Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300–1350 was a momentous undertaking, an assembly of over one hundred works, most created for Florentine religious institutions. There is a hefty catalogue that will become an essential resource, not only for beautiful plates but for scholarly commentary.

The bold title promised a panoramic vision. Even allowing for the customary hyperbole of exhibition titles, it did not disappoint. A primary objective of curator Christine Sciacca and her team was to argue on behalf of a view of trecento painting that extends beyond panels and frescoes to include paintings in miniature and other media, thus addressing a longstanding bias. The exhibition, moreover, privileged collaborative production over questions of authorship that have dominated scholarship on trecento painting. Some scholars might respond that these propositions are hardly earth-shattering. However, in an era when most art historians claim to engage with the broad spectrum of cultural production, it is sobering to recognize that the study of manuscript painting continues to remain apart.

The installation reinforced the narrative of inclusion while ensuring that individual objects could shine. Viewing panel paintings from benches reminiscent of church pews invited contemplative moments one step removed from the object. In contrast, lighting that seemed natural and sufficient space enabled close examination with the exception of one dim gallery that contained a plethora of narrative illuminations and panels. Overall the variation in the galleries’ scale complemented the range of works—from intimate rooms with dark walls to a light-filled, spacious hall.

The first gallery provided an engaging preview or, one might even say, a view of the exhibition in microcosm. In the relatively small, softly illuminated room, Giotto’s single panel The Madonna and Child (ca. 1320–30) faced the entrance, setting a high benchmark. A comparably sized Triptych with the Crucifixion (1338) and A Crowned Virgin Martyr (ca. 1334–80) by Bernardo Daddi appeared nearby. The panels were followed by illuminations in differing conditions produced by miniaturists in the same circle: three cuttings from an antiphonary by the Maestro Daddesco (ca. 1321–30) and three pages from the Codex of San Giorgio by the eponymous Master (ca. 1321–30).

On the opposite wall of the first gallery, two distinctive works by the so-called Master of the Dominican Effigies were displayed side by side: the large codex Specchio umano (ca. 1325–35) and a panel painting entitled Christ and the Virgin Enthroned with Seventeen Dominican Saints (ca. 1336) from which the anonymous artist derived his name. The codex was opened to reveal The Expulsion of the Poor from Siena and The Poor of Siena Being Generously Received in Florence against a backdrop of the walled cities in miniature, with a parade of motley figures in the foreground. The lively narrative of the manuscript illumination could not be further removed from the artist’s sober Christ and the Virgin in which the two figures are enthroned amid a heavenly hierarchy of Dominican saints. Before passing to the second gallery, one turned toward a simple, unframed Crucifixion panel (ca. 1315–20) painted by Pacino di Bonaguida that once may have been part of an altarpiece. Facing the painting were rows of benches that invited experiencing it as a devotional image, rather than in comparison with the more refined objects in the room. Close inspection revealed materials and paint layered on the surface of the grainy wood.

Illuminated manuscripts and small devotional objects were interspersed with paintings by Giotto, seven in all, including familiar panels such as God the Father, the pinnacle of the Baroncelli altarpiece in Santa Croce (ca. 1325–30); Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints and Allegorical Figures (ca. 1330); and Crucifixion panels (ca. 1319–20) from a diptych. Giotto’s best-known followers were represented: Bernardo Daddi, Agnolo Gaddi, and the mysterious Puccio Capanna. The physicality of Taddeo Gaddi’s Stigmatization of St. Francis (ca. 1325–30), similar in dimension to Giotto’s panel in the Louvre, contrasted with the refinement of other Giottesque painters represented here. In a fascinating set of paintings entitled Scenes from the Apocalypse (ca. 1330–40) by the Master of the Erbach panels, the boundaries between illumination and panel painting blur in respect to technique, artistry, and narrative. There were also stunning examples of well-known manuscripts such as Pacino’s oversize illuminations from the Carmina Regia (ca. 1335–40), intended for King Robert of Anjou of Naples, and the pages of the Laudario of Sant’Agnese (ca. 1340) reunited in the final gallery. The inventive painter and illuminator, the so-called Master of the Dominican Effigies whose expansive output was comparable to that of Pacino, was represented by a variety of panels and miniatures, none as delicate as The Garden of Virtues, Tractatus de virtutibus et vitiis (ca. 1325–35).

The original focus of the exhibition was to have been the under-studied oeuvre of Pacino—a logical choice given the extensiveness and magnificence of the artist’s production. But the decision to shift the emphasis to a broader spectrum was wise. It not only allowed for a richer visual field, but revealed the overall sophistication and complexity of trecento painting and its practices, not the least of which was artistic collaboration.

A contemporary of Giotto, Pacino was a multi-faceted artistic personality of the early trecento: panel painter, decorator of small objects, manuscript illuminator, and stained glass designer (the exhibition includes two magnificent windows from Santa Croce). Pacino’s expressive skill can be seen in the intensity of a small Crucifixion (ca. 1315–40) where the scene takes place before a coal-black sky. Pacino devised miniatures with a literal narrative of Dante’s Divine Comedy (ca. 1335), along with other forms of storytelling for the earliest illustrated manuscripts of the epic poem. Yet the altarpiece The Crucifixion and Saints (ca. 1315–20) inscribed with a partial date remains Pacino’s only signed work. The artist’s entire career has been pieced together by scholars, notably Richard Offner in the 1920s; it pivots around this poliptych and a second panel with longstanding, undisputed attribution to Pacino. The eight-foot-high Tree of Life (ca. 1320–15) represents St. Bonaventure’s text, faithful to the Franciscan’s metaphor of events from Christ’s life as fruits hanging from twelve branches of the Lignum Vitae. In the absence of the actual panel, the organizers of the exhibition substituted a photographic reproduction to scale, an image so convincing that visitors might have mistaken it for the original. The didactics did not identify it as a reproduction—a curious omission to begin with, but all the more so because it was displayed in a gallery that explained new imaging techniques.

The Laudario of Sant’Agnese (ca. 1340) was illuminated by Pacino and the Master of the Dominican Effigies, a frequent collaborator who worked with Pacino and his workshop on a massive choir book, the Antiphonary (ca. 1335–40). The Laudario, however, was a more sumptuous manuscript created for the lay Company of Sant’Agnese at Santa Maria del Carmine and composed of hymns in the vernacular. Musical notations appeared on each folio accompanied by an illumination representing the liturgical calendar and lives of saints. For the first time, twenty-six of twenty-eight extant folios were reunited and displayed in a revised sequence as a consequence of meticulous research, including x-radiographs by experts from the Getty Conservation Department. It was a major accomplishment. The manuscript had been disassembled in the early nineteenth century; some folios survived intact while others were cut down. But seen again together again, the series is remarkable despite the damage. While details of execution are visible to connoisseurs, one gains an overall impression of consistency, a seamless collaboration between skilled artists of the first half of the trecento. In this final gallery of the exhibition, the faint music of the laude played in the background, evoking the origins of a manuscript whose pages have traversed centuries to arrive in its present form.

Italian trecento art has long suffered an identity crisis. The off-putting label “Proto-Renaissance,” coined by Jacob Burckhardt in the 1860s, is still in use today, signaling that the period’s significance is as a precursor of a better age. Of course, Giorgio Vasari developed the evolutionary model, but like other Vasarian concepts, it stuck. No less satisfactory in its implications is the current designation of the Renaissance as “early modern” since the term does not embrace the Italian trecento. As “late medieval,” it is an outlier. Designations result from a need for periodization, problematic in itself, but relevant to the impact of Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300–1350. The exhibition identifies a culture of collaboration that flourished in trecento Florence. It makes a strong case for in-depth study of art practices (including the application of new technologies), and elicits questions about cultural context. Most significantly, the exhibition reinvigorates curiosity about a complex, inventive age.