Giovanni di Francesco Toscani
Italian, 1370 - 1430
Italian painter. He matriculated in the Florentine Compagnia di S Luca in 1424, but it seems that already in 1420 he was inscribed on the rolls of the company (Orlandi). In 1423 and 1424 he received payments for decorating the Ardinghelli Chapel in Santa Trìnita, Florence (Milanesi). In the catasto (land registry declaration) of 1427, Toscani described himself as a cassone painter (‘cofanaio’).
Bellosi (1966) realized that the two poorly preserved, but surviving fragments of the fresco decoration in the Ardinghelli Chapel, showing St Nicholas of Bari in Glory and the Pietà, were close in style to the paintings grouped together (Salmi, Offner) under the name of the Master of the Griggs Crucifixion. However, subsequent work on Toscani has led to the view that the Griggs Crucifixion (New York, Met.) after which the anonymous master is named should be excluded from Toscani’s work; its painter was evidently interested in early Renaissance innovations and had a close affinity with the youthful works of Fra Angelico, whereas Toscani’s documented works are closer to the gothicizing style of Lorenzo Monaco and Lorenzo Ghiberti. Among the assistants who worked with Ghiberti (contracts of 1403, 1407) on the north doors of the Florence Baptistery is a Giovanni di Francesco who could be Toscani. Paintings by Toscani such as the Virgin and Child (Buffalo, NY, Albright–Knox A.G.) or the triptych of the Virgin and Child with Saints (Florence, Gal. Osp. Innocenti) probably can be dated c. 1410–20. While they show the influence of late Orcagnesque models, they also reveal an assimilation of a Gothic style that is more tender and more advanced than that of Lorenzo Monaco. The cassone panel of the Court of Love (Madison, U. WI, Elvehjem A. Cent.) and one illustrating a scene from Boccaccio’s Decameron (Edinburgh, N.G.) are also likely to date c. 1410–20. Other cassoni panels attributable to Toscani include two depicting the celebrations of the feast day of St John the Baptist (Cleveland, OH, Mus. A.; Florence, Bargello).
Of the painters active in Florence in the 1420s, Giovanni Toscani was one of the most intelligent and original interpreters of the great changes in style that occurred following Gentile da Fabriano’s arrival there and in the wake of Masaccio’s revolutionary innovations. Among Toscani’s works of that decade the decoration of the Ardinghelli Chapel must have been particularly important. Some panels from the chapel’s altarpiece also survive (dispersed), and attempts to reconstruct it have been helped by the discovery of a 17th-century description of the altarpiece (Padoa Rizzo). Fragments include a predella panel of the Stigmatization of St Francis and a Miracle of St Nicholas of Bari (Florence, Accad.), the Adoration of the Magi (ex-Dodge priv. col., Italy, see 1988 exh. cat., pp. 70–71), the Baptism of Christ and the Martyrdom of St James (Philadelphia, PA, Mus. A.), the right-hand panel of SS John the Baptist and James the Great (Baltimore, MD, Walters A.G.) and gables with the Crucifixion (Florence, Accad.) and the Annunciation (Rome, Carandini priv. col., see Padoa Rizzo).
Luciano Bellosi. "Toscani, Giovanni." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T085793 (accessed April 16, 2012).
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