ABSTRACT
The great pioneer painter Cenni di Pepo, who was so truculent in a city of truculent men that they called him ‘Poll-the-Ox’, might very well never have achieved his breakaway from mediaeval byzantine abstractions if the semi-dramatic laude had never come to Florence. Florence has a permanent tiny theatre which houses a repertory company sometimes joined by non-florentine stars. The laudesi were not Florentines. They came over the border from Umbria. They were groups of flagellants, extreme followers of St Francis, who would probably have deplored their penitential excesses. Because the church was passing through, or into, a sumptuous phase, St Francis or no, flagellants or no, these actors gathered a sumptuous wardrobe.
