Alesso Baldovinetti

Alesso Baldovinetti , c.1425-1499, Italian painter and decorative artist of the early Florentine Renaissance. He was probably trained in the workshops of Domenico Veneziano and Andrea del Castagno, whose influence is evident in his early works. These paintings include an altarpiece for the Medici villa at Cafaggiolo and an Annunciation (both: Uffizi). In 1461 he completed the Nativity in the Annunziata. This scene and his decoration of the Portuguese chapel in San Miniato (1466-74) have deteriorated because of Baldovinetti's unfortunate experiments with the technique of fresco. He painted several Madonnas (Louvre and Uffizi) in a serene style. Baldovinetti was considered the foremost designer in mosaics of his day. He also worked in other media such as stained glass, inlaid wood, shields, and coats of arms.

Bibliography: See study by R. W. Kennedy (1938).

Baldovinetti, Alesso (1425–99). Florentine painter, mosaicist, and worker in stained glass. Nothing is recorded of his training, but his graceful and refined style shows strong influence from Domenico Veneziano, who may well have been his master. Baldovinetti's finest works include a damaged but still enchanting fresco of the Nativity (1460–2) in the forecourt of SS. Annunziata, Florence; a Madonna and Child (c.1460) in the Louvre, Paris; an Annunciation (c.1460) in the Uffizi, Florence; and Portrait of a Lady in Yellow (c.1465) in the National Gallery, London. They show his remarkable sensitivity to light and landscape and his engaging blend of naivety and sophistication. In his History of Italian Renaissance Art (1970), Frederick Hartt writes that Baldovinetti was ‘the finest painter in Florence’ in the 1460s, and considers him ‘a very gifted master who somehow never quite seemed to fulfil his great initial promise’.