Baroncelli Chapel

Baroncelli Chapel.

Baroncelli family tomb.

The Baroncelli Chapel is a chapel located at the transept's end of the church of Santa Croce, Florence, central Italy. It has frescoes by Taddeo Gaddi executed between 1328 and 1338.

Description

The fresco cycle represents the Stories of the Virgin. In this work, Gaddi showed his mastership of Giotto's style, with a narrative disposition of the characters in the scenes, which are more crowded than his master's. He also continued to experiment the use of geometrical perspective in the architectural background, obtaining illusionistic effects in details such as the oblique staircase in the Presentation at the Temple. The two niches with still lives in the basement are perhaps inspired to Giotto's ones in the Scrovegni Chapel.

Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple and Presentation of Jesus at the Temple by Taddeo Gaddi.

The delicate and soft features are characteristic of Gaddi's late style. The adoption of night light in the Annunciation to the Shepherds is nearly unique in the mid-14th century painting of central Italy.

Gaddi also designed the stained glasses, with four prophets on the exterior, and perhaps had a hand in the altarpiece also: this, dating to c. 1328, has the signature Opus Magistri Jocti, but the style shows the hands of assistants, including Gaddi himself. It is an elaborate polyptych, depicting the Coronation of the Virgin surrounded by a crowded Glory of Angels and Saints. The cusp of the altarpiece is now at the Timken Art Gallery of San Diego, California, United States. The original frame was replaced by a new one during the 15th century.

Other artworks in the chapel include, on the right wall, a Madonna of the Cintola by Sebastiano Mainardi. The Baroncelli family owned the tomb on the external wall, which was designed by Giovanni di Balduccio in 1327; the latter also sculpted the statuettes of the Archangel Gabriel and the Annunciation on the arcade's pillars. The "Madonna with Child" sculpture inside the chapel is by Vincenzo Danti (1568).