MANFREDINO DA PISTOIA - b. ~1260 Pistoia, d. ~1300 ?

Italian painter. In 1280 he was paid for (lost) frescoes in the chapel of San Procolo, Pistoia Cathedral. His next known activity was in 1292, when he signed a fresco cycle in San Michele de Fassolo, Genoa, as Magister Manfredinus Pistoriensis. Only detached fragments survive (Genoa, Museo di Sant’Agostino), but they reveal that Manfredino was one of the more eloquent artists of the late 13th century. The dynamic pose and physical solidity of the St Michael shows a keen and intelligent response to the art of Cimabue, whose example can be seen in the modelling and facial construction of the figures in the other major surviving fragment, the Anointing at Bethany. Here Manfredino adds to the traditional Byzantine iconography a sympathetic and psychologically alert sense of the dramatic undertones and a remarkably ambitious and detailed backdrop of a city scene. The last record of his activity is in a Genoese document of 1293.

Christ in Glory among Angels

The picture shows a detail of the fresco representing Christ Pantocrator between Sts Bartholomew and John the Baptist. The fresco is on the bowl-shaped vault of the apse of the church, and it belongs to an advanced phase of the artist’s career. Manfredino offers us one of the most captivating examples of the spreading of Cimabue’s language, marked above all by his original use of colours.