Meliore di Jacopo

Meliore di Jacopo is one of the earliest Florentine painters we can attach a name to, and we know him mainly through a single object. In the Uffizi hangs a long, low panel he signed and dated in 1271, showing Christ blessing between Saint Peter, the Virgin, John the Evangelist and Saint Paul, all against beaten gold. It may be the oldest surviving Italian altarpiece of this horizontal, rectangular kind, made to stand on the back of an altar.

His painting speaks the maniera greca, the Byzantine-derived manner of long faces and gold-lined drapery that ruled Tuscany a generation before Cimabue and Giotto began to loosen it. Meliore was also counted among the Florentine masters whose designs fed the great mosaic ceiling of the Baptistery, the octagonal building facing the city's cathedral. Beyond the signed panel and a few attributions the documents fall silent, and even his exact dates are lost.