Biography

Toscani is best known as a cassone painter, that is, a painter of decorative panels on the sides of large wooden chests or cassoni. These were usually commissioned in pairs for newly married couples and many were produced in Florence from the fourteenth century to the end of the sixteenth century. Like several Florentine painters, Toscani may have worked on the narrative relief panels of the first set of Baptistry doors designed by Lorenzo Ghiberti. He seems to have painted some frescoes and altarpieces in addition to cassoni, in a style influenced by Ghiberti and Lorenzo Monaco.