BUFFALMACCO, Bounamico

No less expressive in its content than the Triumph of Death is the Last Judgment. It is distributed over two sections: one having as its subject the Judgment as such, that is the resurrection of the dead and the separation of the elect from the damned, while the punishments of hell are depicted in the adjoining section of the painting to the right.

Hell as a whole is depicted as a comparatively well-ordered mountain interior consisting of four levels, which vaguely recall Dante’s circles of hell, and including an assortment of infernal localities, in the midst of which the horned Lucifer, and enormous and terrifying monster, is seated.

The Last Judgment had previously been staged with such dramatic emphasis only in the pulpit reliefs of Giovanni Pisano for Pisa cathedral.

The archangel Michael and his helpers impassively, and with an almost business-like manner, assign those risen from the dead to their places.

No less expressive in its content than the Triumph of Death is the Last Judgment. It is distributed over two sections: one having as its subject the Judgment as such, that is the resurrection of the dead and the separation of the elect from the damned, while the punishments of hell are depicted in the adjoining section of the painting to the right. This depiction of the Judgment is unusual in that next to the figure of Christ, in a mandorla of equal size, is Mary, who participates in the judgment.

Buffalmaco’s depiction of the Judgment is unusual in that next to the figure of Christ, in a mandorla of equal size, is Mary, who participates in the judgment.

The cemetery building, the Camposanto, near the cathedral in Pisa, as appears today, was built in the fourteenth century. The large, unarticulated wall surfaces on the inner sides were predestined for fresco decoration, and over the course of many decades - beginning around 1330-35 - one of the greatest fresco cycles of the Trecento was created here. It was expanded in the fifteenth century by adding numerous biblical scenes executed by Benozzo Gozzoli. All in all, painters from different generations and varying origins worked in the Camposanto, including Francesco Traini from Pisa, Buonamico Buffalmaco, Stefano Fiorentino, Taddeo Gaddi and Andrea da Firenze, all Florentine, Antonio Veneziano from Venice, Spinello Aretino, a native of Arezzo, and Piero di Puccio from Orvieto.

The fresco ensemble was partly destroyed, and in parts severely damaged, during the bombing of the city in 1944, and the devastating fire that ensued in the Camposanto. In 1948 work was begun on detaching what remained of the paintings from the walls and transferring the remnants to Eternit panels. In the course of this work the underdrawings (the sinopias) were also secured.

The Triumph of Death on the south wall and the immediately adjoining wall paintings, the Last Judgment with Hell and the Life of the Anchorites (or Thebaid) are attributed to Buffalmaco. Formerly, for a long time, these frescoes were attributed to Francesco Traini and dated after the year of the Black Death, that is after 1348.

The theme of these frescoes, commissioned by Simone Saltarelli, archbishop of Pisa between 1323 and 1342, are of markedly instructional character. Pastoral subjects, exhortative intent, and emphatic presentation go hand in hand to an extent found in no other ensemble of pictures from the Trecento.

This expansive painting does not tell a coherent story. Rather it consists of many different scenes and exempla in which the contrast between the enjoyment of life and death, between embracing reality and fleeing from it, is shown very suggestively, without requiring that the pictures be read in a certain sequence.

At the bottom left part of the painting, in the foreground the encounter between an aristocratic hunting party and three corpses is depicted. This subject serves as a reminder of the transience of all earthly things.

The fresco, with its naturalistic details, shows direct influences of the Sienese masters, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti.

This expansive painting does not tell a coherent story. Rather it consists of many different scenes and exempla in which the contrast between the enjoyment of life and death, between embracing reality and fleeing from it, is shown very suggestively, without requiring that the pictures be read in a certain sequence.

At the top left part of the painting, stone steps ascend to a hermitage where the contemplative, spiritual life is shown as a monastic idyll whose peace and tranquillity seem to affect even the animal world.

This expansive painting does not tell a coherent story. Rather it consists of many different scenes and exempla in which the contrast between the enjoyment of life and death, between embracing reality and fleeing from it, is shown very suggestively, without requiring that the pictures be read in a certain sequence.

At the top right part of the painting, devils and angels are engaged in a battle over souls.

This expansive painting does not tell a coherent story. Rather it consists of many different scenes and exempla in which the contrast between the enjoyment of life and death, between embracing reality and fleeing from it, is shown very suggestively, without requiring that the pictures be read in a certain sequence.

At the bottom right part of the painting, the group of finely dressed men and women disporting themselves in a paradisal garden forms the antithesis to the scene of the crippled and dead in the middle of the painting and is at the same time a pendant to the courtly hunting party at the left.

The detail shows members of the hunting party.

In this detail a rider from the hunting party holds out a chicken leg to his hawk.