Introduction to ‘Michelangelo: The Last Decades’

By Sarah Vowles In 1534, Michelangelo Buonarroti was 59 years old and already the most celebrated artist in Europe. He had mastered the fields of sculpture, painting and architecture, and was a gifted amateur poet. Now, as he moved from his native Florence back to Rome – where Pope Clement VII had commissioned him to […]

Giovanni da San Giovanni, The Painter of Creative Fantasy

Giovanni da San Giovanni (Giovanni Mannozzi), Italian painter and draughtsman. He was the most distinguished of the artists working in fresco in 17th-century Florence. An eccentric personality, he was attracted by the charm and informality of northern art and by a satirical approach to classical themes. Born in San Giovanni Valdarno, Giovanni da San Giovanni […]

Piero di Cosimo, Florentine Painter of Classical Mythology

Piero di Cosimo (2 January 1462 – 1521), also known as Piero di Lorenzo, was an Italian Renaissance painter. The son of a goldsmith, Piero was born in Florence and apprenticed under the artist Cosimo Rosseli, from whom he derived his popular name and whom he assisted in the painting of the Sistine Chapel in […]

Pinturicchio, Raphael’s Analogue

Bernardino di Betto, known also as Pintoricchio, was born between 1456 and 1460 in Perugia to a modest family of artisans. The early life of the painter seems to have been very unhappy and was further complicated in 1475 when his father, a simple cloth tanner, died of the plague. Some years before, however, Giapeco […]