( fl 1307–24). Italian painter. A 16th-century inventory of the church of the Eremitani, Padua, mentions his signature, and that of a collaborator ‘Petruccio’, on a lost altarpiece dated 1324. His only secure work is the dossal (1.64*3.0 m; Boston, MA, Isabella Stewart Gardner Mus.) inscribed ANNO DNI MLLO CCC SETTIMO JULIANUS PICTOR DEARIMINO FECIT OCH OPUS TEMPORE DNI CLEMENTIS PAPE QUINTI, from the Franciscan church of S Giovanni Decollato, Urbania, Marches, later transferred to Urbania Cathedral. The Virgin and Child in Majesty, surrounded by kneeling female donors, occupies the central section; the eight lateral compartments separated by twisted columns contain six standing figures of saints and two devotional scenes: the Stigmatization of St Francis and St Mary Magdalen Praying in the Desert. The dossal appears to be the work of a painter who trained in the Italo-Byzantine manner of the late 13th century, to which the ‘science’ of the new style found in the frescoes of S Francesco, Assisi, was grafted almost as an intellectual exercise. While the Virgin and Child relates to a large group of Riminese paintings, which may depend on a local prototype by Giotto, the dossal also includes direct quotations from S Francesco. In spite of a certain monumentality, the figures reflect only a limited interest in depth and volume, and, like other Riminese 14th-century painters, Giuliano was more concerned with surface pattern and rich colour. The simple symmetry of the design is unified and enlivened by the use of balanced colour contrasts. The Crucifixion fresco (Forlì, Pin. Civ.) is one of the few attributions generally accepted as a later work.

• Giuliano da Rimini
  • Dress, §V, 1(i): Southern Europe, 14th century
  • Giotto, §I, 3(iii)(a): Assisi and related works: The Assisi debate
  • Pietro da Rimini