TADDEO DI BARTOLO

In 1412-14 the Priors of the Palazzo Pubblico commissioned Taddeo di Bartolo to paint a cycle of paintings for the antechapel of the Palazzo Pubblico, a space that functioned as an important passage between other rooms of the palace. On one wall, shown in this picture, Taddeo painted allegories of Justice and Magnanimity under the two arches; beneath each he placed a figure from Roman history exemplifying the concept. Below Justice (at left) there are Cicero, M. Porcius Cato, and P. Scipio Nasica; below Magnanimity (at right) Curius Dentatus, Furius Camillus, and Scipio Africanus. Each group of Roman heroes is labeled with an inscription in Latin, and each figure bears a further Latin Inscription below his feet. The inscriptions between M. Curius Dentatus and F. Furius Camillus claim them as founders of Siena, while others under Cicero and Cato speak of their fight for liberty and justice.

This panel is a fragment of a larger painting.

The detail shows the devil and usurer. devil is defecating gold into the open mouth of a prosperous usurer.

The saint is holding the model of the city named after him.

Saint Geminianus (also known as Saint Geminian, or Saint Gimignano) was a fourth century Deacon, and later Bishop of Modena. He is mentioned in the year 390 when he sent a delegate named Aper to participate in a council called by Saint Ambrose in Milan. From his name, it has been deduced that Geminianus probably belonged to the caste of Roman senators. He died in 397.

Geminianus is rarely appears in art, but when shown is typically depicted as a bishop holding a mirror in which the Mary is reflected; a bishop holding a model of the town of Modena; a man calming a storm at sea; or a man exorcising the daughter of the Byzantine emperor Jovian.

The saint is also venerated in Tuscany, especially at his eponymous town of San Gimignano, and in Pontremoli.

This fresco is located on the north wall of the Cappella dei Signori in the Palazzo Pubblico.

The Cappella dei Signori was constructed in about 1404-05 on the first floor of the Palazzo Pubblico, next to the important Sala del Mappamondo. As soon as the Cappella dei Signori was finished, the government commissioned Taddeo di Bartolo to paint its walls and vaulting, paying him for the work at regular intervals between 1406 and 1408.

The north wall of the chapel is embellished with four large mural paintings depicting events surrounding the death of the Virgin - the arrival of the apostles at her death bed, Christ receiving her soul at the moment of her death, the funeral procession to her burial site and Christ raising the body of the Virgin from her tomb. The Funeral of the Virgin in particular offers a sense of Taddeo di Bartolo’s considerable abilities as a painter of narrative: the foreground is occupied by an impressive procession of monumentally conceived figures of different ages, genders and ethnic types. In the background, meanwhile, appears an assured view of a walled city, the buildings of which resemble those of Siena itself, yet making an implicit parallel between the holy city of Jerusalem and Siena.

Taddeo of Siena was a pupil of a local master, Bartolo di Fredi, but he was most influenced by the leading Tuscan artists of the time, primarily the Lorenzetti brothers and Simone Martini. Though in his altarpieces he employed the traditional forms of the fourteenth century, the marked plasticity of his figures, and their vivacity, foreshadow the trends of the fifteenth century.

The central panel of the triptych portrays the Madonna dell’Umilita, a type of representation popular in the fourteenth-century Siena. Mary, seated on a brocade carpet, is about to give the breast to her Child, while hovering angels hold a crown above her head. St John the Baptist and St Andrew are depicted in the wing panels, and in the lower part seven more saints can be seen. An inscription on the picture informs us that the altar was commissioned by Signora Datuccia to commemorate the dead members of her family.

Until the beginning of the nineteenth century the triptych remained in its original place in a chapel of the church of San Francesco in Pisa.