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Pier Francesco Fiorentino [Pier Francesco di Bartolomeo di Donato]
(b Florence, 1444–5; d after 1497). Italian painter. A fairly large corpus of works can be attributed to Pier Francesco grouped around one documented altarpiece, the Virgin and Child with Saints (1474; Empoli; Mus. Dioc.) and two signed and dated works: the Virgin and Child with Saints (1494; San Gimignano, S Agostino) and Virgin and Child with Saints (1497; Montefortino, Pin. Com.). The stylistically homogeneous group consists mostly of small-scale works, many of which bear dated inscriptions, sometimes including the name of the patron, who is often shown at prayer. They reveal Pier Francesco to have been an artisan-painter of high quality, somewhat lacking in invention but with a sound technique. His devotional paintings have a serene order and an air of humility completely devoid of rhetoric. The fact that he worked mostly for a provincial clientele somewhat limited his scope, but it also allowed him to express his own simple vein of piety derived from an unsophisticated pictorial culture that he gradually enriched through his technical virtuosity.
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