Four Saints

Cecco di Pietro's Four Saints, dated 1386 and housed in the Musée du Petit Palais in Avignon, is a representative work of the late Trecento Pisan school. Cecco was the leading painter in Pisa during the second half of the fourteenth century, working in a conservative style that preserved elements of the earlier Pisan tradition while absorbing influences from Florentine and Sienese contemporaries. The four-saint format suggests this panel served as a lateral wing or independent devotional piece for a Pisan church.

The tempera-on-panel technique employs tooled gold grounds and firmly outlined figures characteristic of the Pisan school. Cecco's style combines flat, hieratic frontality with touches of naturalistic detail in facial features, reflecting the transitional moment between Byzantine-derived convention and emerging Gothic realism.