Taddeo Gaddi (born c. 1300, Florence [Italy]—died 1366?, Florence) was a pupil and most faithful follower of the Florentine master Giotto. A capable artist, although lacking his teacher’s comprehensive aesthetic vision, he was, after Giotto’s death, the leading Florentine painter for three decades.
His earliest authenticated work is a small triptych with the Virgin enthroned with Child and saints, signed and dated 1334. In 1332, however, and possibly as early as 1328, he had already begun to work with Giotto on the fresco decoration of Santa Croce in Florence. The earliest of Gaddi’s works in the Baroncelli Chapel of Santa Croce were scenes from the life of the Virgin and the life of Christ, completed in 1338. Less concerned with drama and with monumental compositional clarity than his master, Gaddi gave in these works more attention to picturesque narrative detail. Although he copied Giotto’s heavy, naturally treated figures and bare landscapes and the general sober and impressive tenor of his works, in introducing more complicating elements he went beyond the bounds that Giotto had carefully set for his own art—those of simplicity and unindividualized figures that free his scenes from the particular and allow them a dramatic and universal impact. Gaddi’s frescoes are thus less powerful, if more lively, than those of his master, although his innovative spirit led him to experiments with the representation of light that are highly effective, as in his mysteriously radiant Annunciation to the Shepherds.
Possibly about 1338 Gaddi decorated the sacristy of Santa Croce with panels representing the lives of Christ and of St. Francis (Accademia, Florence). In 1341–42 he appears to have been employed in San Miniato al Monte outside Florence and in San Francesco at Pisa. At some point in the 1340s Gaddi decorated the walls of the refectory at Santa Croce, painting there one of the most impressive of his works, a “Tree of Life” surrounded by scenes from the life of St. Bonaventure, a work of much vigour, with a rich iconography. The scenes of this work, like those of the other refectory frescoes, are composed with a classical simplicity that represents a retreat from Gaddi’s earlier stylistic rebellion. Following Giotto’s death in 1337, Gaddi became the leader of Giotto’s school in Florence. Between 1347 and 1353 he painted a polyptych for San Giovanni Fuorcivitas at Pistoia, and in 1355 he executed a signed and dated Madonna in Glory (Uffizi, Florence) for San Lucchese at Poggibonsi. In 1366 he is mentioned in documents for the final time.