GENTILE da FABRIANO. – Gentile di Niccolò di Giovanni di Massio, painter, born in Fabriano around 1370, died in Rome in 1427. The biographical data are as follows: in 1408, in Venice, he painted an altarpiece for Francesco Amadi, and was paid twice as much as the painter Niccolò di Pietro. In Venice he also executed a fresco, now lost, in the Hall of the Great Council in the Palazzo Ducale, depicting the naval battle between the Venetians and Ottone III. On 17 April 1414 G. da F. was in Brescia, engaged in painting a chapel, now destroyed, in the old Broletto. Documents (Municipal Archive of Fano) indicate the progress of the work up to 18 September 1419. He was invited to Rome by Pope Martino V; perhaps instead he returned to Fabriano (1420).
In any case, on 21 November 1422 G. was in Florence, enrolled in the registers of the Guild of Physicians and Apothecaries. In May 1423 the Adoration of the Magi in the Uffizi was completed. Three works by G. date from 1425, and also document a journey to Siena and one to Orvieto: the “Quaratesi polyptych” for the Church of S. Niccolò Oltrarno in Florence, the Madonna dei Notai in Siena (lost), and the fresco (Madonna with the Child) in Orvieto Cathedral. Having returned to Siena in October 1426, G. was certainly in Rome in January 1427. The cycle of frescoes he executed in S. Giovanni in Laterano, subsequently continued (1431) by Pisanello, has been lost.
The tradition (later than Vasari), which sees G.’s artistic origins in the fourteenth-century Marchigian school of Nuzi and Ghissi, now appears unacceptable. In reality, the altarpiece by G. da F., formerly in the Federico Museum in Berlin (once in S. Niccolò di Fabriano), the artist’s earliest work known today (around 1390–95), demonstrates a precise reference to Lombard illumination and painting (that is, recollections of the Tacuinum sanitatis, of Giovannino de' Grassi, and of Michelino di Besozzo), as well as the influence of the “international” Gothic style (perhaps through the Cologne school). In the “Valle Romita polyptych” (Milan, Brera; 1400–1405), Sienese motifs (from Taddeo di Bartolo) are incorporated together with ingenuous Lombard naturalism. Shortly afterward the artist must have executed the Madonna and Child, in the Pinacoteca of Perugia.
Only the Kress Madonna remains from the Venetian period, originating from Belluno (Washington, Museum); damaged, but with an open rhythm, with the Child in a frontal attitude in relation to the movement of the Virgin; the center of a polyptych that recalls Venetian examples. The Virgin in Adoration in the Civic Museum of Pisa, on the other hand, in its revival of subtle, miniaturist Gothic style and in the same literary suggestion (owing to the cultivated milieu of a court) of the inscription in Arabic characters along the edges of the fabric on which the Child lies, suggests a work from the Brescia sojourn. There G. may have encountered Franco-Flemish illuminations, by the Limbourg brothers, whose influence is evident in the Adoration of the Magi, executed in Florence for Palla Strozzi. Here G.’s capacity to reexperience, in a serene and narrative pictorial language, and to unify the most diverse and opposing impressions is admirable. These are still Lombard, Sienese, and French impressions, together with the first contacts with the Florentine milieu. Affinities with Masolino and Ghiberti, references to antiquity, and even an ingenuous Masaccio-like quality (scenes on the cope of s. Nicola) subsequently develop in the “Quaratesi polyptych,” formerly in S. Niccolò Oltrarno, and in another polyptych for the same church (Uffizi, storerooms). The dismembered “Quaratesi polyptych” consists of the “Madonna and Child with angels” (London, National Gallery); the lateral panels with 4 saints (Florence, Uffizi); and the predella with scenes from the life of s. Nicola (Vatican City, Pinacoteca; Washington, Museum).
In the beautiful fresco in Orvieto Cathedral, references to the delicate Sienese sense of color (recollections of Simone Martini) prevail, together with the monumentality deriving from experience of Florentine art. A broad, compact effect, achieved through the reduction of ornamental elements, characterizes the Madonna in the Chapter House of Velletri Cathedral, the only work certainly belonging to the Roman period (1426). The impression is that of a painter who interprets Gothic art with classical restraint: no differently from an Andrea Pisano or a Jacopo della Quercia. The attribution to G. of a Crucifix painted in fresco in the refectory of the convent of S. Paolo fuori le mura (Lavagnino) appears plausible, equidistant between Masolino and the Fabrianese master. To him are rightly attributed: the Coronation of the Virgin (Paris,
Heugel Collection); the Madonna with the Child and angels, formerly Davis (New York, Metropolitan Museum); the Madonna formerly Goldman (Washington, Museum); the Madonna – fragment in the Berenson Collection (Settignano); the S. Francesco formerly Fornari (Milan, property of Carminati); and other works.
G. da F.’s pictorial cosmopolitanism reveals an individual foundation in transferring his love of the naturalistic fragment onto the plane of poetry, in the enchantment of color and of a fairy-tale narrative.
(from R. Longhi, Fatti di Masolino e di Masaccio, in «La Critica d'arte», 5 [1916], fig. 11).
GENTILE DA FABRIANO — Pilgrims and the sick at the tomb of St. Nicholas. Detail of the predella of the Quaratesi polyptych (1425). Washington, National Gallery.
F. and aspects of international Gothic in Italian painting (lecture notes), Rome 1949–50.