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Giovanni dal Ponte [Giovanni di Marco]
(b Florence, 1385; d Florence, 1437–8). Italian painter. He was reputed to have been a student of Spinello Aretino. He acquired the name dal Ponte due to the location of his studio at Santo Stefano a Ponte, Florence. He joined the Arte dei Medici e degli Speziali in 1410 and the Compagnia di S Luca in 1413. Outstanding debts brought him a prison sentence in 1424, but he still owed money to a carpenter three years later. By the late 1420s he had opened his own studio and formed a partnership with the painter Smeraldo di Giovanni (c. 1365–after 1442). Giovanni dal Ponte’s varied and prolific production, which continued until his death, included fresco cycles, panels and the decoration of small objects. A number of allegorical panel paintings and cassoni are attributed to him. The animated, stylized figures in the Seven Liberal Arts (1435; Madrid, Prado) are shown in a garden dotted with naturalistic flowers and plants. His early work shows the impact of the Late Gothic style. The composition of the Coronation of the Virgin (?1420; Chantilly, Mus. Condé) recalls the famous altarpiece of the same subject (1413; Florence, Uffizi) by Lorenzo Monaco, while the treatment of drapery suggests the influence of Lorenzo Ghiberti’s sculpture. Giovanni assimilated the discoveries of his contemporaries. In the Virgin and Child with Angels (c. 1427–8; Cambridge, Fitzwilliam, 551) the bulky figures derive from Masaccio. However, his late Virgin and Child with Angels (c. 1434–5; San Francisco, CA, de Young Mem. Mus.) shows a return to a decorative, linear style.
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