Mariotto Albertinelli

Mariotto Albertinelli, in full Mariotto di Bigio di Bindo Albertinelli (13 October 1474 – 5 November 1515) was an Italian Renaissance painter of the Florentine school. He was a close friend and collaborator of Fra Bartolomeo and their joint works appear as if they have been painted by one hand.

His work shows the influence of Perugino, Piero di Cosimo and Lorenzo di Credi as well as of Flemish painting. Some of Albertinelli’s works reveal an eccentrically archaic tendency while others show a return to conventions of the early Renaissance.

Biography

The beginnings
Son of the goldsmith Biagio di Bindo Albertinelli, at the age of twenty, according to Vasari, he left the paternal laboratory to devote himself to painting in the workshop of Cosimo Rosselli, together with Piero di Cosimo and Baccio della Porta, later a friar and painter known as Fra Bartolomeo.

Vasari reports that Mariotto and Baccio ” were a soul and a body, and it was among them such a brotherhood, that when Baccio left Cosimo to make art for himself as a teacher, Mariotto also left with him, where at the Porta San Piero Gattolini both lived for a long time, working many things together, and because Mariotto was not as well founded in the drawing as Baccio was, he began to study those antiques that were then in Florence, most of them and the best of which were in the house Doctors, and drew many a time a few squares in half-relief, which were under the loggia in the garden to San Lorenzo… ”

He works for Alfonsina Orsini, mother of Lorenzo de ‘Medici, Duke of Urbino and also makes a portrait of him but in 1494, banned by the Medici from Florence, he returned to work with Baccio della Porta and tired around the natural and to imitate Baccio’s things, so in a few years he became a diligent and practical teacher. Because he took so much soul, seeing his things succeed so well that, imitating the manner and the going of the companion, it was by many taken the hand of Mariotto for that of the friar.

The works produced in collaboration include the Annunciation of 1497 for the Cathedral of Volterra and the Holy Family, today in the LACMA of Los Angeles, which show influences from Perugino, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio and, for the landscape aspects, Flemish painting. The triptychs of the Virgin and Child, angels and saints of the Musée des Beaux – Arts of Chartres, are attributed to the hand of Albertinelli, showing curious fourteenth-century anachronisms and the Virgin and Child with Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Barbara of the Poldi Pezzoli Museumof Milan.

But Baccio became a Dominican friar in the 1500s, taking the name of Fra ‘Bartolomeo and leaving the workshop, to which Mariotto ” for the lost companion, was almost lost and out of himself “, so that, Vasari continues, if he did not have so much unpopular with all the friars, and in particular with Savonarola, “he would have the love of Baccio operated so much that by force of force he and his companion would have stuck with him again “.

In 1501 the commissioner of a Last Judgment, today in the Florentine Museum of San Marco, Gerozzo Dini, claims, having already paid for it, that the Albertinelli finish the work left unfinished by Baccio and Mariotto ” all’opra gave end; where diligently and with love he conducted the rest of the work, so that many, not knowing it, think that of one hand she is worked. For which it gave him great credit in art “.

Artistic maturity
The monumental Visitation of 1503, now in the Uffizi, refers to the spirit of Fra Bartolomeo with references to Perugino in architectural representation and warm colors, but overall the composition is an important contribution of Mariotto to Florentine art of the new century. On the contrary, both the Crucifixion of 1505, the Madonna with Child and the saints Gerolamo and Zenobio, at the Louvre, and the Annunciation of Munich, both of 1506, represent a return to the fifteenth century.

He worked at the Charterhouse of Florence, frescoing in the Chapter Hall a Crucifixion with the Madonna, St. Mary Magdalene and angels, “work worked in fresco and with diligence and with very well-conducted love. But, not seeming that the friars of eating in the same way treated them, some of his young men who learned art with him, not knowing Mariotto, had countered the key of those windows so that the dish was presented to the friars, who answered in their room; and sometimes secretly when to one and when to another they stole food. It was a lot of noise of this thing among the friars: because of the things of the throat they resent so well as the others; but, by doing this the apprentices with much dexterity and being kept good people, they blamed those some friars who for hate one another made it; where the thing was discovered one day. For that the friars, in order that the work would be finished, doubled the dish to Mariotto and his assistants,”

In 1505 he married Antonia Ugolini, daughter of a wine merchant; from 1506 the Albertinelli worked for the Congregation of San Zanobi at an Annunciation ended only in 1510 and now preserved in the Accademia Gallery in Florence. This is the first Renaissance altarpiece in which a Glory of the Skies is manifested, dynamically conceived within an architecturally structured space; the liveliness acquired by the painting thanks to the intensity of the chiaroscuro, the colors and the treatment of light is a response to the synthesis carried out in the meantime by Fra Bartolomeo, who was combining Venetian colourism with Leonardo’s tone.

Already Vasari had caught the novelty of the painting in his own way: “he began to work in the Company of San Zanobi, next to the rectory of Santa Maria del Fiore, a table of the Nunziata and that with great difficulty led. He had enlightened the post, and he wanted to work on it, to be able to lead the views that were high and distant dazzled, to diminish and grow in his own way. You entered it into fantasy that the paintings that had no importance and strength and at the same time also sweetness, were not to be kept in value; and because he knew that they could not make themselves come out of the plane without shadows which, having too much darkness, remain covered and, if they are sweet, have no strength, he would have wanted to add with a sweetness a certain way of working that art up then it didn’t seem to him that he had done in his way; whence, if he gave him occasion in this work of doing, so he began to do extraordinary hardships, which are known in one God the Father who is in the air, and in some putti who are very much noticed by the table through a dark field of a perspective which he made there with the once-carved sky at half barrel, that turning the arches of that and decreasing the lines to the point, goes in a manner that seems to be in relief; besides that there are some Angels that fly spreading flowers, very pretty.”

“This work was undone and rebuilt by Mariotto, before he led it to his end, several times; exchanging now the color or lighter, or darker and sometimes more lively and bright and now less; but he did not satisfy himself in his own way, nor did he seem to have added to the thoughts of the intellect with his hand; his; nevertheless, known as not being able to do that with the art that includes human ingenuity and intelligence, he contented himself with what he had done, then that he did not act on what could not be done; and it ensued from the craftsmen of this work praise and honor, still believing to draw from them by means of these labors is much more useful than he did, discordantly coming between those who made it and Mariotto. But Pietro Perugino, then old, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio and Francesco Granacci esteemed and agreed the price of it together they arranged.”

In July 1509 the convent of San Marco promotes his collaboration with Fra Bartolomeo, with expenses and revenues divided between them in half, and the works of Albertinelli show again the influence of Fra Bartolomeo and also of the new luministic interests in Leonardo’s sense: so it is for his Madonnas with Child of Genoa and Harewood House and of the altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with Saints of the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence. The Geneva Annunciation is the only one bearing the common signature: FRIS BARTHO OR P ET MARIOTTI FLORENTINOR OPUS 1511.

The preparatory drawings of the Ferry Carondelet altarpiece by Besançon testify that the original design of the whole altarpiece is by Mariotto even if only the Coronation of Mary, which constituted the upper part and, detached, is now preserved at the Stuttgart Staatsgalerie, hand of the Albertinelli; as a whole, it is the best achievement of the artist and one of the best tables of the sixteenth century.

In 1510 he made the altarpiece for the nuns of San Giuliano in Florence with the Madonna and Child with Saints Giuliano, Domenico, Nicola and Gerolamo and a Crucifixion with angels, God the Father and the Trinity in a field of gold, both today Uffizi.

The decline
Their collaboration ends on January 5, 1513: according to Vasari, it was Mariotto “a very anxious and carnal person in things of love and good time in the things of life; for which, coming to hate the sophistries and the brain tears of painting, and often being bitten by the tongues of painters, as is the continual practice in them, and by inheritance maintained, it turned out to be lower and less tiring and more cheerful art; and a beautiful tavern opened outside the Porta San Gallo and at the Ponte Vecchio at the Dragon a tavern and tavern did that many months, saying that he had taken an art which was without muscles, convoys, perspectives and, what matters most, without blame, and that the one he had left was contrary to this; because he imitated the flesh and the blood, and this made the blood and the flesh, and that every hour one felt, having good wine, to praise,. ”

However he soon returned to painting but the small paintings of the period 1513 – 1515, such as the Madonna and Child of Venice, show an intentional archaism, with representations of relief motifs taken from Ghiberti, together with an accurate landscape realism deriving from the Flemish painting of the XV century: the aversion to Renaissance modernity leads to a voluntary distortion of forms.

The altarpiece in the Church of San Michele in Volognano, in the municipality of Rignano sull’Arno, of the Madonna with Child and Saints Pietro, Paolo, Apollonia, Michele and the client Zenobi del Vacchia, dated and signed MARIOTTI FLORENTINI OPUS 1514, is his last work ended where again Mariotto returns to bartolomesche forms.

Vasari reports of his brief journey, in July 1515, to Viterbo, in whose convent of Santa Maria della Quercia a table would have begun. In fact it was Fra Bartolomeo della Porta, in those years in the Convento della Quercia, who began to paint the altarpiece representing the Coronation of Mary, leaving it unfinished so much that the convent decided to have Mariotto complete it, given the style affinity of the two artists.

But the Albertinelli did not complete the table – it will be finished only in 1545 by Fra Paolino da Pistoia, a pupil of Fra Bartolomeo – because shortly after he went to Rome, where he would produce, in the church of San Silvestro al Quirinale, a mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine, quoted again in the Guide to Rome by Filippo Titi in 1763 and in that of Angelo Pellegrini of 1869, of which however no trace has remained. Returned to Viterbo, “where he had some loves, to which, for the desire of not having possessed him, while he was in Rome, he wanted to show that he was in the valiant tournament, for which he made the last effort; and like that which was neither very young nor valiant in such deeds, he was forced to get into bed. Of which, blaming the air of that place, he made himself lead to Fiorenza in baskets. And they received neither help nor refreshment, which died of that evil in a few days of age 45, and was buried in that city in San Pier Maggiore. ”

His students were Franciabigio, Pontormo, Giuliano Bugiardini and Innocenzo da Imola.

Albertinelli’s position in art history
Albertinelli is considered in today’s research as a very talented painter who, however, under the all-powerful influence of Fra Bartolomeo, could hardly establish himself as an independent master. He was at a time when the art of the High Renaissance in Florence was established. In doing so, he subordinated himself to the new art view partly and set quite permanent accents in the representation of monumental architecture and heavenly appearances. At the same time, he had a fondness for traditional forms of presentation, which stood in the way of the perfection of the High Renaissance and thus did not always harmonize optimally with the execution.

Albertinelli trained several painters, among them Jacopo da Pontormo.

Works
Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Madonna with Child, oil on panel, 1495, attributed
Volterra, Duomo, Annunciation, oil, 1497, with Fra Bartolomeo
Los Angeles, LA County Museum, Holy Family, Oil, 1498, with Fra Bartolomeo
Chartres, Musée des Beaux – Arts, Triptych, oil, ca 1500
Milan, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Triptych, oil, 1500.
Florence, Museo Nazionale di San Marco, Last Judgment, fresco, 1501, with Fra Bartolomeo
Florence, Palazzo Pitti: Adoration of the Child, oil, ca 1502
Florence, Uffizi: Visitation, oil, 1503
Florence, Uffizi, Annunciation, Nativity and Presentation at the Temple, predella of the Visitation, oil, 1503
Galluzzo, Florence Charterhouse: Crucifixion, fresco, 1505.
Paris, Louvre, Madonna and Child with Saints Jerome and Zenobius, oil on panel, 1506.
New York, Metropolitan Museum, Madonna and Child, oil and tempera on board, ca 1506.
Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts: Adoration of the Child, ca 1506
Munich, Alte Pinakothek, Annunciation, oil on panel, ca 1506
Genoa, private collection, Madonna and Child, oil on panel, 1509.
Harewood House, Yorkshire, Madonna and Child, oil on panel, 1509
Lucca, Villa Guinigi Museum, Eternal Father among the Saints Catherine of Siena and Mary Magdalene, oil, 1509, with Fra Bartolomeo
Florence, Academy Gallery, Annunciation, oil on panel, 1510; Madonna with Child and Saints Giuliano, Domenico, Nicola and Gerolamo, ca 1510; Trinity, oil on panel, ca 1510.
Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, Bucknell University Art Gallery, Madonna and Child, oil on panel, ca 1510
Columbia, South Carolina, Museum of Art, Madonna and Child, Saints and Angels, Oil, ca 1510, attributed
Geneva, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Annunciation, oil, 1511, with Fra Bartolomeo
Pisa, San Francesco, Madonna with Child and Saints Peter and Paul, oil, 1511, with Fra Bartolomeo
Rome, Galleria Borghese, Holy Family with S. Giovannino, oil, 1512 with Fra Bartolomeo
Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, Coronation of Mary, oil on panel, 1512.
Besançon, Cathedral, Virgin in Glory and saints called altarpiece Carondelet Ferry, oil, 1512, with Fra Bartolomeo
New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Art Gallery, Original sin and the sacrifice of Isaac, oil, ca 1512.
Longniddry, Scotland, private collection, Madonna and Child, oil, ca 1512
Bergamo, Carrara Academy, Cain and Abel, oil on panel, ca 1513.
Zagreb, Slika Gallery, The Expulsion of Adam and Eve, oil on panel, ca 1513
London, Courtauld Institute Gallery, Creation, Temptation and Original Sin, oil on panel, ca 1513.
Canino, Viterbo, church of Saints Andrea and Giovanni Battista, Madonna with Child among Saints, oil, ca 1514, attributed
Volognano, church of San Michele, Madonna with saints and donor, oil on panel, 1514
Venice, Patriarchal Seminary, Pinacoteca Manfrediniana, Madonna with Child, oil, ca 1515
Rome, church of San Silvestro al Quirinale, Mystical marriage of Saint Catherine, 1515, lost

Source from Wikipedia