Gentile da Fabriano (redirected from Gentile di Niccolò di Massio)

Gentile da Fabriano (dä fäbrēä`nō jāntē`lā), c.1370–1427, Italian painter, one of the outstanding exponents of the elegant international Gothic style. In 1409 he worked in the Doge's Palace, Venice, painting historical frescoes that subsequently perished. In 1422 he was in Florence where he created his most celebrated painting, the resplendent Strozzi altarpiece (Uffizi). Gentile painted in the spirit and the manner of the older school, with glowing color and lavish use of gilt, thereby achieving a jewellike, courtly style. By 1425 he had responded to the new Florentine realism. His refined forms yielded to a sturdier rendering of figures in the Quaratesi altarpiece (panels are now in the Uffizi; Vatican; National Gall., London; and National Gall. of Art, Washington, D.C.). From 1425 until his death he worked in Siena, Orvieto, and Rome. Gentile died in Rome before the completion of the frescoes of St. John the Baptist in the Lateran Basilica. Other examples of his art are the Madonna and Child with Angels (Perugia); a polyptych (Brera, Milan); Madonna of Humility (Pisa); and Madonna and Child (Yale Univ.).

Bibliography

See K. Christiansen, Gentile da Fabriano (1982).

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Gentile da Fabriano

 orig. Gentile di Niccolò di Massio

(born c. 1370, Fabriano, Papal States—died 1427, Rome) Italian painter. He was probably trained in the Lombardy region. In 1409 he was commissioned to decorate the Doges' Palace in Venice with historical frescoes, now lost. His most important fresco cycle, also destroyed, was in the church of St. John Lateran in Rome. His major surviving painting is the celebrated Strozzi Altarpiece (1423), featuring The Adoration of the Magi. Its combination of naturalism and rich ornamentation influenced Italian artists throughout the century, notably Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli, and established Gentile as one of Italy's greatest proponents of the International Gothic style. He was the most important Italian painter of the first quarter of the 15th century.