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The Baroncelli Chapel is consecrated to the Annunciation to the Virgin, and thus the pictorial program is devoted to the life of the Virgin.
The fresco cycle covers only the two walls of the front section of the space, beginning on the east wall with the Expulsion of Joachim from the Temple (top left) and Joachim's Dream (top right). It is followed on the same wall by Joachim and Anne Meeting at the Golden Gate (middle left) and the Birth of the Virgin (middle right), Presentation of the Virgin (bottom left) and Marriage of the Virgin (bottom right).
Taddeo Gaddi, one of Giotto's pupils painted the Baroncelli Chapel in the church of Santa Croce in Florence around 1330, brilliantly employing the technical achievements of his teacher. His scenes for the Life of the Virgin were painted with two goals in mind. First, to compose the painting so that it corresponded to the form of the chapel bay, which was arched. Second, by means of the architecture of the painting itself, to create a sufficiently deep stage for the sequence of events to be played out. Gaddi came up with an ingenious solution for the upper section directly under the arch. He placed the architecture of the temple directly beside a cliff which looms up on the right so that in the upper section a quatrefoil shape is created, an open space out of which he let an angel descend. This served to link the scenes Expulsion of Joachim from the Temple and the Joachim's Dream.
The sections below, with their alternating interiors and exteriors, appear as sets in front of which, and in which, the events take place. From the Meeting at the Golden Gate (top left) we move on to the Birth of St John the Baptist, the Virgin on her Way to the Temple, and finally the Marriage of the Virgin. As in San Francesco in Assisi, the architecture of the painting is closely linked to the architecture of the church, the continuous narrative to the way a viewer reads.
The cycle continues on the south wall (at right in the picture).
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