Chimney breast by Niccolò dell'Abbate

In 1552, Niccolò moved to France, where he worked at the royal Château de Fontainebleau as a member of the decorating team under the direction of Francesco Primaticcio. Within two years of his arrival he was drawing a project for a decor commemorating Anne de Montmorency (preparatory drawing at the Louvre). In Paris, he frescoed the chapel ceiling in the Hôtel de Guise (destroyed), following Primaticcio's designs. He also executed private commissions for portable canvases of mythological subjects sited in landscapes. He designed a series of tapestries titles Les Mois Arabesques, some of which were used by the painted enamel industry of Limoges. Much of his output reflected an often overlooked function of artists of the time.

Artist Niccolò dell'Abbate
Title Chimney breast
Date circa 1552
Medium -
Current location
Château d'Écouen Link back to Institution infobox template wikidata:Q1817122

Niccolò dell'Abbate
1512 - 1571

Niccolò dell'Abbate, was an Italian Mannerist painter in fresco and oils He was of the Emilian school, and was part of the team of artists called the School of Fontainebleau that introduced the Italianate Renaissance to France.

He trained together with Alberto Fontana in the studio of Antonio Begarelli, a local Modenese sculptor; early influences included Ferrarese painters such as Garofalo and Dosso Dossi He specialized in long friezes with secular and mythological subjects, including for the Palazzo dei Beccherie (1537); in various rooms of the Rocca di Scandiano owned by the counts Boiardo he created 12 frescoes, one for each book of The Aenid, and notably a courtly ceiling Concert composed of a ring of young musicians seen in perspective, Sotto in Su (early 1540s), and the Hercules Room in the Rocca Meli Lupi at Soragna (c 1540–43), and possibly the loggia frescoes removed from Palazzo Casotti at Reggio Emilia

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His style was modified by exposure to Correggio and Parmigianino, when he moved to Bologna in 1547 In Bologna, most of his painting depicted elaborate landscapes and aristocratic genre scenes of hunting and courtly loves, often paralleled in mythologic narratives It was during this time that he decorated the Palazzo Poggi, and executed a cycle of frescoes illustrating Orlando Furioso in the ducal palace at Sassuolo, near Modena Bologna is also the location of his illustrations for Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, and where he was celebrated in a sonnet which compares him to Raphael and Titian among others One of his early pieces that cemented his reputation was the Martyrdom of St Peter and St Paul, in the church of the abbey of San Pietro, Modena

Niccolò is best known for his mythological landscape subjects, which introduced the Flemish world landscape into French art, such as the Orpheus and Landscape with the Death of Eurydice in the National Gallery, London and the Rape of Prosperine in the Louvre, and for his profuse and elegant drawings Not many of his frescoes have survived; however the Louvre does have a collection of his drawings Many of his canvasses were burnt in 1643, by the Austrian regent, Anne Some of his landscapes for Charles IX were influential for the 17th century painters Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin
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