Cola dell'Amatrice

COLA dell'AMATRICE. - Nicola Filotesio, called dell'Amatrice after his birthplace, an Abruzzese painter and architect. He lived most of his life in Ascoli Piceno, in the first half of the 16th century. The earliest notice of him is from 1514. In 1521 he was granted citizenship of Ascoli and appointed public architect. Traces of this activity are found in Ascoli in the monument to Paul III and in the rear façade of the Palazzo del Popolo, and in Aquila in the beautiful church of S. Bernardino. The last notice concerning him is from 1547.

His personality as a painter first asserted itself within the Marche orbit of Carlo and Vittore Crivelli, whom he perhaps came to know through Pietro Alamanno: the St. James of the Marches in the National Gallery of Urbino, the Four Saints in the church of S. Angelo Magno in Ascoli, and the polyptych with the Virgin, Dead Christ and four saints in the Picture Gallery of the same city, attest to his faithful Crivellesque descent. Subsequently, in his works the knowledge of the Umbrians and of the great masters of the time, including Michelangelo, is evident; one recalls the Polyptych of the picture gallery of Ascoli, dated 1514, and the Assumption of the Vatican picture gallery, dated 1515.

1934, p. 105; A. Massimi, C. dell'A., Amatrice 1939; E. Carli, Per la pittura del '400 in Abruzzo, in Riv. dell'Ist. di arch. e storia dell'arte, 1 (1942); F. Bologna, La ricostruzione di un politico e il «Maestro dei politici crivelleschi», in Boll. d'arte, 13 (1948), pp. 367-70.