Gail E. Solberg, Taddeo di Bartolo. Siena’s Painter in the Early Quattrocento. 2 vols. Studies in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art History. London and Turnhout: Harvey Miller Publishers and Brepols Publishers, 2025, 1686 pp., 107 b/w and 674 color ill.

Gail Solberg’s monumental study offers a comprehensive reassessment of Taddeo di Bartolo (ca. 1362–1422), restoring to the Sienese painter a far more consequential place in the history of late medieval Italian painting. Drawing on more than three decades of research, Solberg reconstructs Taddeo’s career from his formative years in Siena through his travels across central and northern Italy, his engagement with prominent patrons, and his major commissions in fresco and panel painting. Particular attention is given to the social, political, and devotional circumstances of his commissions, including the distinctive agency of female patrons such as Datuccia Sardi. Solberg also challenges longstanding negative assessments of Taddeo’s later work, arguing for the sustained vitality and originality of his late style. The review considers the book’s six-part structure and two-volume format, highlighting its combination of close visual analysis, archival research, digital reconstructions, and extensive documentary apparatus. It concludes that Solberg’s study not only substantially expands our knowledge of Taddeo’s artistic activity and networks but also fundamentally reshapes his position within the artistic culture of late medieval Italy.