( fl Florence, c. 1225–50). Italian painter. Garrison was the first to attribute a group of works to the author of the large panel on the altar of the Capella Bardi, Santa Croce, Florence, representing St Francis and 20 Scenes from his Legend. He included a Crucifix (Florence, Uffizi, 434) in this group and identified these paintings (previously thought to belong to the Lucca school) as Florentine in origin and showing signs of contact with the Bigallo Master. Prehn (1976) noted that two distinct painters worked on the St Francis panel, a fact that was more obvious after restoration, and that neither of them could be identified with the painter of the Crucifix. Boskovits, however, defined the principal Master of the Bardi St Francis as a precursor of Coppo di Marcovaldo, who, during the first half of the 13th century, moved away from the figurative tradition of painting in Lucca and developed a style characterized by the description of form through strongly marked patterns of light and dark. According to Boskovits, Coppo could have been one of the assistants who painted the scenes beneath the figure of the saint in the Santa Croce panel. The impressive painting of a Virgin and Child Enthroned, with Scenes from the Virgin’s Life (Moscow, Pushkin Mus. F.A.) also has obvious stylistic and compositional affinities with the Santa Croce panel.

Part of the Masters, anonymous, and monogrammists family