Políptico Baroncelli

Step into the Baroncelli Chapel in Santa Croce and you find this altarpiece where it was meant to go, made around 1328 for a wealthy Florentine banking family who paid for the whole chapel. Giotto was in his 60s, the most celebrated painter in Italy, running a busy workshop, and the signature across the base, naming the work of master Giotto, is partly a shop advertisement. The panels show the Coronation of the Virgin, with crowded ranks of saints and angels turned toward the centre. Much of the actual brushwork is likely his assistants'. The gold ground and pointed arches still belong to the medieval altarpiece, but the faces lean and cluster like people in a real crowd.