Description
The lunettes in the Chapel of Saint Gregory, also known as the Bardi Chapel, at Santa Maria Novella in Florence preserve traces of late-thirteenth-century mural decoration attributed to Duccio di Buoninsegna and his circle. One wall depicts Christ enthroned between angels, while the other shows Pope Gregory the Great seated between two ceremonial fan-bearers.
The frescoes are severely abraded and their attribution is not universally accepted. They must be distinguished from the later narrative cycle of Saint Gregory’s life, painted after the Bardi family acquired patronage of the chapel. The chapel may originally have been used by the Laudesi confraternity, a devotional association closely connected with the Virgin Mary. Successive patrons altered its surfaces, and the surviving image represents more than one historical moment.
