DEODATO DI ORLANDI
Italian painter. He was an eclectic and apparently prolific artist whose works record the transition from Italo-Byzantine painting of the 13th century to the Giottesque milieu of the 14th. They also indicate the importance of Florentine styles for Lucchese painting in his time. The earliest work attributed to him is a Crucifix with a living Christ (c. 1280; Pisa, Museo Nazionale di San Matteo), and if this attribution is correct it suggests that his early development was influenced by Berlinghiero Berlinghieri.
Deodato was probably the ‘Datuccius Orlandi’ documented in 1284, and in 1288 he signed a richly ornamented Crucifix for San Cerbone, Lucca (Lucca, Villa Guinigi). This was evidently strongly influenced by Cimabue, for example in the way the hair spills from the (rather larger) head on to Christ’s shoulder, although the figure of the dead Christ has none of Cimabue’s monumentality. The style is linear, largely devoid of chiaroscuro though not without grace, and the modelling is barely structural. Some attempt has been made to reproduce the translucent drapery of the Christ of Cimabue’s later Crucifix (Florence, Santa Croce), but the swaying body keeps closer to the axis of the apron than is the case with Cimabue’s versions. The terminal figures of St John and the Virgin are seen in three-quarter length.
