Gozzoli, Benozzo (redirected from Benozzo di Lese)

Gozzoli, Benozzo (bānôt`tsō gôt`tsōlē), 1420–97, Florentine painter, whose real name was Benozzo di Lese. He was apprenticed to Fra Angelico, first in Florence and later in Rome. Becoming independent in 1449, he chose to stay in Montefalco for a few years. There he created an altarpiece of a Madonna and Child with Saints and also frescoes depicting the life of St. Francis. Upon his return to Florence in 1459, he began his famous Journey of the Magi for the chapel in the Medici Palace. There he painted a magnificent cavalcade of pilgrims to Bethlehem, including animated portraits of contemporary Florentines. To represent the Magi he painted Lorenzo de' Medici and two leaders of the East, Patriarch Joseph and Emperor John Paleologus. Gozzoli depicted them in exotic Middle Eastern dress against a background of fantastic landscape and strange animals. From 1468 until almost his last days he decorated the Camposanto, Pisa, with scenes from the Old Testament.

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Gozzoli, Benozzo

 orig. Benozzo di Lese

Detail with Lorenzo de' Medici from “Procession of the Magi,” fresco by Benozzo …

(credit: SCALA/Art Resource, New York)

(born 1420, Florence—died Oct. 4, 1497, Pistoia) Italian Renaissance painter. Early in his career he assisted Lorenzo Ghiberti on the east doors of the Baptistery in Florence and Fra Angelico on frescoes in Florence, Rome, and Orvieto. His reputation today rests on the breathtaking fresco cycle The Journey of the Magi (1459–61) in the chapel of Florence's Medici-Riccardi Palace. His work as a whole was undistinguished, however. He painted several altarpieces and a series of 25 frescoes of Old Testament scenes, now badly damaged, for the Camposanto in Pisa (1468–84).