Andrea del Castagno
(Castagno near San Godenzo prior to 1419 - Florence 1457)
Very little is known about Andrea di Bartolo’s youth, except that he was taken to Florence to be apprenticed to an unidentified painter’s workshop. Named Andrea del Castagno after the village where he was born on the Mugello slopes of the Apennines, in Florence he was first nicknamed “Andreino of the gallows” for having painted on the façade of the Palazzo del Podestà (later, Palazzo del Bargello) the dead bodies of the rebels banished from the city after the battle of Anghiari in 1440 – hanged here in effigy.
After a stay in Venice where he painted, in 1442, the vault of the San Tarasio chapel in the church of San Zaccaria, he spent the remaining fifteen years of his brief artistic career in Florence. In 1444 he was entrusted with the cartoon for one of the stained glass windows in the tambour of Florence’s Duomo, alongside artists such as Ghiberti, Donatello and Paolo Uccello.
For the chapel of the Trebbio castle that the Pazzi family owned on the hills surrounding Pontassieve, he executed the large fresco of the Madonna and Child with Saints (Florence, Uffizi Gallery) set against a sumptuous drapery. In 1447, in the refectory of the Observant Benedictine nuns of Sant’Apollonia, he executed the monumental fresco of the Last Supper set in a supper room with splendid Byzantine-like marble panels painted rigorously in perspective and topped with three scenes from the Passion, all sharing a single luminous landscape.
He was then busy painting the fresco cycle with Illustrious Men for Villa Carducci in Legnaia. In 1451-1453 he was charged with the task of continuing the work started by Domenico Veneziano in the choir of Sant’Egidio, where the latter had worked with the young Piero della Francesca. However, Andrea del Castagno did not finish the work which was later completed by Alessio Baldovinetti and destroyed during the Baroque period. For the church of Santissima Annunziata he executed a luminous fresco of Saint Julian with Christ in the Da Gagliano chapel (later, the Ferroni chapel) and then, for the Corboli chapel, a Trinity with Saint Jerome and two Female Saints in the manner of Donatello.
Shortly before he died, most probably from the plague, he painted in Florence’s cathedral the equestrian monument of Niccolò da Tolentino, condottiere of the Florentine army and victor against the Sienese in the battle of San Romano. Castagno’s fresco, conceived as a mighty equestrian monument from Antiquity, was painted in 1456 next to the one dedicated to Sir John Hawkwood painted twenty years earlier by Paolo Uccello.
(Castagno near San Godenzo prior to 1419 - Florence 1457)
Very little is known about Andrea di Bartolo’s youth, except that he was taken to Florence to be apprenticed to an unidentified painter’s workshop. Named Andrea del Castagno after the village where he was born on the Mugello slopes of the Apennines, in Florence he was first nicknamed “Andreino of the gallows” for having painted on the façade of the Palazzo del Podestà (later, Palazzo del Bargello) the dead bodies of the rebels banished from the city after the battle of Anghiari in 1440 – hanged here in effigy.
After a stay in Venice where he painted, in 1442, the vault of the San Tarasio chapel in the church of San Zaccaria, he spent the remaining fifteen years of his brief artistic career in Florence. In 1444 he was entrusted with the cartoon for one of the stained glass windows in the tambour of Florence’s Duomo, alongside artists such as Ghiberti, Donatello and Paolo Uccello.
For the chapel of the Trebbio castle that the Pazzi family owned on the hills surrounding Pontassieve, he executed the large fresco of the Madonna and Child with Saints (Florence, Uffizi Gallery) set against a sumptuous drapery. In 1447, in the refectory of the Observant Benedictine nuns of Sant’Apollonia, he executed the monumental fresco of the Last Supper set in a supper room with splendid Byzantine-like marble panels painted rigorously in perspective and topped with three scenes from the Passion, all sharing a single luminous landscape.
He was then busy painting the fresco cycle with Illustrious Men for Villa Carducci in Legnaia. In 1451-1453 he was charged with the task of continuing the work started by Domenico Veneziano in the choir of Sant’Egidio, where the latter had worked with the young Piero della Francesca. However, Andrea del Castagno did not finish the work which was later completed by Alessio Baldovinetti and destroyed during the Baroque period. For the church of Santissima Annunziata he executed a luminous fresco of Saint Julian with Christ in the Da Gagliano chapel (later, the Ferroni chapel) and then, for the Corboli chapel, a Trinity with Saint Jerome and two Female Saints in the manner of Donatello.
Shortly before he died, most probably from the plague, he painted in Florence’s cathedral the equestrian monument of Niccolò da Tolentino, condottiere of the Florentine army and victor against the Sienese in the battle of San Romano. Castagno’s fresco, conceived as a mighty equestrian monument from Antiquity, was painted in 1456 next to the one dedicated to Sir John Hawkwood painted twenty years earlier by Paolo Uccello.
The Mugello and the
Arts: Giotto, Fra Angelico and Andrea del
Castagno
Giotto
Fra Angelico
Giotto
Fra Angelico