artnet.com
Search the whole artnet database
 
 
  Services  | The Grove Dictionary of Art

  Research Library groveart.com Artist Biographies
Materials and Techniques
Styles and Movements
 
 

Attavanti, Attavante [Vante di Gabriello di Vante Attavanti]

(b Castelfiorentino, 1452; d Florence, 1520–25). Italian illuminator. He has been praised by art historians since his own times, although many of his autograph works were incorrectly assigned to his workshop. New attributions, supported by archival material, have made it possible to reconstruct his oeuvre and life more accurately. He worked for celebrated patrons and collaborated with the most important illuminators and painters of Florence: Francesco di Antonio del Chierico, the Master of the Hamilton Xenophon, the brothers Gherardo and Monte di Giovanni di Miniato del Foro and Domenico Ghirlandaio, and documents indicate contacts also with Leonardo da Vinci. Attavanti probably trained with del Chierico in 1471–2, while working on the Antiphonary for Florence Cathedral (Florence, Bib. Medicea-Laurenziana, MS. Edili 148). Among the work of late 15th-century illuminators, that of Attavanti is distinguished by his citations from the Antique, his ideas derived from Netherlandish and Florentine panel painting and his illustration of philosophical themes. Recurrent motifs include frontispieces with entablatures on columns, copies of sarcophagi as altar frontals, cameos, allegorical figures within medals and richly dressed figures isolated in framed medallions or symmetrically grouped.

There are more than 45,000 articles in The Grove Dictionary of Art. To access the rest of this article, including the bibliography, subscribe to www.groveart.com. To find out more about this subject, click on a related article below and subscribe to www.groveart.com

  Reproduced by kind permission of Macmillan Publishers Limited, publishers of The Grove Dictionary of Art.
  © Copyright 2000 Macmillan Publishers Limited.
site map  about us  contact us  investor relations  services  terms & conditions artnet.com | artnet.de | artnet.fr
   ©2008 artnet - The art world online. All rights reserved. artnet is a registered trademark of artnet Worldwide Corporation, New York, NY.  


search artists: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z