ITALIAN, CIRCLE OF TINO DA CAMAINO (1280-1337), 14TH CENTURY

Tino da Camaino worked on some of the most important ecclesiastical commissions in the early fourteenth century. He almost certainly apprenticed in Giovanni Pisano’s studio but by 1315 Tino had been named capomaestro of the Duomo at Pisa and was also commissioned to work on the monument for the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII, who had died two years before. By 1319-20 he had been named capomaestro of the Duomo at Siena and in the early 1320s he was working in the Florentine Duomo. Every talented and ambitious sculptor working in North Italy in the first quarter of the fourteenth century would have been aware, and influenced by, Tino’s emotive sculptural programs.

The present sculpture perhaps relates most closely to Tino’s figures for the tomb of Antonio Orso, the Bishop of Florence, who died in either 1320 or 1321. Specifically, Tino’s group of the Virgin and Child, originally part of that larger monument and now in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, is close to the present sculpture as it is so reminiscent of Tino’s bold figures with their architectural, almost geometric anatomy (J. Pope-Hennessy, Italian Gothic Sculpture, London, 1972, pp. 183-185, pls. 32-33 ).

While this sculpture comes from the renowned Florentine collection of Carlo di Carlo, there is no earlier recorded provenance. And while a conclusive attribution may remain out of reach for now, the present group is a powerful reminder of this early and pivotal moment in Italian sculpture, the closing of the Gothic and the birth of the Renaissance.