Andrew of Giusto Manzini

ANDREA di GIUSTO MANZINI. — Florentine painter. A pupil of Lorenzo Monaco, he first collaborated with Bicci di Lorenzo and later with Masaccio on the altarpiece for the Carmine church in Pisa (1426); indeed, the two predella panels with stories of s. Giuliano and s. Nicola in the State Gallery in Berlin are attributed to him. In 1437 he signed an Assumption and Saints in the Florentine Academy, and around 1445 he executed three frescoes depicting the Marriage of the Virgin, the Martyrdom, and the Funeral of s. Stefano in the Bocchieri Chapel (or, more accurately, the chapel of Tommasa dei Palei) in Prato Cathedral. In his later works he was strongly influenced by Angelico and was not insensitive even to the experiments of Domenico Veneziano. Among the leading masters, however, he found his direction only with difficulty and displayed weak individuality; this often makes the catalogue of his works, which also includes cassone paintings, controversial and unstable.