Gentile da Fabriano

Gentile di Niccolò di Giovanni di Massio detto Gentile da Fabriano (Fabriano, circa 1370 - Rome, September 1427)was an Italian painter known for his participation in the International Gothic painter style. He worked in various places in central Italy, mostly in Tuscany. His best-known works are his Adoration of the Magi and the Flight into Egypt.

Among the most important members of the Gothic International, he embodied in his century the typical figure of the traveling artist who preferred to move to find the most varied business opportunities offered by the courts rather than to shop. His poetic and fairy-tale paintings, the taste for the line, and the unparalleled use of decorative elements led him to the summit of the Italian school of the time, receiving commissions of great prestige. With his visit to Florence he entered into dialogue with the rising humanism in art, and without departing from his style, he began a conscious transition between late-gothic decorativism and Renaissance essence.

He was born in Fabriano in 1370-1375 by Niccolò di Giovanni, merchant.

There is no direct data on its formation; In one of the first works we know, the table with the Madonna and Child and the Saints Niccolò and Caterina and a donor, performed for the church of San Niccolò in Fabriano between 1395 and 1400 (now in Berlin). Linked mainly to the late Lombard culture, based on the Umbrian-Marche tradition. As a young man he began to move, moving to the centers of the Marche and Lombardy (some hypothesized a Pavese formation where there was an important miniature atelier).

From about 1405 he was in Venice, where he enrolled at the School of Merchants. For the church of Hagia Sophia he painted a table, lost. Probably in his shop worked Jacopo Bellini. In 1408-1409 he was commissioned the wall decoration of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in Palazzo Ducale, for which he carried out the fresco with the Battle between Ottone III and the Venetians, lost as the rest of the frescoes (due to a fire and Venetian climate, which tends to quickly wipe frescoes). Here he surely knew Pisanello and perhaps Michelino from Besozzo.

Other work, documented but lost, is a table for Francesco Amadi paid on July 27, 1408.

Towards 1410, probably after one of the Venetian stays, the Polyptych of Valle Romita dates back to the Pinacoteca di Brera, which perhaps also forms part of a Crucifixion panel.

It is his first masterpiece to be received, painted for the Franciscan hermitage of Valleremita, located between the Apennines mountains, near Fabriano. In this work where the Lombard derivations (soft colors, attention to naturalistic details, linear taste) updated on Michelino da Besozzo's work are accentuated, along with greater balance and formal solidity (the saints stand firmly on their feet ), The iconography of the Virgin's Incoronation suspended in the sky is, however, typically Venetian, while the characteristics of the artist are typical of the finishing of gold, the preciousness of the garments, the ability to make the texture of the materials (such as The Maddalena fur) with a soft and delicate stretch that undo the contours.

There were many moves in those years. He is known to have returned to the Marches and worked in Umbria and Lombardy.

In the years 1411-1412 he was in Foligno, where he performed the designs for the decorative cycle of Trinci Palace on commission of Ugolino III. The pictorial drawing, poorer, is due almost entirely to students, including Jacopo Bellini.

Between January 1414 and 1419 he went to Brescia, where he decorated the chapel of San Giorgio al Broletto on behalf of Pandolfo III Malatesta, work almost entirely lost. In the spring of 1420 it was again at Fabriano.

August 6, 1420 is documented in Florence, where he enrolled at the Art of Doctors and Speziali (21 November 1422) as "Magister Gentilis Nicolai Joannis Massi de Fabriano pictor, Florentiae habitator in the Sancte Trinitatis people".

He commissioned the very rich Palla Strozzi adoration of the Magi, a work completed in May 1423, for the altar of the Strozzi Chapel at Santa Trinita, on which he deployed the procession of the Magi, forming in the background several outbreaks of action, not linked to their. The gold of sumptuous details is almost dazzling, and the figures, though laid down in depth, do not follow any perspective, but are simply approached creating an unrealistic and fairy-tale effect. In the foreground the two groups (on the left the sacred family and on the right the march) are separated by the young king's straight figure; Such arrangements allow the work to be read from many points of view on which the spectator is invited to dwell on and to analyze each individual detail at later moments.

May 1425 is the polyptych commissioned by the Quaratesi family for the main altar of the church of San Niccolò sopra l'Arno in Florence, signed and dated, now dismembered and dispersed in various museums (Uffizi, National Gallery of London, Pinacoteca Vaticana and National Gallery Of Washington). In this work we see a transition of the style of Gentile influenced by Florentine human culture, which in those years was affirming, with a careful observation of ancient sculptures. The figures are peaceful and monumental, solidly constructed, in compact colors and with a more sober sign, closer to the works of Lorenzo Ghiberti and Masolino da Panicale.

A second polyptych of Gentile was discovered in 1862 (but perhaps from another place), particularly for the horizontal development of the structure and for the narrative character, unusual in an altarpiece. The Intercession of Christ and Mary to the Eternal is represented in the central panel, the Resurrection of Lazarus and the encounter of three Saints in an urban context in those at the sides, and Saint Ludwig of Toulouse and St. Bernard by Chiaravalle in the panels extremes. The work welcomes many stylistic motifs from the Masaccio of the Chapel Brancacci of the Carmine Church, and in particular a rendering of space and reality far removed from the usual forms of the Fabrianese, but of which the artist had already testified in the predella of Polittico Quaratesi .

Between June and August 1425 he was in Siena, where he painted for the Palace of the Notai, on the square of Campo, a Madonna with Child on the facade (another lost opera).

Between August and October of 1425 he moved to Orvieto for the execution of the fresco with the Virgin with the Child and Saints inside the Duomo, in which the solid bodies project from under the clothes and the expressions are humanized , Abandoning the courteous ways of the first works.

In January 1427 he arrived in Rome, where he received a prestigious commission on Martino V: the decoration of the central nave of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome. Death in August of the same year prevented her from ending it, and the work was completed by Pisanello five years later. This cycle, the culmination of late-gothic art in Italy, was destroyed after Borromini's work at the basilica, but they know of a design copied by Borromini himself and some fragments, but the criticism is unanimous about its origin and originality.

On October 14, 1427 Gentile was remembered as already dead. He was buried in the church of Santa Maria Nova, today's Santa Francesca Romana; His grave has also disappeared.

Works:
List of main works (unless otherwise indicated the works are all temperature on the table, measurements in cm).
Madonna and Child in glory among the saints Francesco e Chiara, 1390-1395, 56,50x42, Pinacoteca Malaspina, Pavia
Madonna and Child among the saints Nicholas of Bari, Catherine of Alexandria and a donor, 1395-1400 circa, 131x113, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
Madonna on the throne with the Child and musician angels, circa 1400-1410, National Gallery of Umbria, Perugia
Madonna and Child, circa 1400-1405, 58x48, National Picture Gallery, Ferrara
Madonna Davis, circa 1410, 85.7x50.8 cm, Metropolitan Museum, New York
Polytechnic of Valleromita, circa 1410-1412, 280x250, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
Crucifixion, circa 1410-1412, 64,20x40,4, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
Polittico Sandei, about 1410-1412, lost
San Giacomo maggiore, tempera on table, 28,30x8,50, Berenson Collection, Villa I Tatti, Settignano (Florence)
Saint Peter, 23,20x6,50, Berenson Collection, Villa I Tatti, Settignano (Florence)
Madonna on Throne with Child and Two Angels, 1410-1415, 58.7x42.9, Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa (Oklahoma)
Trinci palace frescoes, 1411-1412, Foligno
Romulus and Remo Loggia
Giants Room
Hall of Liberal Arts and the Planets
Suspended bridge (school)
Crowning the Virgin (from a processional stand), circa 1420, 87.50x64, Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Stimmate of Saint Francis (from a processional stand), circa 1420, 87x64, Fondazione Magnani-Rocca, Mamiano di Traversetolo (Parma)
Adoration of the Child, circa 1420-1421, 72x42.6, Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Madonna with Child, circa 1420-1423, 95.9x56.5, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Polyptych of Intercession, circa 1420-1423, church of San Niccolò Oltrarno, Florence
Madonna of Humility, circa 1420-1423, 56x41, National Museum of San Matteo, Pisa
Adoration of the Magi (Pala Strozzi), 1423, 300x282, Uffizi, Florence
Presentation of Jesus at the Temple by Pala Strozzi, 1423, 25x62, Louvre, Paris
Madonna with Child, 1423-1425, 24,8x19, Berenson Collection, Villa I Tatti, Settignano (Florence)
Madonna on the throne with Child among the Saints Lorenzo and Giuliano, circa 1423-1425, 170x61, Frick Collection, New York
Annunciation, circa 1423-1425, 41x49, Vatican Pinacoteca, Vatican City
Lapidation of St. Stephen, circa 1423-1427, 16.5x27, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Madonna with Child, circa 1424, 91.4x62.9, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven
Polittico Quaratesi, 1425
Madonna with Child and Angels with Cimasa with Angels and Medallion with the Redeemer, (Central Magazine), 222,70x83, The Royal Collection, Hampton Court, deposited at the National Gallery in London
Santa Maria Maddalena, with cimasa (left compartment), 200x60, Uffizi, Florence
San Nicola di Bari, with cimasa (left compartment), 200x60, Uffizi, Florence
San Giovanni Battista, with cimasa (right compartment), 200x60, Uffizi, Florence
San Giorgio, with cimasa (right compartment), 200x60, Uffizi, Florence
Birth of Saint Nicholas (predella magazine), 36,5x36,5, Vatican Pinacoteca, Vatican City
St. Nicholas gives three golden balls to poor girls (a predella magazine), 36.5x36.5, Vatican Pinacoteca, Vatican City
St. Nicholas saves a ship from the stormy sea (predella magazine), 39x62, Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican City
San Nicola saves three young men in brine (magazine of predella), 36,5x36,5, Vatican Pinacoteca, Vatican City
Miracle of the pilgrims at the tomb of Saint Nicholas (predella magazine), 36.5x36.5, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Madonna with Child and angels, 1425, fresco, 225x125, Duomo di Orvieto
Madonna with Child and Two Angels, Approx. 1426-1427, 110,4x66,3, Diocesan Museum, Velletri
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