DELLA GATTA, BARTOLOMEO (PIER DI ANTONIO DEI). — Camaldolese monk, painter, miner, and architect, born in 1448 in Florence, died in Arezzo in 1502 or 1503. He entered the convent of the Angeli at a young age and in 1470 was at Arezzo in that of S. Maria in Gradi. In 1487 he became prior and later abbot of the convents of S. Clemente and S. Maria in Gradi. As a young man he devoted himself to miniature painting, as evidenced by a choir book he painted at the convent of Monte Oliveto Maggiore.
In Arezzo he became acquainted with the art of Piero della Francesca and had the opportunity to meet Luca Signorelli and Pietro Perugino, whom he followed to Loreto in 1479. In the same year he painted two panels depicting St. Roch, now in the Arezzo museum.
He then went to Rome, where he collaborated with Perugino on the fresco of the Sistine Chapel depicting the Delivery of the Keys, and assisted Signorelli in the scene of the Promulgation of the Law and the Death of Moses. In Rome the painter also became acquainted with the art of Melozzo da Forlì, whose forms are reflected in the Assumption painted for S. Domenico in Cortona. He then painted at Castiglion Fiorentino, for the church of S. Francesco, the scene of the Saint receiving the stigmata, commissioned in 1487.
In addition to these works, Della Gatta painted in Arezzo for the church of S. Bernardo the Apparition of St. Bernard and, within two roundels, the Annunciation and a St. Jerome in penance, a fragment of the frescoes of the Gazzari chapel, now in the sacristy of the Arezzo Duomo, and at Castiglion Fiorentino the Madonna in Majesty between Four Saints for the collegiate church and an Archangel Michael in the sacristy of the same collegiate church. In addition to the influences of Signorelli, Perugino, and Melozzo, the master, who was easily influenced, sometimes inclined toward the forms of Pollaiuolo and even Botticelli, seeking to blend the contributions of the more properly Florentine culture with that derived from the great school of Piero della Francesca, his initial foundation.