ANTONIO DA FABRIANO

Antonio da Fabriano (Antonio di Agostino di ser Giovanni) was an Italian painter and sculptor. He worked mainly in the Marches, but it has been suggested that he was in Naples in 1440-45 and possibly trained there. This is reinforced by the apparent influence of Antonello da Messina in his two dated autograph paintings, St Jerome in his Study (1451; Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery) and a Crucifixion (1452; Matelica, Museo Piersanti). The composition of another early work, the Death of the Virgin (Fabriano, Pinacoteca Civica e Museo degli Arazzi), also reflects prototypes produced in southern Italy. Works attributed to him include a fresco fragment of St Bernardino of Siena (1451) and a triptych of the Virgin and St Anne with Sts Joseph and Joachim (both Gualdo Tadino, Pinacoteca Comunale), a panel of St Jerome and a double-sided standard of the Virgin and Child and St Clement (both Genga, San Clemente).

From 1468 to 1471 he was in Sassoferrato, where for the Palazzo Comunale he painted a Virgin and Child with Saints (1468; destroyed). Also from this period is a double-sided standard of the Madonna della Misericordia and Sts Bernardino and John the Baptist (Milan, Università Cattolica). A signed triptych of the Virgin and Child with Angels and Saints (Genga, San Clemente) is dated by documents to 1474. The frescoes of the Crucifixion with Dominicans and Christ with Dominican Saints (both Fabriano, Convent of San Domenico) have a suggested date of c. 1480. Antonio da Fabriano’s approach to light and volume reflects the influence of Piero della Francesca, perhaps acquired through the work of Gerolamo di Giovanni da Camerino and Giovanni Boccati. Antonio’s only signed work of sculpture is a marble tabernacle (Fabriano Cathedral).

Antonio da Fabriano is among the most fascinating Marchigian painters of his generation for the synthesis his work strikes between the perspective vision of Italian art and the optical tendency of Netherlandish painting.