The Shadow of the Florentine School To understand Giottino, one must look past the moniker little Giotto and see a painter who functioned as a vital link in the fourteenth-century Florentine tradition. Born around 1324, Maso di Stefano—better known by his diminutive title—did not simply mimic his predecessors. He operated within a specific lineage of naturalism established by his father, Maestro Stefano Fiorentino. This elder artist,…