Master of San Torpè

When historians cannot put a name to a hand, they borrow one from the work, and this Pisan painter is known only as the Master of San Torpè, named after a panel he made for the church of San Torpè in Pisa. Torpes was a Roman officer beheaded under Nero and later taken up as a patron of the city. The same saint's name, carried west by legend, is where the resort of Saint-Tropez got its own.

He worked around Pisa in the years on either side of 1300, in the soft, courtly Gothic then spreading from nearby Siena, the manner of Simone Martini, with slender figures, gold grounds and gentle faces. Roughly two dozen panels have been gathered under his notname on the strength of that shared hand, mostly Madonnas and saints for Tuscan churches.

Nothing else about him survives, not a real name, not a birth year. What holds the group together is the painting in Pisa that gave him his label.