Fra Carnevale
From records, we also know that he was curator of San Cassiano del Cavallino and joined the Confraternità di Santa Croce.
[1] Baldinucci's Dictionary of Masters of Disegno cited Fra Carnevale as a student who was well-known to local scholars with a reputation for excellence in the art of perspective.
Luigi Lanzi’s 1787 Storia Pittorica dela Italia discusses Fra Carnevale, noting that “Bramante and Raphael studied his work, as nothing better could then be found in Urbino.” Although he was quite harsh in judgement of the perspective used in the altarpiece, he was equally complimentary of the architecture.
Carnevale surrounded himself with prominent members of local society including lawyer Guido Bonclerici, vicar general to the Bishop Giovanni Battista Mellini, Ottaviano Ubaldini who held power in the court of Urbino, and Matteo di Cataneis who was close to the Lords of Urbino.
His paintings reflect this experience within the elitist culture of his society, even more so than would be expected from the member of a prominent religious order.
[3] He therefore arrives in Florence in 1445 "as a pupil not an apprentice which implies his early training was in the Marshes, possibly under the monk Jacopo Veneto; however another document connects him with Antonio Alberti.
Although his paintings are widely seen as perspectively inaccurate, he uses the motif of architectural backgrounds to his advantage, basing the precision of his style on the influence of his work as an architect.
However, the painting is attributed by others to Francesco di Giorgio Martini, partly due to the latter's greater significance at the Urbino court and because the painting refers to architectural themes he refers to in his architectural treatise derived from Leon Battista Alberti's slightly earlier published treatise.
The Milan exhibit included works hypothesized to be from Carnevale in order to prompt theoretical discussion regarding the true attribution.
[6] A Portrait of a Man, one of the controversial works, looks almost like a Roman relief from one of the buildings in Carnevale’s other paintings but with color added.
The deep, chiseled details of the hair are reminiscent of the painting style used for the heavy undulating fabric in the Barberini panels.
The examination of the carpentry of the panels undertaken for the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum demonstrates that, despite discrepancies in the dimensions of the painted surfaces, the four works are, indeed, from a single polyptych.
When viewing all four of these panels, we see the dense model-like treatment of the drapery with its deep shadows, yet there is a sensitivity in the manner by which the highlights are painted.
The drawing depicts a youth worker in rumpled clothing whose proud stature betrays his misshapen appearance.
This depiction of eleven male nudes was originally attributed Domenico Veneziano, but instead was likely completed between 1445 and 1450 when Fra Carnevale apprenticed with Filippo Lippi.
