NELLI, OTTAVIANO (OTTAVIANO di MARTINO di NELLO). — Painter, born in Gubbio ca. 1375, died probably before 1450. He was very active, especially in Umbria.
In Gubbio there are preserved, in addition to his earliest known work, the Madonna of Belvedere (1403) in S. Maria Nova, executed in tempera on a wall; the undated cycle of frescoes in S. Agostino; and that recently discovered in S. Francesco, with Stories of the Virgin. The frescoes of the chapel in S. Pietro, from 1438, have instead been lost. Particularly well known and important for the group of collaborators involved is the decoration of the chapel in Palazzo Trinci at Foligno (1424). Other pictorial cycles are found in Urbino, where N., in the years 1411, 1420, 1428, and 1434, 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, mention should be made of the polyptych of Pietralunga (1403) and the Marriage of St. Francis and Poverty in the Vatican Pinacoteca.
His affiliation with the current of International Gothic, with reference to Sienese painting and French and Lombard illumination, explains his affinities with the Salimbeni brothers and with Gentile da Fabriano, whom, according to an erroneous statement by Cavalcaselle, he is supposed to have influenced. The convergence of these various influences does not alter N.’s personality, which, although not of the highest order, enabled the painter to maintain his own characteristics even within the common language of the period. He did not, however, succeed in maintaining a consistently high qualitative level; from the refined and accomplished Madonna of Belvedere (considered his masterpiece), with its harmoniously blended colors, to which the frescoes of S. Agostino in Gubbio may be compared for their perfection of execution, refinement of palette, and expressive force, one passes to the frescoes of Foligno, of richer but less refined chromaticism, where the treatment of light is also intensified, with effects of greater vivacity and immediacy that nevertheless impair the elegance of the whole. The same may be said of the Stories of the Virgin in Gubbio, which nonetheless retain a certain grace. This carelessness becomes more pronounced in the later works, perhaps as a result of the increasingly extensive intervention of collaborators.