GIOTTINO
(b. 1320/30, Firenze, d. after 1369, Firenze)

Pietà of San Remigio

c. 1365
Tempera on wood, 195 x 134 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Celebrating the eloquent expression on faces of figures and their gestures, Vasari remembers the altarpiece in the Florentine church of San Remigio: the scene is grouped in the lower part of the painting, with the dead Christ, the Virgin, Mary Magdalen and other saints crying him. On the left the saints Remigio and Benedict with two kneeling women in modern clothes, probably the donors of the picture.

The painting is mentioned by Vasari as a work of Giotto di maestro Stefano called Giottino, and not otherwise documented. Certain critics have identified this with Maso di Banco, the author of the stupendous frescoes in the Bardi Chapel at Santa Croce, but it is more probable that we have here a personality of equal worth but distinct. Certain Lombard elements (e.g. the costume of the two figures of the donors) tend to indicate a painter who was familiar with northern painting: and Giottino's father, Stefano, did, in fact, migrate from Florence to Lombardy.