Lippo di Dalmasio, the Madonna of Humility and Painting in Pistoia in the Late Trecento

The essay examines the early career of the Bolognese painter Lippo di Dalmasio (ca. 1350s-1410), documented as a resident of the Tuscan city of Pistoia in the 1370s and 1380s, and seeks to cast light on his most ambitious work to survive in Pistoia, the Madonna of Humility between Sts. Dominic and Catherine and Two Donors (ca. 1380) in S. Domenico. Through close examination of the iconographical and stylistic sources of the S. Domenico Madonna, this study promotes a deeper understanding of Lippo’s practices and of the Pistoiese artistic milieu in which Emilian and Tuscan pictorial conventions met and coalesced. Such an episode also contributes to the wider discussion on the diffusion of the Virgin of Humility theme which was prominent in the devotional images of both Bologna and Pistoia after 1350. In addition, the essay raises questions about the use of regional stylistic labels and, in doing so, offers fresh material to the broader debates surrounding the rich network of artistic exchange within and between the urban centres of trecento Italy.