NELLI, Ottaviano (Ottaviano di Martino di Nello). — Painter, born in Gubbio c. 1375, died probably before 1450. He was very active, especially in Umbria.
In Gubbio, besides his earliest known work, the *Madonna del Belvedere* (1403) in S. Maria Nova, executed in tempera on wall, there are preserved the undated fresco cycle in S. Agostino and the one recently discovered in S. Francesco with *Stories of the Virgin*; in their place, the frescoes of the chapel in S. Pietro from 1438 are lost. Very well-known and important for the group of collaborators is the decoration of the chapel in Palazzo Trinci in Foligno (1424). Other pictorial cycles are in Urbino, where Nelli, in the years 1411, 1420, 1428, 1432, went to work on several occasions in S. Maria del Lomo and in the oratories of S. Gaetano and S. Croce. Among the panel paintings worthy of mention are the polyptych of Pietralunga (1403) and the *Espousal of St. Francis and Poverty* in the Vatican Pinacoteca.
His belonging to the current of International Gothic with reference to Sienese painting and to French and Lombard illumination explains the affinities with the Salimbeni brothers and with Gentile da Fabriano, on whom, according to an erroneous assertion by Cavalcaselle, he would have had an influence. The confluence of various influences does not alter Nelli’s personality, which, although not of the highest order, enabled the painter to maintain his own characteristics within the common language of the time. He was, however, unable to maintain a consistently high level of quality; from the delicate and graceful *Madonna del Belvedere* (considered his masterpiece), with its harmoniously blended colors, to which the frescoes in S. Agostino in Gubbio can be compared for the perfection of execution, the refinement of the palette, and the expressive force, one moves to the frescoes in Foligno, with a richer but less refined chromaticism, where the search for luminosity is accentuated with effects of greater vivacity and immediacy that, however, detract from the elegance of the whole; the same can be said for the *Stories of the Virgin* in Gubbio, which nonetheless retain a certain grace. This carelessness increases in his later works, perhaps due to an ever greater involvement of collaborators.
