Retrieval and Trial of the Three Crosses (detail)

1385 · Chancel Chapel, Santa Croce, Florence

religious

Extending behind the scenes is a landscape of a markedly bucolic character, a world that appears to be completely untouched by the events occurring in the foreground. To the already familiar motifs - mountains, a river, trees, a citadel, and so on - are added a farm as well as people and animals. A monk is drawing water from a well; another is fishing from a bridge over the river.

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Retrieval and Trial of the Three Crosses (detail)

About the Artist

Agnolo Gaddi

1350 – 1396

Florentine painter, the son of Taddeo Gaddi. He continued the Giotto tradition but modified it still further in the direction of decorative elegance. He is particularly notable for his cool pale colours, which infiuenced the refined late Gothic art of artists of the next generation such as Lorenzo Monaco. Agnolo's works include frescos on The Story of the Cross in the chancel of Sta Croce (after 1374) and on The Story of the Virgin and her Girdle in the Chapel of the Holy Girdle in Prato Cathedral (1392-5). Many panel paintings also are attributed to Agnolo.

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