Vierge à l'Enfant

Taddeo Gaddi, Giotto's longest-serving pupil and godson, was the dominant painter in Florence for the generation following Giotto's death in 1337. This Virgin and Child continues the Giottesque devotional tradition of the enthroned Madonna, a subject central to Florentine painting from Cimabue onward. Taddeo's versions of this theme, produced throughout his career for churches and private patrons, helped establish the standard compositional formulas that Florentine workshops would follow for decades.

Tempera on gold-ground panel in the Florentine tradition, showing Taddeo's characteristic balance of monumental form and gentle expression. The Virgin's drapery is modeled with Giottesque solidity, while the delicate features and tender interaction between Mother and Child reflect an increasingly humanized devotional sensibility.