FIORENZO di LORENZO. — Painter, born in Perugia ca. 1445, died before 1525. Educated in the traditionalist Umbrian milieu whose most authoritative representatives were Niccolò da Foligno and Bonfigli, and having become acquainted with the art of Pietro Perugino when the latter, around 1470, returned to Perugia rich in the experience he had gained in Florence and Arezzo under Piero della Francesca, he turned toward the manner of that great master. Despite this, in his painting F. di L. always retained a somewhat provincial taste, at once austere and gentle, as well as a meticulous artisan’s care; these represent the painter’s essential characteristics and, in a certain sense, his greatest merits.
Among the earliest works by F. di L., in some of which he also shows an affinity with the manner of Benozzo Gozzoli and Pinturicchio, particular mention should be made of the triptych with the Madonna, the Child, and four saints, from the Confraternity of Justice and now in the Pinacoteca of Perugia, in which the painter is still bound to traditional modes. A development of his style in a Peruginesque direction is instead evident in the other panel in the Perugia Pinacoteca depicting the Adoration of the Shepherds; in the Madonna of Mercy in the church of S. Francesco at Montone, dated 1482; in the Madonna with the Child, s. Sebastian, and s. Christopher in the Städel Institute in Frankfurt am Main; in the S. Jerome at Yale University; in the Tabernacle with SS. Peter and Paul; in the pentaptych with the Madonna and four saints, from the church of Mercy and now in the Pinacoteca of Perugia; and in numerous other panels attributed to him by the many scholars who have taken an interest in this modest but captivating painter. — Vedi tav. LXXXIX.
BIBLI. - Venturi, VII, II, pp. 567–85; W. Bembe, s. V. in Thieme-Becker, XI, pp. 598–600. Emilio Lavagnino