ANDREA DEL CASTAGNO
(b. 1423, Castagno, d. 1457, Firenze)

Famous Persons Cycle (reconstruction)

c. 1450
Fresco
Villa Carducci, Legnaia

Andrea was commissioned the Legnaia Famous Persons cycle no later than June 1449, when Filippo Carducci, the owner of the villa and most probably the one who commissioned the frescoes, died. The frescoes were finished before the house was sold in October 1451.

The Legnaia cycle consists of nine portrayals (three Florentine military commanders, three famous women and three Tuscan poets), placed inside painted niches made to look like monumental marble recesses, separated by pilasters. On one of the room's short walls, the figures of Adam and Eve were painted.

The picture shows a digital reconstruction by Lew Minter of the Famous Men and Women fresco cycle originally in the loggia of the Villa Carducci, Legnaia. The width of the loggia is approximately 15,5 m. The figures from he left are: Eve, Madonna and Child (over the door, largely lost), Adam (largely lost), Pippo Spano, Farinata degli Uberti, Niccolò Acciaioli, Cumaean Sibyl, Queen Esther, Queen Tomyris, Dante, Petrarch. The third Florentine literary figure in the cycle, Boccaccio, next to Petrarch, is not shown in this reconstruction. The nine figures from the long wall have been detached and exhibited in the Uffizi, while the frescoes representing Adam and Eve and the Virgin and Child on one end wall of the loggia remain in poor condition in the villa.