( fl Liguria, 1481–before Nov 1508). Italian painter. He is first documented in guild records in 1481, and in the mid-1480s he obtained the most prestigious commissions in Genoa: a polyptych (untraced) for the members of the Brigittine Order, to be modelled on the one made by Vincenzo Foppa for the Spinola Chapel in S Domenico, and frescoes (1489–90) for Archbishop Leonardo de Fornari’s chapel in S Maria delle Vigne. Barbagelata’s earliest surviving works were produced in the last years of the century and include a polyptych depicting the Annunciation with Saints in Calvi (Corsica), in which both the painting and the wood-carving must be based on Giovanni Mazone’s polyptych of the Annunciation (Genoa, S Maria di Castello), and the St Nicholas (1498; Pietra Ligure, Parish Church). Other works of this period include the triptych of St John the Baptist (1499; Casarza Ligure, nr Sestri Levante, Genoa, S Giovanni Battista) and the polyptych of St Ambrose (1500; Varazze, S Ambrogio). In the structure of the wooden framework, the abundant use of gilding, the use of chiaroscuro to suggest volume and the attention given to architectural perspectives, these polyptychs show close links with the works of those painters whom the patrons had recommended as models, such as Foppa and Mazone. To the same period must belong the triptych of St Louis (Moneglia, nr Genoa, S Giorgio), in which the sections are linked by their architectural perspective as in some works by Mazone. A Virgin and Child with a Votive Nun (Switzerland, priv. col., see Boskovits, fig. 39), in which the throne is modelled on the one in Mazone’s St Mark with Four Saints (Liverpool, Walker A.G.), is perhaps identifiable with a commission of 1498. A section of a polyptych depicting Two Saints (sold New York, Sotheby’s, 13 Oct 1989, lot 56) attests to the influence of Carlo Braccesco during the 1490s.

• Barbagelata, Giovanni di Nicolò (da)
  • Bréa, Louis