Giotto and workshop

Giotto ran one of the busiest painting workshops of his day, with commissions across Italy, and much that went out under his name was painted with the help of assistants trained in his manner. Giotto and workshop is the museum's way of saying both are present in one picture, the master's design and much of his brush, with some passages left to others.

In the National Gallery in London this name is given to a small Pentecost, probably painted between about 1310 and 1318. It was once the last of seven scenes from the life of Christ set side by side on one long wooden panel. The panel was later cut up and the scenes sold separately. Three are now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, and one each in New York, Boston, Settignano outside Florence, and London. The Gallery judges the drawing good enough to be mostly Giotto's own and suggests he may have left the figures' hands to his assistants. The panel came to London in 1942, bequeathed by the widow of the collector William Coningham in his memory.