Resumen de Aggiunte alla scultura fiorentina della 'miniaturist tendency' nella prima metà del Trecento: l'arca di san Luca in Santa Giustina a Padova e il crocifisso e il San Donato lignei di San Donato a Campignalla
It is still widely believed that artists from Rome, Siena and Pisa had the monopoly on sculpture in Florence in the first half of the 14th century. However, some enlightening studies by Enrica Neri Lussana have recently revealed the existence of a truly Florentine school active at the time, characterized by a "miniaturist tendency" similar, in some respects, to that found in the work of various Florentine painters of the period. Until now, this school was essentially known to us through works by Giovanni di Jacopo and Paolo di Giovanni, whose authorship is attested by an inscription-signature and documentation respectively. This article re-examines the proposed attributions to these two masters and concludes that they were part, but not the protagonists, of a large group of sculptors who shared the same tendencies in that they followed the teachings of Nicola Pisano and were receptive to northern-European Gothic. In addition, new works are tentatively attributed to this circle of sculptors, who are known to have worked on the bracket capitals of Prato Cathedral around 1322. They include the celebrated tomb of St Luke dating to 1316, in the Basilica of Santa Giustina, Padua, and two virtually unknown wooden sculptures: a crucifix and a standing figure of the Saint Bishop Donatus, patron saint of Arezzo, which are in the small privae church of San Donato at Campignalla (Bagno a Ripoli) near Florence. The comparison of photographs, on which the proposed attributions are based, sheds light on a 14th-century Florentine school that has so far been neglected by scholarship and is completely unknown to the general public, who mistakenly associate the Florentine art of the period with style that was "pure and without ornament" -to which not even Giotto remained completely faithful.
