Zanobi Strozzi

[5] He was one of the most important Florentine illuminators of his day, with documents confirming his participation in at least eighteen surviving manuscripts (in which he often worked as but one of a group of artists).

After he was orphaned at age 15, Strozzi went to live with the artist Battista di Biagio Sanguigni, described in documents as his "tutor" but more probably also his teacher in the art of painting and illumination.

[7] Strozzi is not recorded as joining the Florentine painters' guild the Arte dei Medici e degli Speziali, thereby precluding him from contracting paintings (as opposed to illuminations) under his own name in Florence.

[2] Strozzi's only "signed" painting is an Annunciation for the church of San Salvatore al Monte, Florence (c. 1440–45), now in the National Gallery, London.

The painting's signature is semi-hidden in the decorated gold border to the Virgin's dress, where can be seen "Z" (reversed), followed by "A", then after a gap filled with ornament, "NOBI".

[11] A Nativity at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and Adoration of the Magi in the National Gallery in London might have also belonged to this altarpiece as parts of its predella.

[8] A large Last Judgement by Strozzi for the convent of San Benedetto Porta a Pinti, Florence, was one of many paintings that disappeared from the Berlin State Museums in World War II.

[5] As an illuminator, Strozzi was responsible with Filippo di Matteo Torelli for several choir books for the church of San Marco.

The collaboration with Francesco took eleven years and eventually involved other workshops, including those of Cosimo Rosselli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Attavante Attavanti and the Master of the Hamilton Xenophon.