Circle of Giovanni Baronzio

Circle of Giovanni Baronzio is the label a museum uses for a painting close to Baronzio's manner that it does not feel able to give to the master himself. Among the painters of Rimini that caution comes naturally. In the generation after Giotto's stay in the city they worked in a closely shared style, and their pictures have passed from one name to another ever since.

Baronzio is one of the few whose name is fixed by a signed altarpiece, now in the national gallery in Urbino, and even that name needs explaining. Barontius, as it appears in the Latin signature, was his father's name, so he was Giovanni, son of Baronzio. A picture placed in his circle shares his way of telling a story in small gold-ground scenes, and was made by a painter who worked beside him or followed him.