Shepherd's Head and Flocks

In the 1620s the Badia Fiorentina, the old abbey church in the heart of Florence, was rebuilt facing another way, and a new wall went up just in front of the back wall of its main chapel. The frescoes there, scenes from the Virgin's life that early writers credited to Giotto, were almost all lost. A few pieces survived in the thin gap between the walls and came to light in the late 1950s. This is the finest. A young shepherd in a hood, a bag slung across his chest, is seen in profile against a deep blue sky, a goat's head behind him. He belonged to the scene of Joachim among the Shepherds, where Mary's father, turned away from the Temple for being childless, goes off to his flocks. Scholars long argued over whose hand painted the fragments, and this head is the one most widely accepted as Giotto's. It still belongs to the Badia and is here on temporary loan.