Bernardo Daddi

Bernardo Daddi was the son of Daddo di Simone. His exact year of birth is unknown; he is generally thought to have been born in the last decade of the 13th century, if not earlier, and BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry gives about 1290, probably in Florence.⁠[1][2][3]

Daddi first appears in the records between 1312 and 1320, in the registers of the Arte dei Medici e Speziali (the guild of physicians and apothecaries) in Florence, which also admitted painters.⁠[1][4]

Daddi began his career as an apprentice in Giotto’s workshop in Florence. In the second or early third decade of the 14th century he worked in close contact with Giotto’s shop, including on the frescoes of Santa Croce, where he painted the frescoes in the chapel of the Pulci and Berardi families; recent studies date these earlier than the 1328 triptych.⁠[4][1]

His earliest dated work is a signed triptych in the Uffizi whose inscription bears the year 1328; Britannica records a triptych he completed in 1328 for the Church of Ognissanti in Florence. His style fused the plastic qualities of Giotto’s art with aspects of Sienese painting, and was influenced by Pietro Lorenzetti.⁠[1][3]

In the 1330s Daddi produced a number of dated works, including the 1333 triptychs in the Museo del Bigallo in Florence, the 1334 triptych in the Fogg Art Museum, a work of 1336 in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena and a work of 1339 in the Minneapolis museum.⁠[1]

In this period he ran a large workshop with numerous assistants, and his work was influenced by Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti. He was known for small, portable altarpieces for private prayer, while also painting large altarpieces for churches.⁠[2][4]

In 1338 Daddi completed the tempera-on-panel Triptych - The Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints, now in the Courtauld Gallery in London. Portable paintings of this kind encouraged personal meditation on the life of Christ; another work of the same year is in the National Galleries of Scotland.⁠[5][1]

In about 1340–1345 Daddi painted The Coronation of the Virgin in egg tempera on wood. The Virgin’s crossed arms are taken from a scene by Giotto for the Baroncelli Chapel in Florence, while the picture also shows Daddi’s admiration for the decorative style of Siena; it remains unclear whether the panel was the centre of a large altarpiece.⁠[6]

In 1344 he painted a polyptych for Santa Maria Novella. In the 1340s his workshop produced many small panels for private devotion while continuing to make altarpieces for churches.⁠[1]

In about 1347 Daddi painted the Madonna and Child Enthroned with Eight Angels, known as the Madonna delle Grazie, for Orsanmichele in Florence. It is framed by Orcagna’s marble tabernacle of 1352–1359, which remains the religious centrepiece of the church.⁠[7][1]

After Giotto’s death Daddi became the most important painter in Florence, and he was one of the most important Florentine painters of the first half of the 14th century.⁠[2][4]

In 1348 Daddi painted a polyptych for San Giorgio at Ruballa. He died that year during the Black Death; Britannica instead gives his death as about 1355.⁠[1][2][4][3]

The Coronation of the Virgin was cut in two sometime before 1828, probably so that each section could be sold separately; the lower part entered the collection of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1828. In 2004 the National Gallery in London bought the panel (NG6599) with a grant from the American Friends of the National Gallery, London, made possible by Sir Paul GettyJohn Paul Getty Jr.John Paul Getty Jr. (1932–2003), known as Sir Paul Getty, was a son of oil businessman J. Paul Getty and a Britain-based philanthropist and book collector who made large gifts to the National Gallery, the British Film Institute and cricket, and received an honorary KBE in 1986.Open the full entry’s endowment. It is the only picture by Daddi in the National Gallery.⁠[6]

The National Gallery states that Getty’s endowment helped it acquire works by Caravaggio, Daddi, Holbein and Poussin, among others, and lists this painting among the selected works associated with him.⁠[8]