Bartolomeo Ghetti

Bartolomeo (or Baccio) di Zanobi Ghetti (died 1536) was a Florentine Renaissance painter who has only recently emerged from obscurity as a result of art historical research.

Our knowledge of Ghetti’s career rests chiefly on a brief notice by Vasari, a few mentions in documents, and half a dozen jewel-like, painstakingly finished paintings. Vasari briefly mentions Ghetti, whom he calls "Baccio Gotti" in the Lives, describing him as a pupil of Ghirlandaio and stating that he worked in France at the court of King Francois I.

Until 2003, no works by Ghetti were known; on that year documents were published showing the artist had painted and restored a number of works for the church of San Pietro a Selva, near Malmantile, a neighborhood of Lastra a Signa in the lower Arno valley. The only sixteenth-century painting in the church is a frescoed lunette depicting the Madonna and Child. Waldman (2003) identified this painting as a work of a follower of Ghirlandaio, called the Master of the Copenhagen Charity (the name came from his most beautiful work, an allegory of Charity now in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen). The conjunction of the painting and the document led to the identification of the Master of the Copenhagen Charity as Bartolomeo Ghetti.

Ghetti can almost certainly be identified with the painter and illuminator “Barthélemy Guéty” who is named in a number of payment records surviving from the court of François I. From these we learn that Ghetti had already worked for François at some time before his accession in 1515, and that the painter received payments and salary as court painter and valet de chambre in 1519 and between 1521 and 1532. The payments records reveal that, together with Matteo dal Nassaro, Ghetti designed the rich set of hangings, with subjects drawn from Virgil’s Bucolics, that were produced to decorate a so-called Chambre verte in 1521. Further payments from the French king survive from 1528 and 1529. He was still producing pictures and also illuminating manuscripts for the king in 1532, when François paid him 300 écus for two designs of figures from histories and poetry, satyrs and nymphs, that the king wished to decorate the Hall of jeu de paulme of the Louvre (possibly cartoons for tapestries) and for two Books of Hours. Ghetti received a donative from the king in April 1532, recorded in a document that indicates that François was hoping by this means to keep him his court: “par forme de pention et bienfaict, et pour s’entretenir à son service.”

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