Taddeo's copious work in fresco, a single chapel is all that now remains, and this has been subject to sweeping restoration of the most heedless kind. As a fresco painter Taddeo cannot be judged. Yet we are so far fortunate as to find in this damaged relic-the Baroncelli Chapel at Santa Croce-Taddeo's treatment of several of the scenes that are pictured at Assisi. His Adoration of the Magi is reproduced here, and will repay study. A comparison of the Virgin's face with another by Taddeo in a niche near by confirms what its expressiveness would lead us to suspect that it has suffered less from restoration than the other parts of the picture. The type is by no means pleasing at first sight, but gentleness combined with strength of character gives it a permanent artistic value. As these frescoes are known to have been Taddeo's earliest independent work, it is irrational to suppose that in later life he would have been content with insipidity such as we find in the Virgin of the Assisi "Adoration." 2 Nevertheless, that "Adoration" makes a far nearer approach to Taddeo's than to Giotto's at Padua; and the action of the child at Assisi is clearly a development of Taddeo's idea. Hardly less important, and more incontrovertible, is the fact that the two pictures contain identical architecture; the formation of the porches in which the Virgin sits, with the balcony above, the three square apertures, the delicate pointed windows, are only less remarkable for their similarity than for their slight differences. That the Assisi architecture is the more elaborate and graceful, and therefore, presumably, of later date, need not be pointed out; what interests us most is that the Assisi artist is so well acquainted with Taddeo's design that he can turn the building round a little and present it at a different angle to the spectator. Taddeo's lobby answers its purpose well enough, but it hardly deserved the distinction of being in this way learnt by heart. 1 Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle note that the fresco has been totally repainted. 2 A reproduction of this fresco was given in the MONTHLY REVIEW for October 1903. It must have been circumstance that taught the painter his lesson so completely. Had he been Taddeo's son he might have learnt it, when as a boy he helped his father. The Nativity at Assisi is also no less clearly modelled on Taddeo's representation of the subject as we see it in the left wing of his altar-piece at Berlin. The latter is described by Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle as "all but a repetition of the same subject in the lower church at Assisi." In both, Giotto's realistic treatment is replaced by a more devotional rendering. It became usual, at an early date, to consider the Virgin exempt from the sufferings of child-birth. Taddeo represents her already sitting upright on a mattress beside the manger, and giving her child the breast. The Assisi painter, departing still further from the more human associations of the event, makes her adore the child she holds on her knee. That Taddeo was not himself the author of the Assisi frescoes, it is not, however, necessary to prove. Taddeo has never been accused of the affectation which distinguishes them, or ever been suspected of the slightest contamination from the Sienese. That no fresco work of Taddeo's betrays an approach in quality to The Life of Christ is perhaps not wholly Taddeo's fault; but if his powers of composition as a whole can be judged from the decoration of the Baroncelli chapel, there can be little doubt that he was in this respect greatly inferior to his successor. Who could be expected to combine so close a relationship, as we have seen in these frescoes, to Taddeo, with another equally close to Giovanni da Milano, if not Taddeo's son? Ruskin, we know, hazarded the conjecture that Agnolo was the author of The Life of Christ. May it not be possible that we have here the assertion of his real penetrative genius, and not of the perverseness that he at times allowed to obscure it? Recent discoveries with regard to the life of Agnolo and the chronology of his works seem likely to give him higher claim to consideration as a serious painter than formerly he possessed. But Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, even in their |