Vitale da Bologna

He is a representative of the 14th century school of painting in Bologna, his natal city and the place where he was most active.

Surviving works in Bologna include a polyptych in the church of San Salvatore (1353) and fresco fragments in the right apsidal chapel of Santa Maria dei Servi.

Vitale was also active in Pomposa, where he painted the frescoes in the apse of the Pomposa Abbey, in Ferrara, completing a set of now-lost statues for Ferrara Cathedral and a confraternity altarpiece now in the Vatican Museums, and in Udine, where he was called to work for the Patriarch of Aquileia, Bertrand de Saint Geniès.

[2] His masterwork is the panel with St. George and the Dragon, held in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna.

Universally attributed to him are the large Nativity fresco originally from the confraternity church of Santa Maria della Mezzaratta in the Bolognese countryside, now detached and conserved in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, and the fresco known as the Madonna del Ricamo ("Embroidering Madonna"), originally from San Francesco, Bologna, and now in deposit at the Museo della Storia di Bologna.