Francesco Traini was an Italian painter who was documented as working from 1321 to ''ca'' 1365 in
Pisa and
Bologna
Bologna (, , ; egl, label=Emilian language, Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 1 ...
.
He appears to have been a follower of
Andrea Orcagna to judge by only one work known to be by Traini: in 1345 he signed and dated a
polyptych
A polyptych ( ; Greek: ''poly-'' "many" and ''ptychē'' "fold") is a painting (usually panel painting) which is divided into sections, or panels. Specifically, a "diptych" is a two-part work of art; a " triptych" is a three-part work; a tetrapt ...
of the Pisan church of S. Caterina, showing
Saint Dominic and a
predella
In art a predella (plural predelle) is the lowest part of an altarpiece, sometimes forming a platform or step, and the painting or sculpture along it, at the bottom of an altarpiece, sometimes with a single much larger main scene above, but oft ...
showing eight hagiographic scenes from the saint's life, now in the Museo Nazionale, Pisa. Most scholars attribute many of the huge
frescoes of the
Camposanto
Camposanto ( Modenese: ; Mirandolese: ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Modena in the Italian region Emilia-Romagna, located about northwest of Bologna and about northeast of Modena on the Panaro river. Although the name in ...
Monumentale in Pisa to Traini, including the ''Last Judgement'', ''Inferno'', ''Legends of the Hermits'' and, the famous ''Il Trionfo della Morte'' (the Triumph of Death).
There are Traini paintings at the
Princeton University Art Museum
The Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM) is the Princeton University gallery of art, located in Princeton, New Jersey. With a collecting history that began in 1755, the museum was formally established in 1882, and now houses over 113,000 works o ...
, Ackland Art Museum, and an ''Allegorical Representation of Crucifixion with Saints Andrew and Paul'' at the
Carnegie Art Museum
The Carnegie Art Museum is a public art museum owned by the City of Oxnard, California in the building originally occupied by the Oxnard Public Library. The Neo-Classical building, located adjacent to Oxnard's Plaza Park, opened in 1907 as the ...
.
''Triumph of Death''
Though other scholars attribute it to
Buonamico Buffalmacco
Buonamico di Martino, otherwise known as Buonamico Buffalmacco (active c. 1315–1336), was an Italian Renaissance painter who worked in Florence, Bologna, and Pisa. Although none of his known work has survived, he is widely assumed to be the ...
, the ''Trionfo della Morte'' was used by the art historian
Millard Meiss
Millard Lazare Meiss (March 25, 1904 - June 12, 1975) was an American art historian, one of whose specialties was Gothic architecture. Meiss worked as an art history professor at Columbia University from 1934 to 1953."Meiss, Millard." ''The Columb ...
in 1951 as a fundamental example (the other being
Andrea Orcagna's "
Strozzi Altarpiece") to prove his theory on the influence of the
Black Death on contemporary spirituality. He believed the painting, which displays the merciless omnipresence of death, to be a reaction to the horrors of the black death of 1348, as was the contemporaneous ''
Totentanz
The ''Danse Macabre'' (; ) (from the French language), also called the Dance of Death, is an artistic genre of allegory of the Late Middle Ages on the universality of death.
The ''Danse Macabre'' consists of the dead, or a personification of ...
'' ("Dance of Death") paintings in Germany. However, this fresco cycle was re-dated by Polzer to 1333-36 because of French contemporary paintings inspired by these ones and because of its
Guelph
Guelph ( ; 2021 Canadian Census population 143,740) is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Known as "The Royal City", Guelph is roughly east of Kitchener and west of Downtown Toronto, at the intersection of Highway 6, Highway 7 and Wel ...
political meaning, and Pisa was only Guelph for a short period in the mid 1330s; this meant, of course, that the frescoes cannot be an example of post-Black Death art as Meiss had originally suggested. In fact, since the painting was originally on the exterior wall of the town cemetery in Pisa, its function was just that of reminding the viewer of the certainty of death and the need for salvation through the church. The imagery is not, then, influenced by recent suffering and death caused by the plague but by mortality. Designed by a member of the Dominican College at Pisa, the fresco reflects the ideals of the order and its emphasis on judgement and the need for people to turn away from the temptations of the world; it promotes Mendicant poverty and cautions against earthly pleasure. It articulates a view of society, put forward by the Dominican Order in which sinfulness is the cause of suffering.
The background space is not treated naturalistically but establishes divisions between the different, symbolic groups of figures. Each spatial zone refers to a different idea being communicated such as temptation, judgment, death, and suffering. The landscape is treated symbolically. The rocky area represents the hermit's asceticism while the fertile area earthly pleasures.
American historian
Barbara Tuchman
Barbara Wertheim Tuchman (; January 30, 1912 – February 6, 1989) was an American historian and author. She won the Pulitzer Prize twice, for ''The Guns of August'' (1962), a best-selling history of the prelude to and the first month of World ...
examined the Traini fresco and described it thus: "A scroll warns that 'no shield of wisdom or riches, nobility or prowess' can protect them from the blows of the Approaching One. 'They have taken more pleasure in the world than in things of God.' In a heap of corpses nearby lie crowned rulers, a Pope in tiara, a knight, tumbled together with the bodies of the poor, while angels and devils in the sky contend for the miniature naked figures that represent their souls."
Barbara Tuchman, ''The Black Plague''
, accessed May 6, 2010
The frescoes of the Camposanto were unfortunately either severely damaged or destroyed by Allied air raids in World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
.
References
*
*John White: ''Art and Architecture in Italy 1250-1400''. Pelican History of Art 1993
External links
The Triumph of Death
Page about historian Barbara Tuchman's analysis of the Traini fresco
{{DEFAULTSORT:Traini, Francesco
14th-century Italian painters
Italian male painters
Painters from Tuscany
People from Pisa
Italian Renaissance painters