Francesco Pesellino (probably 1422 – July 29, 1457), also known as Francesco di Stefano, was an Italian Renaissance painter active in

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

. His father was the painter Stefano di Francesco (died 1427), and his maternal grandfather was the painter Giuliano Pesello (1367–1446), from whose name the diminutive nickname "Pesellino" arose. After the death of his father in 1427, the young Pesellino went to live with his grandfather whose pupil he became. Pesellino remained in his grandfather's studio until the latter's death, when he began to form working partnerships with other artists, such as Zanobi Strozzi and Fra Filippo Lippi. He married in 1442, and probably joined the Florentine painters' guild in 1447. In the following years he made for reputation with small, highly-finished works for domestic interiors, including religious panels for private devotional use and secular subjects for pieces of furniture (i.e. wedding chests and wainscoting). Pesellino died of plague in Florence in 1457 at the age of 35. According to many art historians, his style "anticipated the developments of later Florentine painters such as Andrea del Verrocchio and the Pollaiuoli Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo">Piero">Antonio del Pollaiuolo">Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo">Piero.

Works

According to Vasari, Pesellino painted the predella of Fra Filippo Lippi's ''Novitiate Altarpiece'' for Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence, Santa Croce. The predella is now divided between the Uffizi and the

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. His only surviving documented work is the '' Santa Trinita of Pistoia Altarpiece''. Early sources, such as Vasari's ''Lives of the Artists'', describe a number of other paintings by Pesellino, now lost, in prominent at the Palazzo Medici and the Medici Casa Vecchia. At least one work by Pesellino is said to have hung in the same room as

Paolo Uccello Paolo Uccello ( , ; 1397 – 10 December 1475), born Paolo di Dono, was an Italian Renaissance painter and mathematician from Florence who was notable for his pioneering work on visual Perspective (graphical), perspective in art. In his book ''Liv ...

's '' Battle of San Romano''. Some panel paintings have been identified as Pesellino's by stylistic comparison with the altarpiece. These include two long horizontal panels with the ''Story of David and Goliath'' and the ''Triumph of David'', now at the National Gallery, London.Gordon:288-295 Other cassoni panels are in

Bergamo Bergamo ( , ; ) is a city in the Alps, alpine Lombardy region of northern Italy, approximately northeast of Milan, and about from the alpine lakes Lake Como, Como and Lake Iseo, Iseo and 70 km (43 mi) from Lake Garda, Garda and Lake ...

( Accademia Carrara) and

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( Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum), whilst the

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and Toledo Museum of Art have other works. A small diptych of the ''Annunciation'' at the Courtauld Institute is another good example of the small-scale

cabinet painting A cabinet painting (or cabinet picture) is a small painting, typically no larger than in either dimension, but often much smaller. The term is especially used for paintings that show full-length figures or landscapes at a small scale, rather th ...

s that made Pesellino's famous, whilst his '' King Melchior Sailing to the Holy Land'' is in the Clark Art Institute. The Hermitage has six very beautiful full-page miniatures by Pesellino from an

illuminated manuscript An illuminated manuscript is a formally prepared manuscript, document where the text is decorated with flourishes such as marginalia, borders and Miniature (illuminated manuscript), miniature illustrations. Often used in the Roman Catholic Churc ...

Notes

References

*National Gallery Catalogues (new series): ''The Fifteenth Century Italian Paintings'', Volume 1, by Dillian Gordon, 2003, * Vasari, Giorgio, ''Le Vite delle più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori'', many editions and translations. *Sheridan, Victoria, ''Inventing Pesellino: Biography, Language and Style in Art History'', M.A. Thesis (2003), University of California, Davis. OCLC#55762857 *Kanter, Laurence. "Pesellino," in ''Fra Angelico''. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005.

External links

National GalleryBoston cassoni panels''Italian Paintings: Florentine School''
a collection catalog containing information about Pesellino and his works (see ''Pesellino'', pages: 95-98). {{DEFAULTSORT:Pesellino, Francesco 1422 births 1457 deaths 15th-century Italian painters Quattrocento painters Italian male painters Italian Renaissance painters Painters from Florence Italian manuscript illuminators Catholic painters

Works

See also

Notes

References

External links