Giovanni di Paolo

Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia (c. 1403–1482) was an Italian painter, working primarily in Siena. He may have apprenticed with Taddeo di Bartolo, becoming a prolific painter and illustrator of manuscripts, including Dante's texts.

He was one of the most important painters of the 15th century Sienese School. His early works show the influence of earlier Sienese masters, but his later style was more individual, characterized by cold, harsh colours and elongated forms. His style also took on the influence of International Gothic artists such as Gentile da Fabriano. Many of his works have an unusual dreamlike atmosphere, such as the surrealistic Miracle of St. Nicholas of Tolentino painted about 1455 and now housed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, while his last works, particularly Last Judgment, Heaven, and Hell from about 1465 and Assumption painted in 1475, both at Pinacoteca Nazionale (Siena), are grotesque treatments of their lofty subjects. Giovanni's reputation declined after his death but was revived in the 20th century.

Giovanni di Paolo was first documented in 1417 working for the Sienese Dominican Order as a miniaturist (manuscript illuminator). Most of Giovanni's commissions came from local monastic communities which is apparent because so many of his early works are altarpieces for such churches. For example, The Virgin and Christ Child with Saints Bernardino, Anthony Abbot, Francis and Sabina and The Lamentation Over the Dead Christ (1462–3), a "square panel painting" altarpiece commissioned by Pope Pius II (of the noble Sienese Piccolomini family) for his recently finished cathedral.

Giovanni di Paolo was influenced by many great artists in Trecento and Quattrocento, Italy. It is believed that he may have owned a model book of other artists’ work he could flip through and use that would fit his paintings. A few of these include the following: Gentile da Fabriano's two Florentine altarpieces, Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Presentation in the Temple, and the Baptistery reliefs by Donatello. He would then be able to alter, modify, and combine these artists’ works into his own renderings. Throughout his career one can see how this model book was utilized because of certain figures he repeatedly used, "His isolated detail, a single figure, or group copied from another image is shown that he is naturally drawn to the inventions of his fellow artists". However much it would be looked down upon today to copy, in Trecento and Quattrocento Siena, the culture valued an artist that could manipulate others' work and make it their own as creatively as Giovanni did.

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