Cenni di Francesco (Florence, news 1369 – 1415) was an Italian painter and miniaturist. He collaborated with Giovanni del Biondo. He was a prolific painter in and around Florence, with extensive documentation on his works.

Influenced by the style of the so-called Master of Mercy and John of the Blond, he was also a collaborator of the latter. Very prolific painter both in Florence and in the countryside, there are countless artistic testimonies.

His oldest work, Madonna tra i santi Cristoforo and Margherita, from 1370, is Church of San Cristoforo in Perticaia, in the Italian commune of Rignano sull’Arno.

His most important work is a vast fresco of frescoes, painted in 1410, in Volterra on Cappella della Croce di Giorno, adjacent to the Church of St. Francis.

His only signed work is fresco of the True Cross at the Cappella della Croce di Giorno at the church of San Francesco in Volterra, painted in 1410. A couple of dozens work have been attributed to Cenni di Francesco of the basis of the similarity of style with the fresco.

A Polyptych with Coronation of the Virgin and Saints is on display in the Getty Museum in California.

The most ancient work known is a triptych with Our Lady of Prayer Christopher and Margherita who is preserved in the church of San Cristoforo in Perticaia, in the municipality of Rignano sull’Arno: on the steps of the throne we can read. Thanks to this inscription we can date the work back to 1370.

In Empoli there are two little tablets (66×26 cm) from the collection Raimondo Cannoni with Santa Lucia, Santa Catherine of Alexandria and another saint and Sant’Onofrio, St. Anthony and St. Martin of Tours in Empoli in the Collegiate Museum of Sant’Andrea: Dated to 1370 – 1375 the two tablets were part of a small triptych whose central part was dispersed.

The Museum of Sacred Art in Certaldo conserves three works of Cenni, confirming its copious activity. The oldest is a table cuspidata with a crucifixion with the sorrows, saint Catherine of Alexandria and San Miniato (?), Coming from the church of San Lazzaro in Lucardo and, even before the oratory of San Pietro in Tugiano (until 1917) . The dating should fall in the five-year period 1385-1390. Another very similar work for the subject to that of Tugiano (this is a Crucifixion), but later (1400 ca.), which is preserved at the Museum of the Opera of the Duomo of Prato, was approached to the production of Cenni , But the author is usually regarded as a much more sophisticated painter.

In the Museum of Certaldo there are also two detached frescoes from the church of San Martino in Maiano, later from the previous table (1405 – 1410), with San Martino and Santa Catherine of Alexandria, partially restored in the later period, and Madonna with Child depicted In the act of breastfeeding and inserted into an architectonic throne of late Gothic taste.

Coevi at the table with the Crucifixion of Tugiano (1385 – 1390) are some frescoes made on the pillars with figures of saints that can be admired within the church of San Lazzaro in Lucardo. In the left nave, on the other hand, there is a venerated Madonna with Child of the iconographic type of the Madonna of Milk, subject that the same author will propose with a few variants a few years later (1405 – 1410) in the already mentioned fresco of the Museum of Sacred Art of Certaldo.

Always referring to the period from 1385 to 1390 is a tempera on table with a Pentecost (175×78 cm) with a Dormitory Virginis (cm 25×78) on the forehead, kept in the Sala della Canonica della Pieve di San Martino in Sesto Fiorentino.

In the San Casciano Museum of San Casciano Val di Pesa there is a delightful Madonna with Child (1390 – 1395), from the church of San Martino in Argiano. Its outstanding conservation status meant that for years it was used as a model for study and copy at the Fortezza da Basso restoration school in Florence.

In collaboration with the Master of Our Lady Lazzeroni in 1393 he performed in the Town Hall of San Miniato a Virgin with the Child surrounded by virtues personifications.

At the Museum of Sacred Art in Montespertoli there is a Triptych (1400), coming from the Church of San Giusto in Montalbino: in the inscription below you can read. This painting was commissioned by Bicci d’Andrea and depicts:

Central part, Madonna of milk between Saint Lucia and Saint Just;
In the three forms of the cusp, Saint Gabriel Archangel announcing, Jesus Christ blessing and Madonna announced;
In the predella, St. Anthony Abbot, St. Lawrence, Jesus Christ in pity, a holy bishop and St. Catherine of Alexandria.
The work is another testimony to the late Gothic culture of our art, also linked to the style of Agnolo Gaddi.

In the first decade of the fifteenth century, Cenni was active in Castelfiorentino, where inside the Church of San Francesco he made some unfortunately fragmentary frescoes despite the restorations. The fresco with the Trinity has been detached and placed in the Santa Verdiana Museum, as it is no longer possible to relocate on site. Detached for the restoration, but relocated to its original seat in the Chapel of the Conception is the work with Saint Francis who passes the rule with the Signs of the Passion and the three monastic virtues

Always at Castelfiorentino there is another work of Cenni: it is a fresco depicting a Madonna and Child located in Casa Fortini.

In the Pinacoteca di Volterra there are two works attributed to Cenni di Francesco.

The first is a great polyptych (169 x 197 cm) with Madonna on the throne with the Child and angels among the saints Nicola and Jacopo (on the left) and Cristoforo and Antonio (on the right) painted for the church of Sant’Agostino in Volterra Dated in 1408. (In the same church there is still a fresco with a Madonna with Child always from our painter).

It is a vast cycle of fresco painted by Cenni in 1410 in Volterra in the Chapel of the Cross of the Day, adjacent to the Church of San Francesco: it is not the most important work of our painter in Volterra, but of all his artistic production .

The source of the iconography was the Abbe Legend of Iacopo from Varazze, but Cenni was also inspired by the cycle of Agnolo Gaddi in the greater chapel of the church of Santa Croce in Florence.

The Stories of the Cross consist of eight boxes that follow in two registers in a butrophic sequence: the sequence starts from the first span, the right wall bezel, to proceed to the right at the level of the other lunettes; At this point you go down the lower register and go backward (left) until you go back to the first lunette of the right wall of the first spell from which the reading was started.