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410 EARLY CHRISTIAN ART. Chap. XVIII. CHAPTER XVIII. GIOTTINO. Cotemporary with Taddeo Gaddi in Florence, lived a vast number of artists whose labours have remained un known to posterity. Of fourteen masters composing the council of painters at S. Maria del Fiore in 1366, two or three in addition to Taddeo and Orcagna have names connected with works. If, from the list of members of the council, one passes to that of painters allowed to compete for designs and models, the number of unknown names is surprising. Yet paintings without ascertained authors are not less numerous than masters without au thenticated works. Half the difficulties of classifying the productions of Italian art arise from the precipitation with which early writers connected pictures with names and names with pictures, thus creating confusion of styles, of dates, and of men. These difficulties become insur mountable when nicknames occur, and a new element of doubt is superadded to so many others previously exist ing. Orcagna is known to be the nickname of Andrea Cioni, shortened from “Arcagnolo.” No success has yet attended the effort to trace the real name of Giottino. Ghiberti in one of his commentaries 1 affirms that Maso, the disciple of Giotto, painted a chapel in S. Agostino at Florence (later S. Spirito), — a space above the portal of the same church, and a tabernacle on the square before it. In the church of S. Croce, he decorated the chapel of S. Silvestro with scenes from the life of that Saint and 1 Ghiberti. Com. 2. in Vasari. Vol. I. p. XXI.