Taddeo Gaddi is a more definite and less pleasing personality. He was Giotto’s godson and his assistant for twenty-four years, presumably from 1313 to 1337, as well as his artistic executor. Whether in panel or fresco, he was an admirable craftsman; in tempera, a fine colorist. His panels are widely scattered, some ten being in the United States; his frescoes, all that we need to note, are in Santa Croce. In the Baroncelli Chapel, just after Giotto’s death, Taddeo finished these frescoes of the early life of the Virgin, repeating themes which Giotto had used both in Padua and elsewhere in Santa Croce itself. His way of competing with Giotto is to stir and add and mix things up. Compare the meeting of Anna and Joachim at the Beautiful Gate in the two masters; Giotto at Padua is grave, noble, heartfelt; how he discriminates between the masculine clutch of the old husband and the tender embrace of the wife—how drastic the conception is, but also how clear and stately. Poor Taddeo on the other hand brings the sacred pair together with the bounce of a modern dance, Figure 26. He brings no brains to bear, and almost no feelings, just a sprightly and wholly casual inventiveness. Certain delightful little panels with stories of Christ and St. Francis which he did in Giotto’s shop for the doors of the sacristy wardrobes of Santa Croce remind us of the pity that he ever ceased to be an interpreter of a greater man’s designs. In the fresco of Job’s trials, in the Campo Santo, Pisa, he seems nearly a great artist. Conceivably he worked on designs of his late master. At least he had a certain critical sense, for at an artist’s reunion at San Miniato, about 1360, he told Andrea Orcagna and the rest of the company that painting had constantly declined since Giotto and was declining every day. He transmitted, his sound craftsmanship to a son, Agnolo, who decorated the Choir of Santa Croce with the legends of the Cross. He carried down the panoramic style to the end of the 14th century, practicing it with more taste than his father, achieving a grace without much inwardness or force. A later contemporary of Giotto’s, Buonamico Buffalmacco,[13] seems to have inherited something of Giotto’s power, but the identification of his work is very uncertain, and he lives for us chiefly as an egregious wag in the pages of the Italian story writers. [Illustration: FIG. 27. Giottino. Deposition—_Uffizi._ ]