26 If the breadth ofGiotto’s delegation posited in the catalogue is correct, then, as proposed by RobertoBellucci and Cecilia Frosinini, easily portable designs certainly played a pivotal role inthe transmission of ideas from a master to employees, who realized them in fresco.27

Works by or attributed to Giotto differ widely in style and the catalogue was con-cerned with why the corpus appears heterogenous. Modern criteria of authorshipprivilege the master’s physical touch and lack the flexibility to accommodate syntheticcommissions undertaken by a Trecento bottega often executed in multiple campaigns.At Santa Croce, for example, Andrea de Marchi argued that Giotto (with the Francis-cans) masterminded a single unified decorative program for the ten transept chapelsexecuted by several independent firms over the course of twenty years.28 Equally, DonalCooper proposed that Giotto conceived and began to paint the fresco cycle for theLower Church at Assisi, establishing the programme and setting the stylistic tone forhis squadra of talented compagni to complete.29 If their hypotheses are correct, or evenon the right track, then pictorial ingenuity was the principal value at stake anddelegation was a skill more important to Giotto’s success than the physical act ofpainting itself. When it comes to authorship, perhaps art historians should worry lessabout subtle stylistic variation within an individual commission and focus more on theoverall unity of its component parts.

Stylistic harmony in panel paintings too is not always what art historians expect, andthis exhibition was a welcome addition to the recent trend in scholarship that bringstechnical evidence to bear on questions of workshop practice. Take, for instance, thefour attributed to Giotto – Saint John the Evangelist (cat. 13), Saint Stephen (cat. 15), theVirgin and Child (cat. 12) and Saint Lawrence (cat. 14), first proposed by Roberto Longhias fragments of the same pentaptych and reunited in Paris for the first time since 1937.

26 Infrared reflectography captures revealing his undermodelling technique can be found in cat. 11–15, andin several exhibition labels. For more on this technique see, Roberto Bellucci and Cecilia Frosinini, ‘“Di Grecoin latino”. Considerazioni sull “underdrawing” di Giotto, come modello mentale’, in Marco Ciatti (ed.),L’officina di Giotto. Il restauro della Croce di Ognissanti (Florence: Edifir, 2010), 167–77.

27 Roberto Bellucci and Cecilia Frosinini, ‘“Di Greco in latino”. Considerazioni sull “underdrawing” diGiotto, come modello mentale’, in Marco Ciatti (ed.), L’officina di Giotto. Il restauro della Croce di Ognissanti(Florence: Edifir, 2010), 170, cited by Dominique Thiébaut in Giotto e compagni, 22.

28 Andrea de Marchi in Giotto e compagni, 56; Andrea de Marchi, ‘Il progetto di Giotto tra sperimentazione edefinizione del canone. Parimenti a finti marmi nelle cappelle del transetto di Santa Croce a Firenze’, in FulvioCervini and Andrea de Marchi (eds.), Santa Croce. Origini. Firenze 1300, frammenti di un discorso sugli ornate suglispazzi (Rome: Carroci, 2010), 13–24.

29 Donal Cooper in Giotto e compagni, 40.

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Differences of style and incision motifs (a useful reference for which is available inAppendix 1) in addition to factual confusion over dimensions and preparation tech-niques, not to mention the dismal condition of Saint Lawrence, led many scholars todoubt their common provenance, let alone their collective attribution to Giotto. Newscientific examination of each one confirmed Longhi’s hypothesis, even if it couldnot determine their original order.30 Furthermore, the results of the collaborativetechnical study pointed to a single mind at work during the initial stages – microscopicexamination revealed the shared preparation of a double bol layer in two differentcolours and infrared reflectography demonstrated a common underdrawingtechnique.

The attribution of this altarpiece to Giotto, sometimes thought to come from thePulci-Berardi Chapel,31 is complicated by the authorship of individual panels. Thesame problem plagues the Raleigh polyptych, typically identified as the Peruzzi Chapelaltarpiece and recently on display at the J. Paul Getty Museum.32 Thièbaut hypoth-esized a prolonged completion by Giotto to explain the appearance of the fragmentarypentaptych assembled at the Louvre, but the intervention of more than one paintercould equally account for its stylistic diversity. To extend the principles of delegationtypically reserved for frescoes to multi-compartment commissions on panel is not toimply that it was any less a signature product.33 Both altarpieces have been proposed astwo of Giotto’s four ‘tavole’ recorded by Ghiberti at Santa Croce.34 If each one was infact commissioned from him, then it must be recognized that the narrow stylisticcontours of ‘artistic personalities’ are poorly adapted to accommodate the productiondynamics of frescoes or panel paintings created in the Trecento bottega. Instead, ideascome to the forefront when we are asked to imagine the corporate Giotto, foundingdirector of an industrious firm whose products bear the hallmark of his ingegno. Likehis frescoes, the magnificent panel paintings assembled in the Louvre’s own chapeloffered an opportunity for quiet contemplation of Giotto’s remarkable pictorialachievements and reflection on how much we have to learn about his business.

Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice Nat Silver

30 The scientific examinations were undertaken by Joanna Dunn, Cecilia Frosinini and Élisabeth Ravaud.See, Dominique Thièbaut in Giotto e compagni, 142–9.

31 Cesare Gnudi (1959) first proposed that the polyptych partially reassembled here was made for thePulci-Berardi Chapel. For his hypothesis see, Dominique Thièbaut in Giotto e compagni, 149.

32 For a recent catalogue entry see David Steel in Christine Sciacca (ed.), Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance:Painting and Illumination 1300-1500, exh. cat. (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2013), 24–8.

33 A similar principle was applied to the Louvre Crucifix (cat 11). It is argued in the exhibition and cataloguethat although this monumental work was commissioned from and conceived by Giotto, a compagno painted it.Unlike the Washington-Chaalis and Florence panels, it does not share their expressive underdrawing. See,Dominique Thièbaut in Giotto e compagni, 128.

34 ‘Nell’ordine de’ frati minori quattro capelle e quattro tavole fatte molto excellentemente . . .’ LorenzoGhiberti, I Commentari. Libro II (1447–8), transcribed by Schwarz and Theis 2004, 291.

Review of exhibition 11