Gentile da Fabriano ( – 1427) was an Italian painter known for his participation in the International Gothic pictorial style. He worked in various places in central Italy, mostly in Tuscany.

His best-known works are his Adoration of the Magi from the Strozzi Altarpiece (1423), and the Flight into Egypt. Following a visit to Florence in 1419, he came in contact with humanism, which influenced his work throughout the rest of his career. He became highly influential on other painters in Florence, especially with his detailed representations inspired by his observations of the natural world.

Biography

Early life in Fabriano (c. 1370-1400)

Gentile (di Niccolò di Massio) da Fabriano was born around 1370 in or near Fabriano, in the Marche. His family included people active in the civic and religious life of the city. However, much of Gentile's early life remains undocumented. Little is known of his education: one of his first known works, a Madonna and Child (c. 1395–1400, now in Berlin) shows the influence of paintings made in the northern Italian late-Gothic style.

thumb|250px|Madonna in Glory between Saint Francis and Saint Clare, c. 1390-1395

Around 1390 he was in Pavia at the court of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, where he left a painting of Madonna with the Children together with the saints Clara and Francis (now in the Pavia Civic Museums) and some frescoes depicting ladies in a room of the Visconti Castle.

Venice (c. 1405–1420)

About 1405, Gentile da Fabriano was working in Venice. He painted a panel for the church of Santa Sofia, now lost; Jacopo Bellini might have worked in his workshop. This work, which is now in the Uffizi, is regarded as one of the masterpieces of the International Gothic style and had a lasting influence on Italian Renaissance painting. This painting contains a number of unique features and uses the so-called ut vitrum metaphor, that is a special use of light creating glass-like images. Venice was among the early important centers of trade for Islamic goods in Europe, and in turn, traditional Islamic forms were highly desired by European patrons because of their associations with "exotic" Other of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Halos painted with patterns based on Mamluk metalworks reveal the types of commercial and artistic exchanges that were taking place in other Italian city-states, like Florence. The fact that Florence secured two major seaports, Pisa and Livorno, in 1406 and 1421 respectively, illustrates the increased diplomatic ties between the Florentines and Mamluks. In Gentile da Fabriano's Adoration of the Magi (1423), pseudo-Kufic inscriptions line the cloaks of several figures. An example of a Mamluk plate of the time is the Mamluk Philae Dish (c. 1345–1360), where four rosettes divide the Arabic script into quadrants.

Halos with pseudo-kufic inscriptions are reflected in several of Gentile da Fabriano's paintings that were produced during his time in Florence including the Coronation of the Virgin from around 1420 and a Madonna with Child and Angels that is part of the Quaratesi Polyptych (1425). Moreover, Gentile da Fabriano's use of halos with Arabic inscriptions influenced other artists, including painter Masaccio, who began his use of pseudo-kufic halos as early as 1422, and can be seen later in his Pisa Altarpiece from 1426.<sup>ref?</sup>

Notes

References

Sources

  • Exposition lasting 21 April–23 July 2006.
  • Gentile da Fabriano biography-paintings-curiosity-publications
  • Italian Paintings: Sienese and Central Italian Schools, a collection catalog containing information about Fabriano and his works (see index; plates 34-35).
  • 5 paintings of Gentile da Fabriano
  • Gentile da Fabriano at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC