Niccolò dell'Abbate

Niccolò dell'Abbate, sometimes Nicolò and Abate (1509 or 1512 – 1571) was an Italian Mannerist painter in fresco and oils. He was of the Emilian school, and was part of the team of artists called the School of Fontainebleau that introduced the Italianate Renaissance to France. He may be found indexed under either "Niccolò" or "Abbate", though the former is more correct.

Niccolò dell'Abbate was born in Modena, the son of a violinist.

He trained together with Alberto Fontana in the studio of Antonio Begarelli, a local Modenese sculptor; early influences included Ferrarese painters such as Garofalo and Dosso Dossi. He specialized in long friezes with secular and mythological subjects, including for the Palazzo dei Beccherie (1537); in various rooms of the Rocca di Scandiano owned by the counts Boiardo he created 12 frescoes, one for each book of The Aenid, and notably a courtly ceiling Concert composed of a ring of young musicians seen in perspective, Sotto in Su (early 1540s), and the Hercules Room in the Rocca Meli Lupi at Soragna (c. 1540–43), and possibly the loggia frescoes removed from Palazzo Casotti at Reggio Emilia.

His style was modified by exposure to Correggio and Parmigianino, when he moved to Bologna in 1547. In Bologna, most of his painting depicted elaborate landscapes and aristocratic genre scenes of hunting and courtly loves, often paralleled in mythologic narratives. It was during this time that he decorated the Palazzo Poggi, and executed a cycle of frescoes illustrating Orlando Furioso in the ducal palace at Sassuolo, near Modena. Bologna is also the location of his illustrations for Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, and where he was celebrated in a sonnet which compares him to Raphael and Titian among others. One of his early pieces that cemented his reputation was the Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul, in the church of the abbey of San Pietro, Modena.

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