DADDI, Bernardo
(b. ca. 1280, Firenze, d. 1348, Firenze)

The Coronation of the Virgin

1340-45
Tempera on wood, 112 x 76 cm
National Gallery, London

This panel, formerly attributed to both Jacopo di Cione and his brother, Andrea Orcagna, was probably part of a larger altarpiece. It has undergone two interventions. The base with Four Musical Angels was cut from the bottom of the Coronation of the Virgin at some date before 1828 - the year in which the panel entered the Christ Church Collection in Oxford. A second intervention occurred sometime after the cutting when the top and bottom additions were made to the panel. The current frame is not original.

The Coronation of the Virgin is almost identical to the central panel of an altarpiece from Santa Maria Novella, Florence, now in the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence. Mary's gesture of drawing her mantle around her, with the fabric held between her fingers, seems to have been an invention of Daddi's.