Albertinelli, Mariotto

ALBERTINELLI, MARIOTTO. - Painter, b. in Florence in 1474 and d. there in 1515. He was a pupil of C. Rosselli, at whose school he underwent the influence, formative for him, of Piero di Cosimo, evident in early works such as the Expulsion from Paradise in Zagreb or the Pitti tondo (no. 365). Of an initial period of collaboration with his fellow pupil Fra Bartolomeo the Annunciation in the cathedral of Volterra (1497) is proof. A. reached his maturity with the tabernacle in the Poldi Pezzoli museum in Milan (1500) and the Visitation in the Uffizi (1503), where a certain monumentality derived from Fra Bartolomeo harmonizes with his nature as a quattrocento artist. Then the grandeur of the new century drove him toward experiments in movement that render the forms coarse and the composition complicated, as in the Crucifixion of the Certosa in Florence (1506) or the Annunciation in Boston. From 1509 to '13 he collaborated again with Fra Bartolomeo. In the Madonna of the Florentine Academy or in the large Annunciation of the same museum (1510) he seeks theatrical backgrounds and gestures, accentuates movement and chiaroscuro, and becomes monotonous and slovenly. In the few works he executed afterward on his own he exhausted his qualities entirely. - See Pl. LIII.

Guglielmo Matthiae