Traini, Francesco (doc. 1315[?]; d. 1348)

Francesco Traini's career was centred on Pisa, where he led a busy shop that attracted the patronage of the city's most important civic and religious institutions. His only surviving signed and documented work is the Saint Dominic Altarpiece, completed by 1345 for the Dominicans of Santa Caterina in Pisa. Early sources, other than the scant record of his life in Pisan archives, reveal little about him. Since the nineteenth century, scholars have reassessed his achievements, paying particular attention to his chronology and stylistic development, as well to the related question of the activity of his assistants and followers. Disagreement still exists among scholars over the exact nature of his involvement in the decoration of the Camposanto at Pisa and over his career as an illuminator. But despite these differences of opinion, all would acknowledge that Francesco Traini was Pisa's leading indigenous painter of the fourteenth century.