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ounder of modern Italian painting and leading light of the Florentine school, Giotto's name is familiar to most people, both in Italy and abroad. It is also widely known that he completed his training in the workshops of Cimabue, one of the outstanding artists of the late 13th century.

As far as the previous decades and centuries are concerned, however, even the experts have to admit that their knowledge of artistic endeavour in Florence is hazy and lacking in detail, largely due to the fact that ninety percent of the period's picture output has been destroyed. The few paintings that survive have, all to often, been removed from their original context, are fragmentary, or have an uncertain history of provenance or author.

The Origins of Florentine Painting (with texts in the English language) attempts, for the first time, to provide a comprehensive study of the paintings produced in the city between c. 1100 and 1270; the scope of the volume ranges from early examples of Medieval art to the generation of painters preceding Cimabue. All known works of the period are included, accompanied by descriptions, discussion, thorough catalogue references and excellent reproductions. The critical catalogue is complemented by a complete transcription of documentation relating to the works and artists of medieval Florence, as well as by a wide-ranging introductory study. This traces the progress of artistic development in Florence over the 12th and 13th centuries, focusing on the painters themselves and placing their output within the wider context of Italian and European painting in the middle ages.

Amongst the numerous little-known and previously unknown figures which emerge we find: the Maestro della Madonna di Rovezzano; the Maestro del Bigallo; the Maestro della Croce no. 434 in the Uffizi; Coppo di Marcovaldo; Salerno di Coppo; Meliore and the Maestro di Sant'Agata. Thus we now have ample proof that Giotto's art was actually rooted in a fertile cultural tradition which had, over the previous two hundred years, produced artists of outstanding quality.

Technical Features: cloth bound volume (size 31.8 x 24.5 cm) printed on ivory coated paper with coloured dust jacket; 816 pages, 423 black and white illustrations. The volume is priced at $US180.