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Lot Essay
Bernardo Daddi was with Taddeo Gaddi one of the two outstanding Florentine painters of the generation that succeeded Giotto's. Giotto himself was the formative influence of his early style, but Daddi reacted to other artists, including the Saint Cecilia Master, and had a distinct personality of his own, a sense of rhythm, beautifully expressed in this panel by the upturned faces of the two saints, and a languorous, indeed poetic, taste, exemplified here by the type of the Madonna herself. Daddi is particularly associated with the production of small portable triptychs, but was also responsible for a number of major commissions for prominent churches, including Santa Croce and the Cathedral. This panel was probably the central element of a tabernacle, very probably in a Franciscan church.
Offner, who was very restrictive in attribution of pictures to Daddi, considered this to be from the artist's close following. But Berenson consistently recognized that it is by Daddi himself, and this view was accepted by van Marle, by Roberto Longhi (in a letter of 11 April 1961 referred to by Boskovits in the 1991 edition of Offner), by Klara Steinweg (referred to in the same), and most recently by Miklos Boskovits in his publications of 1984, 1990 and 1991. Offner proposed a date of about 1340, and Boskovits observes that the upward looking pose of Saint Francis is similar to that of the saint on the lateral panel of the Prato pentatych, which he dates to the mid-1330s and in the small portable triptych at Pittsburgh (Offner, 1991, pls. XV and XXIX): in the former it might be argued that the saint's gaze is directed above the Madonna and Child, whereas in this panel it is clearly directed at the Child. Daddi's types were consistent, but are subtly varied between related compositions, as is indeed the case with this panel, in which the heads of both the Madonna and the Child are very close in detail to those of the beautiful small Madonna and Child in the Berenson collection at I Tatti (Offner, 1989, pl. XIII, in which the Madonna's hands are also similar but differently disposed) and in the main panel of the San Pancrazio altarpiece (Florence, Uffizi, op. cit., pl. XIV).
Offner, who was very restrictive in attribution of pictures to Daddi, considered this to be from the artist's close following. But Berenson consistently recognized that it is by Daddi himself, and this view was accepted by van Marle, by Roberto Longhi (in a letter of 11 April 1961 referred to by Boskovits in the 1991 edition of Offner), by Klara Steinweg (referred to in the same), and most recently by Miklos Boskovits in his publications of 1984, 1990 and 1991. Offner proposed a date of about 1340, and Boskovits observes that the upward looking pose of Saint Francis is similar to that of the saint on the lateral panel of the Prato pentatych, which he dates to the mid-1330s and in the small portable triptych at Pittsburgh (Offner, 1991, pls. XV and XXIX): in the former it might be argued that the saint's gaze is directed above the Madonna and Child, whereas in this panel it is clearly directed at the Child. Daddi's types were consistent, but are subtly varied between related compositions, as is indeed the case with this panel, in which the heads of both the Madonna and the Child are very close in detail to those of the beautiful small Madonna and Child in the Berenson collection at I Tatti (Offner, 1989, pl. XIII, in which the Madonna's hands are also similar but differently disposed) and in the main panel of the San Pancrazio altarpiece (Florence, Uffizi, op. cit., pl. XIV).