Giottino

Giottino , early Florentine painter of the school of Giotto. He is supposed to have lived in the first half of the 14th cent. and has been variously identified as Giotto di Stefano, Tommaso di Stefano, and Maso di Banco. It is possible that the work of more than one man has been associated with this name. He has been credited with frescoes in Santa Croce, Florence, and in the Lower Church of St. Francis in Assisi. Also attributed to him is a fine Pietà in the Uffizi.

Giottino. See Maso di Banco.

Maso di Banco (active second quarter of the 14th century). Florentine painter. Almost nothing is known of his career (Vasari does not mention him by name and attributes some of his work to an obscure—possibly fictitious—artist called Giottino). However, he is regarded as the greatest of Giotto's followers on the strength of Ghiberti's testimony that he was the painter of the frescos illustrating the legend of St Sylvester in the Bardi Chapel of S. Croce, Florence. The stately figures here are sometimes even more massive than Giotto's and the lucid and beautifully coloured compositions are of almost geometric clarity (although it has been argued that some of the effect of monumental simplicity may be due to restoration). On stylistic grounds other works have been attributed to Maso, including panels in Budapest (MFA), Chantilly (Mus. Condé), and New York (Brooklyn Mus. and Met. Mus.).