GIOTTO DENIED, GIOTTO 'REINVENTED' THE CHRISTIAN FAITH TO THE PALACE OF THE PARTE GUELFA

Built between 1319 and 1322, the Palace of the Parte Guelfa in Florence was the seat of the most influential political party of the city in the communal age. According to some early, reliable literary sources, i.e. Lorenzo Ghiberti's Coinmentarii (1447-1455), Libro di Antonio Billi (1516-1530 ca.), Giovanni Battista Gelli's Vite d'artisti (1550s), and Giorgio Vasari's Vite (1550 and 1568), the building was frescoed by Giotto, who painted a figure on the doorway at the top of the external staircase and a "storia della fede christiana" on the walls in the first room inside. The latter fresco may have disappeared by 1677, while the figure on the staircase was probably concealed shortly after 1770. This article aims to show that there is no reason to question the truthfulness of the accounts about the existence of these frescoes in the palace, as many historiographers did between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. An inventory of the properties of the Parte Guelfa (1431) confirms that there was a narrative painting in the first room. Moreover, a small decorative fragment in the room and the external figure quoted by the sources were rediscovered by Alfredo Lensi during the restoration of the building, which took place between 1921 and 1923. On this occasion, this figure was traced and then replaced by a new fresco representing the personification of the Faith. Giotto's paintings are supposed to have been executed in 1326/27, when the rule of the city was given to Charles, duke of Calabria and son of Roberto of Anjou, who was the king of Naples and the leader of the Guelph party.