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Endnotes
Surviving the Black Death

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1. The literature on the Black Death is intimidatingly vast. Useful starting points are Tuchman, B, A Distant Mirror: the Calamitous 14th Century, Ballantine Books, New York, 1978 (and later reissues); and Kelly, J, The Great Mortality: an Intimate History of the Black Death, Harper Perennial, London 2006. 
2. Kelly, op cit, at 26.
3. Meiss, M., Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death, Harper and Row 1973, at 66; Maginnis, H.B.J., Painting in the age of Giotto: a historical re-evaluation, University Park, 1997, at 191.
4. Norman, D, (ed) Siena, Florence and Padua: Art, Society and Religion 1280-1400, Vol 1, Yale University Press 1995, at 19.
5. Bowsky, W M, “The impact of the Black Death upon Sienese government and society”, Speculum 39, 1964, 1-34.
6. Bartolo was probably born in 1330 and died in 1410.
7. Meiss, op cit at 66.
8. Steinhoff, J., “Artistic Working Relationships after the Black Death: a Sienese compagnia”, Renaissance Studies 2000, 14, no. 1, 1-45, at 44.
9. Freuler, G., and Wainwright, V., Letter to Editor, Art Bulletin 68, 1986, 327-8.
10. In 1368, 1374 and 1389: Harpring, P, The Sienese Trecento Painter Bartolo di Fredi, Associated University Presses Inc, 1993, at 16.
11. Wainwright, V., “Andrea Vanni and Bartolo di Fredi: Sienese painters in their Social Context”, PhD diss, University of London, 1978, at 36.
12. Wainwright, op cit, at 10; Harpring, op cit at 16.
13. Freuler and Wainwright, op cit at 328.
14. Norman, D., “Change and continuity: art and religion after the Black Death” 177-196, in Norman, D., (ed) Siena, Florence and Padua: Art, Society and Religion 1280-1400, Vol 1, Yale University Press 1995, at 195.
15. A detailed study by Wainwright concluded that “on the whole, Sienese painters in the latter half of the Trecento do not appear to have been as adventurous as their illustrious predecessors; with few exceptions they were perhaps reluctant to undertake long and potentially hazardous journeys to work in other cities in the peninsula”: Wainwright, op cit at 162.
16. Wainwright, op cit, at 154.
17. Meiss, op cit at xi.
18. Maginnis, op cit at 164.
19. A detailed examination of this much disputed view is outside the scope of this Art Brief. 
20. Maginnis, op cit at 164-191.
21. Van Os, H. W, “Tradition and innovation in some altarpieces by Bartolo di Fredi”, Art Bulletin 67, 1985, at 56, 64.
22. Steinhoff, op cit at 7. This view has been further developed in the same author's Sienese Painting after the Black Death: Artistic Pluralism, Politics and the New Art Market, Cambridge University Press, 2007.
23. Freuler and Wainwright, op cit at 327.

24. Norman, op cit at 195. Another reason may simply have been that the abundance of commissions, combined with the demands of his political career, led Bartolo into taking shortcuts.
25. There seems to be no compelling reason why this should occur – as Maginnis points out, one might expect that reliance on precedent would tend to lead to preservation or even precise imitation of pre-1348 styles: Maginnis, op cit at 173.
26. Ambrogio’s work was for the altar of the Duomo of Siena. Bartolo’s work was probably originally for an altar in Sant’ Agostino, San Gimignano. 

27. Meiss, op cit at 19.
28. Wainwright, op cit at 187.
29. Harpring, op cit at 120.
30. Wainwright, op cit at 186.
31. Meiss, op cit at 56.
32. Meiss mentions the child only in passing, and claims to detect that the child is looking at the Priest. However, this would appear to be almost a physical impossibility.
33. Van Os’s view of Bartolo’s shortcomings also sits oddly with his later-expressed views as to the originality of the design of Bartolo’s altarpieces in provincial centres.
34. An excellent photographic representation of the cycle is in Freuler, G., Bartolo di Fredi Cini, Desertina Verlag, 1994 (back cover insert).
35. Meiss, op cit at 68.
36. Fengler, C K., “Bartolo de Fredi’s Old Testament frescoes in San Gimignano”, Art Bulletin 63, 1981, 374-384, at 378 and 384. Theoretically, Taddeo’s work could have been executed at any time before 1367, but to a large extent the date is irrelevant in view of his consistency of style over this period. Meiss refers to Taddeo’s work only in a footnote (68 fn 37), where he says that the same subject matter had been used by Taddeo, and tentatively suggesting that this work was started “in the ‘fifties?” (sic) and that it was completed some years later “by another painter”.
37. Meiss, op cit at 4, 56.
38. Fengler, op cit at 383.
39. Meiss, op cit at 46 fn 131.
40. Meiss, op cit at 7, 21. Vasari had also effectively dismissed Bartolo as a mediocrity: Gardner, J., Book Review, Burlington Magazine 139, no. 1132, 478-9.
41. Harpring, op cit at 9; Gardner, op cit at 478.


© Philip McCouat 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015

Mode of citation: Philip McCouat, "Surviving the Black Death", Journal of Art in Society, www.artinsociety.com

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