Domenico Veneziano (1410-1461) 
- Name:
- Domenico Veneziano / Domenico di Bartolomeo, known as
- Dates:
-
Venice, circa 1410 - Florence, 1461
- Attivitą:
- painter
- Places:
- Venice, Florence, Rome, Perugia
- Biographical information:
-
Domenico di Bartolomeo was always known as “Veneziano” after his native city of Venice. We have no certain information about his training, which probably took place in Florence. He may have come to the city at an early age, in the wake of Gentile da Fabriano, and in any case appears to have entered the workshop of the latter around 1423, assimilating a style with courtly and Flemish accents.
He very probably accompanied Gentile to Rome in 1426, entering into contact with Pisanello and the other Florentines who were in the city: Masaccio, Paolo Uccello and Masolino. He may have worked as an assistant on the Crucifixion frescoed by Masolino in San Clemente. His first known and signed work was the frescoed tabernacle for the Canto de’ Carnesecchi in Florence (now conserved in the National Gallery in London). It can be dated between 1432, the year in which he had to leave Rome with Masolino and Pisanello, and 1437 when he is recorded as being in Perugia. Here in April 1438 he frescoed a room, now destroyed, for the Baglioni family.
Vasari (1568) recalls that in Florence he learnt the art of oil painting from Andrea del Castagno. From the art of illumination and from Beato Angelico he derived a brilliant and luminous colour palette, from Brunelleschi and Masaccio a solid perspective layout, and from Luca della Robbia an elegant and gentle plastic modelling.
On 1 April 1438 he wrote a letter from Perugia to Piero de’ Medici in Ferrara, presenting himself as a youth who wished to prove his worth in the eyes of a great patron. Domenico revealed a profound familiarity with the Florentine artistic scene, where in his opinion the figures of Filippo Lippi and Fra’ Angelico were outstanding. Following this letter, the artist obtained prestigious Florentine commissions. For Piero de’ Medici himself he painted the medallion with the Adoration of the Magi (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie) datable around 1438-41, documented in Palazzo Medici in the inventory of 1492, albeit with the attribution to Pesello. This work very likely earned him the commission for the frescoes (lost) in the choir of Sant’Egidio, illustrating Scenes from the Life of the Virgin, the most important pictorial cycle after that of Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel in the Carmine. In this undertaking Domenico availed of the collaboration of the young Piero della Francesca, painting the Meeting of Joachim and Anne between 11 May and September 1439. In 1445 he withdrew the advance for the scene showing the Marriage of the Virgin, which was then completed by Alesso Baldovinetti (1461).
Around 1445, through Cosimo il Vecchio de’ Medici, Domenico was given the commission for the altarpiece for the high altar of Santa Lucia dei Magnoli, completed in the summer of 1447. This work is now dismembered and divided between the museums of the Uffizi (the central panel), Cambridge, Berlin and Washington. Again for the Medici he designed the stained glass windows of the Cappella del Noviziato in Santa Croce, portraying Saints Cosmas and Damian (around 1445).
Between September 1447 and the following June he painting the wedding chests for the marriage of Marco Parenti and Caterina Strozzi (lost). Between February and July 1450 he is documented in Arezzo, engaged in painting a gonfalone, or banner, for the Compagnia di Sant’Antonio Abate. Before August 1454 he executed the fresco portraying St. Francis and St. John the Baptist originally on the corner of the destroyed Castellani chapel in Santa Croce.
In the same year he was appointed as judge, together with Lippi and Fra’ Angelico, to appraise the frescoes of Benedetto Bonfigli in Perugia. He was assigned a similar task three years later for the Trinity by Pesello in Pistoia.
On 15 May 1461 he proves to be recorded in the deaths register in the parish of San Pietro in Gattolino in Florence. This belies the information recorded by Vasari (1550, 1568), according to whom Domenico was assassinated by Andrea del Castagno, since the latter had died in 1457.
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