Pentecoste

This Pentecost panel by Agnolo Gaddi, painted around 1390 and now in the Museo Bandini in Fiesole, depicts the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles — a key event in Christian theology marking the birth of the Church. Agnolo Gaddi, the leading Florentine painter of the late Trecento, inherited the Giottesque tradition through his father Taddeo and applied it to both fresco cycles and panel paintings with a distinctive softness and chromatic warmth.

Tempera and gold on panel. Gaddi arranges the apostles in a compact group with the Virgin at center, using soft modeling and warm tonalities characteristic of his late style, with tongues of flame above each figure rendered in vermilion against the gold ground.