Taddeo Gaddi
1300–1366 · Republic of Florence · Italian Gothic, Trecento
The story
Taddeo Gaddi trained in the workshop of Giotto, the painter who pulled Italian art toward weight and real space, and stayed with him for some 24 years as his chief assistant. When Giotto died, Gaddi was among those who carried the style forward.
His main surviving work is the Baroncelli Chapel in Santa Croce in Florence, where he told the life of the Virgin. One scene, the announcement to the shepherds, is painted as a genuine night lit by the angel's glow, one of the earliest real nocturnes in Italian painting.
He also worked as an architect around Florence. A later list names him among the city's foremost living painters after the Black Death of 1348.
