ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ERA
Famous artists include:
Cimabue (c.1240-1302)
Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337)
Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446)
Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455)
Donatello (1386-1466)
Paolo Uccello (1397-1475)
Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72)
Piero della Francesca (1420-92)
Andrea Mantegna (1430-1506)
Donato Bramante (1444-1514)
Alessandro Botticelli (1445-1510)
Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-94)
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Michelangelo (1475-1564)
Raphael (1483-1520)
Biography
Gentile da Fabriano was born to a prominent family in Fabriano, but little is known of his arts training and early career. Though influenced by the art of his fellow-townsmen Allegretto Nuzi and Francesco di Cecco Ghissi, he seems to have assimilated the International Gothic style mainly from the miniaturists and painters of Lombardy. Signs of this are evident in what is perhaps his earliest surviving panel painting, the signed Madonna and Child with St Nicholas, St Catherine and Donor (c.1395; Staatliche Museen, Berlin), painted for the church of S.Niccolio in Fabriano.
Between 1395 and 1400 Gentile painted the Coronation Altarpiece for the Franciscan convent in Fabriano (now divided between two private collections) and the more advanced Valle Romita Polyptych for the hermits' church of S.Maria di Valdisasso, near Fabriano (now in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan). In this signed example of polyptych altarpiece art - long dismantled, but now reassembled in a modern frame - the Lombard International style is tempered by a new softness, as in the features of the Madonna and the undulation of her silk gown.
Gentile must have traveled to Venice about 1406 or 1407; there is a record of his presence there in 1408. A 1581 guide to Venice mentions an altarpiece by Gentile in S.Felice, and mural painting by him in the Grand Hall of the Ducal Palace: none of these survive - all of Gentile's Venetian works are now lost. But the fact that he - an immigrant artist - was commissioned to decorate the main hall of the Ducal Palace is proof of his reputation and the outstanding quality of his fine art painting.
From 1414 to 1419 Gentile worked at the cosmopolitan court of Brescia in Lombardy, where he painted a chapel for Pandolfo Malatesta (destroyed at the beginning of the 19th century). On its completion, he accepted an invitation to work for Pope Martin V, who was making his way south to Rome. But owing to the Pope's delay, it was another seven years before Gentile entered his service. He might have returned to a career of provincial obscurity in Fabriano, had not his arrival in Florence, in the Pope's footsteps, occurred at an opportune moment: at a time, that is, when the rich Florentine burghers were beginning to ape the tastes of the courts of northern Italy and France.
Gentile's religious paintings catered precisely to this taste. His versions of The Madonna of Humility (examples in the Museo Nazionale, di S.Matteo, Pisa, and Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; both 1420-22) are refined and aristocratic. Fashion predominates over saintliness, as in his Washington Madonna (1422; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC), her tunic sleeve, under a mulberry-red robe, embroidered in gold with a pomegranate pattern.
The fashionable International Gothic style Gentile brought to Florence was already known there, but in a diluted, Sienese version. Gentile expressed its full force in the signed and dated altarpiece he painted for the wealthy Florentine businessman Palla Strozzi (1423; Uffizi, Florence). It consists of a single main panel of the Adoration of the Magi; there are lunettes above the three arches at the top of the panel, and a three-panel predella below. An inseparable component is the Gothic frame, of which the polygonal corner posts are painted with miniature panels of Mediterranean flowers. In the main panel, Gentile depicts the Epiphany as a courtly cavalcade. Sumptuously attired in gold-encrusted brocades, the three Kings have dismounted before the Madonna. A veritable menagerie (which may have been painted by Gentile's friend Pisanello) accompanies the entourage that crowds the foreground. In the background, passing through cities and castles on their way, the Magi journey towards Bethlehem: a seemingly endless procession meandering flamboyantly from one side of the panel to the other. The predella panels show an attempt - new in Italian painting - to represent real sky instead of a gold background.