Neri di Bicci
Neri di Bicci's main works include a fresco of Saint John Gualbert Enthroned with Ten Saints (1455) for the church of San Pancrazio, Florence (now in the nearby church of Santa Trinita), an Annunciation (1464) for Santa Maria alla Campora (now in the Florentine Academy), two altarpieces (one dated 1452) in the Diocesan Museum of San Miniato, a Coronation of the Virgin (1472) on the high altar of the abbey church at San Pietro a Ruoti (Bucine), and the Madonna with Child with Four Female Saints (1474) on loan to the Sacred Art Museum in Casole d'Elsa from the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena.
Neri is most famous for his Ricordanze, a series of journals he kept from 1453 until 1475 in which he chronicled the numerous types of commissions he accepted (altarpieces, small devotional panels, frescoes, shop signs, candlesticks, painted sculpture, etc.)
In 1434, at the age of fifteen, Neri joined the Florentine painters' confraternity the Compagnia di San Luca.
[1] Neri created works for all different social classes, ranging from the upper bourgeoise to Florentine guild members, government offices, prominent local basilicas and humble provincial churches.
His first documented work is from 1439, when he collaborated with his father on the trompe-l’oeil funerary monument to Luigi Marsili (1342–94) in Florence Cathedral.
An early work from this year is the triptych of the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Ten Saints for the chapel of the Villani family in Santissima Annunziata, Florence.
The composition is perhaps inspired by the work of Fra Filippo Lippi, while the figures show similarities with the art of Paolo Schiavo.
Also in this year Neri was commissioned to create a fresco cycle illustrating Scenes from the Life of Saint Giovanni Gualberto for the Spini family chapel in Santa Trìnita.
The Assumption of the Virgin originally on the altar in this chapel (Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada) shows the clear influence of Fra Angelico and Domenico Veneziano.
The subject of the Archangel was extremely popular in Florence in the 1460s and artists such as Francesco Botticini and Piero del Pollaiuolo illustrated this bible story.
[1] On November 25, 1459, Neri received a commission for an altarpiece depicting the Coronation of the Virgin with Eleven Saints, now located in the Acadamia of Florence, for the church of the monastery of Santa Felice.
In 1933 it was published that the curator of the Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, Victor Lasareff, had identified two new panel paintings that were created by Neri di Bicci.
[5] The St. James Cathedral altarpiece depicts the Virgin and Child in the center, flanked by saints: Luke, Bartholomew, and Lawrence on the left, John the Baptist, Martin, and Sebastian on the right.
This panel clearly was inspired by works of Andrea del Castagno with the figures portrayed as freer than normal and other stylistic similarities.
It was very common at this time that when a younger member of the family left home a picture would be ordered and Tobias would be depicted as the person who was about to leave.
One of the last records we have of Neri is from April first, 1488 when he received 8 bushels of grain in Santa Maria Monticelli as payment for a painting.
Later on May tenth, the same year, he was paid for an untraceable frontal portraying the "Legend of St Francis" and the "Building of the Santa Maria degli Angeli".
Giotto was the father of this type of gold art, creating it in the 13th century, and therefore Vasari refers to Neri as being one of the last Giottoesque painters.
[1] The first pupil of Neri's workshop, Cosimo Rosselli, began his apprenticeship at the young age of fourteen as documented on May 4, 1453.
Years later in 1460 the cousin of Cosimo, Bernardo di Stefano Rosselli, would collaborate with Neri on a series of paintings in the workshop.
The record included all types of information to the art pertaining to the workshop including commissions for paintings, the names, professions and social status of patrons, descriptions and dimensions of works, techniques and colors used, type of carpentry, the style of frames, the scenes depicted, and prices.
We also know that the workshop took commissions from all types of people in Italy such as artisans of the Chianti region, noble families like the Spini, Soderini and Rucellai, small Florentine shopkeepers, abbots of the Vallombrosans of Santa Trìnita and S Pancrazio, and ordinary parish priests from the surrounding countryside.
These false attributions were corrected in 1768, with Domenico M. Manni's edition of Baldinucci's Notizie dei professori del disegno.
This mistake was reiterated by Gaetano Milanesi in his 1878 commentary on Vasari's Vite, and by the early twentieth-century scholars who assembled Neri's corpus, such as Bernard Berenson.
