|
Giovanni di Consalvo [Master of the Chiostro degli Aranci]
( fl Florence, c. 1436–9). Italian painter of Portuguese or Spanish descent. He was probably the author of ten scenes from the Life of St Benedict, frescoed in the lunettes of the upper loggia of the cloister (called the Chiostro degli Aranci) of the Badia, a Benedictine abbey in Florence. The scenes are arranged along two walls so that they seem to take place beneath the loggia; the lunettes are divided from each other by fictive painted fluted pilasters. The fourth scene in the sequence was damaged and replaced by a fresco of St Benedict in the Wilderness by Agnolo Bronzino. Beneath the lunettes runs a decorative frieze with busts of Benedictine saints set in tondi. A Latin inscription, painted between the scenes and the frieze, describes the scenes and names the saints. Two extra lunettes of scenes from the life of the Longobard king, Totila, are of mediocre quality and are by another hand, although dating from only shortly after the scenes of St Benedict. In 1956, and again in 1978, the frescoes were restored and the sinopie revealed (the frescoes and the sinopie are both displayed at the Badia).
|
|
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
|
