Bicci di Lorenzo

Fresco of Saint Jude the Apostle, painted in Florence Cathedral

Bicci di Lorenzo (1373–1452) was an Italian painter and sculptor, active in Florence.

He was born in Florence in 1373, the son of the painter, Lorenzo di Bicci, whose workshop he joined. He married in 1418, and in 1424 was registered in the Guild of Painters at Florence. His son, Neri di Bicci was also a painter and took over the family workshop. Bicci di Lorenzo died in Florence in 1452 and was buried in Santa Maria del Carmine.

Following early work – largely frescoes – in collaboration with his father, he received a number of important commissions, including, according to Vasari, from the Medici for a cycle of frescoes of Illustrious Men for the Palazzo Medici. For the Opera del Duomo, he painted frescoes of the apostles. And he painted a Saints Cosmas and Damian and frescoes representing the dedication of the church itself for Sant'Egidio in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova.

Among his major works are an Enthroned Madonna now in the National Gallery at Parma; the Three Scenes from the Life of St Nicholas, a triptych in the cathedral of Fiesole; and a Nativity in the church of San Giovannino dei Cavalieri in Florence. He frescoed the entrance to the Compagni chapel in the church of Santa Trinita, and in the area around Florence, there are frescoes at the Oratory of Sant'Antonio Abate, Pescia; Empoli; and at Lastra a Signa. Tempera panels depicting Saints John the Baptist and Miniato and Saint Anthony and Saint Stephen are found in the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco.

References

• Bryan, Michael (1886). Robert Edmund Graves (ed.). Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, Biographical and Critical. Vol. I: A-K. London: George Bell and Sons. p. 125.

External links

• Bicci di Lorenzo at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Further reading

• Pope-Hennessy, John & Kanter, Laurence B. (1987). The Robert Lehman Collection I, Italian Paintings. New York, Princeton: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Princeton University Press. ISBN 0870994794.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) (see index; plate 73)