Gentile da Fabriano, one of the absolute leading artists in 15th Century European art.

“Michelangelo ...speaking of Gentile used to say that in painting his hand was similar to his name”.
With these words the artist and biographer of artists, Giorgio Vasari from Arezzo has told us about the divine Michelangelo’s admiration for Gentile’s art. There could be no greater consecration for an artist who during his lifetime was one of the most respected and fought over by the great commissioners. Gentile played a leading role on the artistic scene in Italy’s most important cities, such as Venice, Florence and Rome, but was also a very important personality in society of the times, honoured as a real star.

Ever since he was a young man, Gentile enjoyed the protection of the lord of Fabriano, Chiavello Chiavelli, the Duke of Milan Giangaleazzo Visconti ‘s commander, protection that allowed him to find hospitality in one of the most thriving art workshops in end of 14th Century Lombardy. Giangaleazzo Visconti, a greedy and ruthless politician, but a careful governor and an attentive humanist, had created a court between Milan and Pavia attended by artists and men of letters of international renown for whom the prince provided one of the most important libraries of the times. From his teachers Gentile learned the secrets of painting techniques, gold working, the use of colour and paint in transforming works of art into the page of a fairytale. Gentile studied the most precious fabrics he admired on the most elegant women or in the richest shops, experimenting how to replicate in paintings the effects of the material’s texture.

Enchanted, he observed the gold working techniques that from the Parisian workshops came to Lombardy, and imitated these with extraordinary results in his paintings, creating relief jewellery r drawing rare and extremely sweet figures engraved directly in the gold. Trees, bushes and flowers provided Gentile with an inexhaustible source of inspiration, and one can imagine him bust drawing on his notepad. with the minute detail of a botanical scholar, the vegetal elements destined to his paintings. The colours and light effects of the atmosphere were studied and portrayed by this artist with a geniality and sensitivity that greatly anticipated many of the objectives achieved by Flemish art. It was no chance that the artist from Fabriano created one of the first nocturnes known in western art.

Human beings, their physiognomy and expressiveness were investigated with just as much attention and emotional participation. In painting holy personalities, Gentile evoked eyes that revealed a serenity and joy transcending time and human anxieties, eyes accompanied by the faces and gestures of cheerful baby Jesus. Sources speak of this artist as the author of extremely realistic portraits, particularly appreciated by the customers. The artist spent many years in Venice, where he founded one of the most important art workshops of the times. In about 1409 he was summoned to decorate with wonderful frescoes (that no longer exist) the Main Council Hall in the Ducal Palace.

Among his first masterpieces it is worth mentioning the Valleromita Polyptych (preserved at the Brera Gallery in Milan), painted for customers in Fabriano or the Madonna with Child, painted for the church of Saint Domenico in Perugia, and today preserved in the city’s National Gallery. After a short stay in Fabriano in 1420, Gentile’s arrival in Florence marked another important season of his intense activity that culminated in 1423, with the creation of the grandiose Adoration of the Magi, one of the great masterpieces of Italian 15th century art and preserved at the Uffizi, a painting in which the artist described and portrayed a fairytale cortège of extraordinary beauty. The Quaratesi Polyptych, painted for the Church of San Niccolò Oltrarno, and today divided among various museums, was also created during his stay in Florence when the artist came into contact with other

leading artists of the Tuscan Renaissance such as Masaccio and Ghiberti. When he was summoned to Rome by the pontiff to work on the decoration, sadly lost, of the Basilica of St. Jon in the Lateran, Gentile was already one of the most famous and admired artists of his times. He died in Rome in 1427, leaving numerous and important students who, in Northern and central Italy were to continue to portray the wonders of taste and courtly life through their art.

Non just a catalogue
A prestigious catalogue in both Italian and English will be published for this exhibition, presenting the most updated and final monograph on Gentile da Fabriano as well as an essay by Keith Christiansen and contributions by the curators, the book also includes descriptions and an illustrated register of all his paintings.

The publishers Electa will also create a book of studies of Gentile’s workshop, with a lengthy essay by Andrea De Marchi, on his patrons and recent restoration by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure.