The Master of 1310 is the conventional name given to an anonymous Italian painter active in Pistoia between the late 13th and early 14th centuries. The name comes from an altarpiece showing the Madonna and Child with angels and the donor Filippo Paci, dated 1310 and now held in the Petit Palais in Avignon. The panel shows a clear French Gothic influence, which helps place his style within the wider European context of the period.
Earlier, he is credited with a series of frescoes depicting the Passion in the choir of the church of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas in Pistoia, dated 1307, with figures of strong expressive force. From his later years comes a polyptych of the Madonna and Child with Saints John the Baptist, an apostle, Mary Magdalene and Bernard, which once stood on the high altar of the church of Santa Maria Maddalena at the convent of the Humiliati and is now in the city's Civic Museum.
Other attributions, such as two frescoes in the church of Santo Domingo in Pistoia, dated to around the 1330s, remain disputed among specialists. His legacy is mainly documentary: his conventional name groups together a body of Pistoiese works that helps us understand how French Gothic style spread through Tuscany in the early fourteenth century.
Works (1)
Painted in tempera on panel around 1330 by an anonymous artist conventionally known as the Master of 1310, this religious work shows the Virgin and Child accompanied by several saints. Such groupings were a common format in altarpieces of the period, so the painting probably served devotional purposes. It is preserved in the Museum of the Collegiate Church of Sant'Andrea.