Jacopo del Casentino

Jacopo del Casentino took his name from the wooded Casentino valley east of Florence, where he was born around 1297. He worked in the manner of Giotto, the painter who had begun giving figures real weight and space, and he may have passed through Giotto's circle himself, learning from a close follower named Taddeo Gaddi.

In 1339 he did something that outlasted any single panel. With a group of fellow painters he helped found the Compagnia di San Luca, the confraternity of Florentine artists placed under the protection of Saint Luke, who by tradition had painted the Virgin. It gave the city's painters, still ranked among craftsmen, a body of their own, and Jacopo was elected one of its first councillors.

His surviving works are gold-ground altarpieces and small devotional panels of the Virgin and saints, stiff and bright in the way of the early 14th century.