Bernardo Daddi may have trained in the Florentine workshop of Giotto, a pivotal figure in the history of European painting. Daddi fused Giotto’s grandeur and monumentality with a refined grace and lyricism. It has been suggested that while Daddi was responsible for the design of this panel, it was executed by a leading member of his workshop. The panel is likely the upper half of an important altarpiece painted for a chapel in the Cathedral of Prato, near Florence, which houses the highly venerated girdle, or belt, of the Virgin Mary. As evidence of her Assumption, the Virgin lowers her girdle to St. Thomas, whose hands are visible at the panel’s lower edge and who was depicted in the missing lower section of the painting.
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Artwork Details
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Title:The Assumption of the Virgin
Artist:Bernardo Daddi (Italian, Florence (?) ca. 1290–1348 Florence) (possibly with workshop assistance)
Date:ca. 1337–39
Medium:Tempera on wood, gold ground
Dimensions:Framed: 44 1/2 × 56 1/8 × 2 3/4 in. (113 × 142.6 × 7 cm) without frame: 42 1/2 × 53 7/8 in. (108 × 136.8 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Robert Lehman Collection, 1975
Accession Number:1975.1.58
Lombardi-Baldi, Florence (oral communication to M. Boskovits by F. Zeri); Harold Parsons, Rome, 1954 (note on a photograph in the library of the Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, Florence); Carlo and Marcello Sestieri, Rome; acquired by Robert Lehman in 1954
Roger Eliot Fry. "Review of A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. Section III. Vol. II. Pacino di Bonaguida and the Elder Contemporaries of Bernardo Daddi. Part I. Part II. Section III. Vol. III. Bernardo Daddi by Richard Offner." The Burlington Magazine 63 (1933), p. 43.
Richard Offner. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. Vol. 5, section 3, New York, 1947, pp. 55-140.
Klara Steinweg. "Contributi a due predelle di Bernardo Daddi." Rivista d'arte 31 (1956), p. 40 n. 34.
Charles Sterling, ed. Exposition de la collection Lehman de New York. Exh. cat., Musée de l'Orangerie. Paris, 1957, no. 13.
Richard Offner. Letter to Robert Lehman. New York, 27 August 1957.
The Lehman Collection. Exh. cat.Cincinnati, 1959, no. 59.
Mojmir Frinta. "An Investigation of the Punched Decoration of Mediaeval Italian and Non-Italian Panel Paintings." Art Bulletin 47 (1965), p. 262.
Miklós Boskovits. "Orcagna in 1357--And in Other Times." The Burlington Magazine 113 (1971), p. 240 n. 7.
Giuseppe Marchini. "L'antica pala dell'altar maggiore del Duomo di Prato." Archivo storico pratese 48 (1972), pp. 39-45.
George Szabó. The Robert Lehman Collection: A Guide. New York, 1975, p. 22, pl. 27.
Giuseppe Marchini. La Capella del Sacro Cingolo nel Duomo di Prato. Prato, 1975, p. 14.
Erling Skaug. "Notes on the Chronology of Ambrogio Lorenzetti and a New Painting from his Shop." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 20, no. 3 (1976), p. 328 n. 78.
Giuseppe Marchini. "Vicende di una pala." Studies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Painting in Honor of Millard Meiss . New York, 1977, pp. 320-323.
George Szabo. Masterpieces of Italian Drawing in the Robert Lehman Collection. New York, 1983, no. 8.
Miklós Boskovits in Richard Offner et al. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. Vol. 9, section 3, The Fourteenth Century: The Painters of the Miniaturist Tendency. new ed. Florence, 1984, pp. 72-73.
John Pope-Hennessy assisted by Laurence B. Kanter inThe Robert Lehman Collection. Vol. 1, Italian Paintings. New York, 1987, pp. 48-51, no. 23.
Brendan Cassidy. "The Assumption of the Virgin on the Tabernacle of Orsanmichele." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988), p. 180 n. 34.
Erling S. Skaug. Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico: Attribution, Chronology, and Workshop Relationships in Tuscan Panel Painting. Oslo, 1994, pp. 111-112, table 5.3.
Philippe de Montebello. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide. New York, 1994, p. 348.
Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 6.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Bernardo Daddi: The Assumption of the Virgin (1975.1.58)." Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York, 2006.
Bernardo Daddi (Italian, Florence (?) ca. 1290–1348 Florence)
ca. 1325–30
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