Triptych with the Virgin Enthroned and Child, with Angels and Saints

Daddi was trained by the very Giotto, who achieved his fame with impressive fresco cycles and monumental panel paintings. Unlike that, Daddi’s forte was in painting smaller portable altars, designed for private devotion – of exactly the same kind as this triptych. The centre features the Virgin Enthroned, who, surrounded by angels, saints both male and female, is nursing the Christ Child. The wings are decorated with the scenes of Nativity and Crucifixion; the top shows the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary in the Annunciation. Bernardo Daddi with his assistants made a large number of works of this kind (the collections of the Prague National Gallery include three of them); it was predominantly due to Daddi’s contribution that works of this type had become a characteristic expression of Florentine painting of the mid-14th century.