The Coronation of the Virgin

1388 · Museo Civico e Diocesano d'Arte Sacra, Montalcino

religious

The polyptych of the Coronation of the Virgin, signed and dated 1388 by Bartolo di Fredi, was executed for a chapel in the church of San Francesco in the town of Montalcino to the south of Siena. The painter appears to have had a number of other connections with Montalcino, both as an agent for the Sienese government (in 1375 and 1376) and as a painter - securing at least four major commissions in the 1380s and 1390s. This altarpiece, which approaches the scale and complexity of the front face of Duccio's Maesta and of Pietro Lorenzetti's Carmelite altarpiece, offers a compelling example of the ambition of Sienese altarpiece design in the 1380s.

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About the Artist

Bartolo Di Fredi

1330 – 1410

Sienese painter, pupil of Ambrogio Lorenzetti. His best two fresco cycles are at S. Gimignano, one dealing with Old Testament subjects in the Collegiata (1356) and one in the church of S. Agostino on the birth and death of the Virgin (1366). He was the most successful Sienese painter of the later fourteenth century. He shared a workshop with Andrea Vanni, and produced a large number of altarpieces and frescoes, and, in addition, collaborated with other artists on mural and altarpiece paintings and polychrome sculptures. He worked on many of his most important commissions with his son, Andrea di Bartolo.

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