Orcagna

Orcagna, born Andrea di Cione, was the leading artist in Florence in the years just after the Black Death of 1348, when the plague had killed perhaps half the city and shaken its confidence in the sunny, human style of Giotto's followers.

His art answers that mood with sterner, more formal figures. His one securely signed painting, the Strozzi Altarpiece in Santa Maria Novella, sets a solemn enthroned Christ above ranks of saints, grander and less earthly than the previous generation's.

He worked as painter, sculptor and architect at once. His marble tabernacle in Orsanmichele, encrusted with reliefs and coloured stone, was built to frame a miracle-working image of the Virgin that had drawn crowds through the plague years.