Pinturicchio

Pinturicchio or Pintoricchio [Ital.,=little painter], c.1454-1513, Umbrian painter whose real name was Bernardino di Betto. A prolific and facile painter, he was influenced by Perugino, with whom he collaborated on the frescoes for the Sistine Chapel. Pinturicchio worked chiefly in Perugia, Rome, and Siena. He decorated the Borgia apartments in the Vatican and several churches in Rome. His most elaborate project was the decoration of the cathedral library in Siena. In the Metropolitan Museum are many panels of mythological scenes from the ceiling of the reception room in the Palazzo del Magnifico in Siena. The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., has several of his religious works.

Pintoricchio (or Pinturicchio) ( Bernardino di Betto) (c.1454–1513). Italian painter. He was born in Perugia and in 1481–2 he assisted the city's leading painter, Perugino, with his frescos in the Sistine Chapel, Rome. His style was strongly influenced by Perugino, especially in his sweet, elegant figure types, but Pintoricchio lacked Perugino's lucidity of design and was more interested in decorative effects. His chief works are frescos in the Borgia rooms in the Vatican (1492–5) and the colourful Scenes from the Life of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (i.e. Pope Pius II) in the Piccolomini Library of Siena Cathedral (1503). In these he showed the brilliant colours, ornamental detail, and fanciful charm that make him at his best, in the words of Frederick Hartt (A History of Italian Renaissance Art, 1970), ‘one of the most endearing masters of the Quattrocento…a kind of Perugian Benozzo Gozzoli’. Pintoricchio was a prolific painter of panels as well as frescos—there are several examples of his work in the National Gallery, London.