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for Pier Francesco Fiorentino
Pier Francesco Fiorentino
Italian, 1444/5 - after 1497
Born Florence, 1444–5; died after 1497.
Italian painter. A fairly large corpus of works can be attributed to Pier Francesco grouped around one documented altarpiece, the Virgin and Child with Saints (1474; Empoli, Mus. Dioc.) and two signed and dated works: the Virgin and Child with Saints (1494; San Gimignano, S Agostino) and Virgin and Child with Saints (1497; Montefortino, Pin. Com.). The stylistically homogeneous group consists mostly of small-scale works, many of which bear dated inscriptions, sometimes including the name of the patron, who is often shown at prayer. They reveal Pier Francesco to have been an artisan–painter of high quality, somewhat lacking in invention but with a sound technique. His devotional paintings have a serene order and an air of humility completely devoid of rhetoric. The fact that he worked mostly for a provincial clientele somewhat limited his scope, but it also allowed him to express his own simple vein of piety derived from an unsophisticated pictorial culture that he gradually enriched through his technical virtuosity.
Pier Francesco probably trained in the workshop of his father, Bartolomeo di Donato, also an artist. There he would have acquired sufficient technical knowledge to enable him to become independent at an early age. The detached fresco with scenes from the Life of St Eustace (Florence, Cenacolo S Apollonia) is certainly a youthful work, although its inscribed date of 1462 is suspect. It reveals a mature technique and a confident approach to spatial problems, modelled on Andrea del Castagno’s work at the Villa Pandolfini, Legnaia, outside Florence. The lateral scenes are inspired by Benozzo Gozzoli’s Florentine works and also by the coffer (‘forzieri’) paintings of the followers of Domenico Veneziano. Certain stylistic features of the fresco such as its luminosity, the articulation of perspective and the linear treatment of the figures also suggest comparisons with Giovanni di Francesco (i), with whom it is likely that Pier Francesco collaborated on the terra verde frescoes of biblical stories in the loggia of the Palazzo Rucellai, Florence.
There are no documents concerning Pier Francesco’s activity between 1461 and 1474, but stylistic evidence, supported by the large number of works attributed to him in the Val d’Elsa region, suggests he joined Benozzo Gozzoli’s studio when the latter moved to San Gimignano around 1463–4. He may even have painted parts of Gozzoli’s frescoes in S Agostino, San Gimignano. From this time Gozzoli’s influence is increasingly evident in Pier Francesco’s work, although he also borrowed from other artists such as Botticelli, Baldovinetti, Piero della Francesca and Perugino, whose Infant Christ type Pier Francesco used in his numerous representations of the Virgin and Child. His years in the Val d’Elsa, a territory caught between the political and cultural influences of Siena and Florence, caused him to assimilate elements from Sienese painters, particularly il Vecchietta. This is most apparent in the predella of the Virgin and Saints altarpiece (Colle Val d’Elsa, S Maria in Canonica).
The Dominicans were an important source of patronage for Pier Francesco: many of his works in and around San Gimignano, such as the fresco of the Crucifixion (S Lucia, near San Gimignano) and the altarpiece of the Virgin and Saints (Avignon, Mus. Petit Pal.) were commissioned by members of the Order. His frescoes in the Palazzo Vicariale in Certaldo and in the Palazzo Pretorio in Volterra demonstrate the degree of respect also accorded to him by civic patrons. Pier Francesco’s last dated works are of 1497: they include the Trinity (San Gimignano, Mus. Civ.) and a Sacra conversazione (Montefortino, Pin. Com.). His lucid manner was readily accessible to a public of different cultural levels and probably accounts for his continuing success.
Anna Padoa Rizzo. "Pier Francesco Fiorentino." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T067452 (accessed April 10, 2012).
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