Artist

(active c. 1430-1470 in Lombardy)

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Details

Italian illuminator. He was one of the principal and most distinctive manuscript illuminators active in Lombardy in the mid-15th century. This distinguished miniaturist remained unknown for a long while and scholars only became aware of him in 1915. Yet he was famed in his time throughout northern Italy. He received his training in Lombardy where he was guided by the masters Giovannino de' Grassi and Michelino da Besozzo, and just as much by the miniatures of Franco-Flemish manuscripts which were kept at Castello di Pavia. In 1450 he was convicted of sodomy in Mantua, in his absence. He was engaged by the most important patrons imaginable, because of his outstanding accomplishments - the Este family, the Gonzagas, the Visconti and Cardinal Bessarion. Filippo Maria Visconti, 3rd Duke of Milan, commissioned him to complete a Book of Hours (Ms. Landau Finaly 22, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence) left unfinished by Giovannino de Grassi and Salomone de Grassi. Three miniatures in an Acta sanctorum (Mss. AE. XIV. 19-20, Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Milan), the first volume of which is dated 1431, are close in style, and probably in date, to Belbello's work in the Visconti Hours. He also contributed to the illumination of the Breviary of Marie of Savoy (Ms. 4, Bibliothèque Municipale, Chambéry). This is likely to have been painted after Marie's marriage to Filippo Maria in 1428, but before 1434, the year Belbello completed a Bible (Ms. Barb. lat. 613, Biblioteca Apostolica, Vatican) for Niccolò III d'Este, Marquess of Ferrara. In 1460 Barbara von Brandenburg requested his son in Pavia, Francesco Gonzaga, to correspond with Belbello concerning the miniatures for a missal. The artist may have spent his final years in Venice; at any rate he received several commissions from the Veneto. His dramatic style found no immediate following, nevertheless he influenced later artists, including Teddeo Crivelli and Girolamo da Cremona. //

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Category	Artists
Artists by letter	B
Artist nationality	Italian