Bicci di Lorenzo

(b Florence, 1373; d Florence, 6 May 1452).

Italian painter and architect, son of Lorenzo di bicci. He continued the workshop founded by his father. Though not attracted to the artistic ideals and innovations of the Renaissance, he developed the productive capacities of the workshop by inaugurating a remarkable series of partnerships and collaborations with other painters.

1. Life and work.

(i) To 1430.

Bicci’s first artistic work was naturally done in the paternal workshop. No doubt because of the similarity between the names of father and son, Vasari assigned works to Lorenzo that were actually painted by Bicci. Moreover, he attributed to Lorenzo a second son, Neri di bicci, whereas Neri was in fact the only son of Bicci.

Between 1385 and 1408 Bicci enrolled in the Arte dei Medici e Speziali (Doctors’ and Apothecaries’ Guild), to which painters in Florence were required to belong. Over a period of nearly 40 years he produced a huge number of paintings inscribed with the year of production or recorded in documents. In his first dated work, a triptych of the Annunciation with Saints (1414; Porciana, nr Stia in Casentino, S Maria Assunta), the style is still reminiscent of the late 14th century, that is, the style learnt in his father’s workshop, but with more attention paid to Gothic lines and modulations. The readiness of Bicci’s workshop to take on any work connected with painting is recorded in an archive note dated 1416, when Bicci gilded chandeliers and benches for the Florentine charitable organization of the Compagnia Maggiore di S Maria del Bigallo.

In 1417 Bicci married Benedetta d’Amato d’Andrea Amati, with whom he had three daughters, Andrea, Maddalena and Gemma. The son who was to carry on the activity of the workshop, Neri di Bicci, was born in 1418. In that year Bicci seems to have begun a fruitful period of activity for the hospital complex of S Maria Nuova, Florence, which also employed him as an architect. He provided the modelli for the construction of the church of S Egidio, included within the old hospital building. In 1420 he frescoed the façade of the church with the Consecration of St Egidio (in situ), a composition that has often been cited as echoing Masaccio’s Festival of the Carmine (untraced). In 1420–21, for the same church, Bicci painted an altarpiece (untraced) commissioned by Bartolommeo di Stefano of Poggibonsi, known as Ghezzo.

Bicci’s pupil Stefano d’Antonio Vanni (?1407–1483) collaborated with him in his fresco painting. Much of his production was in this medium. In the first decade of the 15th century he had probably worked alongside his father in the monumental frescoed tabernacle known as the Madonnone. He painted frescoes (1421–c. 1425) for Ilarione de’ Bardi in the Florentine church of S Lucia de’ Magnoli. Of these, all that remain are small fragments, no longer clearly visible in the church.

A predella with scenes from the Lives of the Saints (Berlin, Gemäldegal.) is dated 1423, a significant year in the development of Bicci’s style (see Paolucci). Influenced by Gentile da Fabriano, who was then in Florence painting the Adoration of the Magi (ex-Santa Trìnita, Florence; Florence, Uffizi) for Palla Strozzi, he introduced some strongly gothicizing elements, though Gentile’s passages of shade and the richness of his materials and expression were very different from the precise backgrounds and bright colours of Bicci’s painting. In 1423 Bicci also began the panel of the Virgin and Child with Saints (Empoli, Mus. S Andrea) for the church of the Collegiata, Empoli, commissioned by Simone da Spicchio. This work was finally paid for in 1426.

In 1424 Bicci was enrolled as a member of the Compagnia di S Luca. At the same time he continued to work in S Egidio, where he produced some statues of Apostles (untraced) and a terracotta relief of the Coronation of the Virgin (Florence, Arcisp. S Maria Nuo.; copy in situ). An altarpiece with the Virgin and Child with Six Saints for S Niccolò sopr’Arno, Florence (in situ), dates from 1425. In 1427 Bicci painted a fresco cycle (untraced) for Niccolò da Uzzano (1359–1431) in S Lucia de’ Magnoli, Florence. Frescoes, documented in 1427, 1433 and 1441, for Santa Croce, Florence, are also untraced. From 1428 to 1432 he continued his fresco painting in S Marco, Florence, in collaboration with Stefano d’Antonio Vanni, with whom he had formed an official partnership in 1426. This relationship continued until 1434 with the addition of another painter, Buonaiuto di Giovanni.

During this period countless commissions were received by Bicci’s active workshop. In 1429 he executed frescoes in the Camaldolese Monastery, Florence, and in the same year he produced the panel with SS Cosmas and Damian, commissioned by Antonio Dalla Casa for Florence Cathedral. The altarpiece with the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Saints (Siena, Pin. N.) for the church of Vertine near Gaiole in Chianti dates from 1430, the date at one time inscribed on the fresco depicting the Virgin and Child with SS Leonard and George in the lunette over the Porta S Giorgio in the city wall of Florence.

(ii) 1430 and after.

The influence of Gentile da Fabriano’s painting, first evident in Bicci’s work around the mid-1420s, re-emerged, at least superficially, in the Polyptych (1433; centre panels, Parma, G.N.; side panels, Grottaferrata, Mus. Abbazia S Nilo, and New York, Met.) for the Benedictine convent of S Niccolò di Cafaggio (destr.), Florence. This was modelled almost slavishly on the Quaratesi polyptych (1425; dispersed), which Gentile painted for S Niccolò sopr’Arno, Florence. The frescoes with Sacred Scenes in the baptistery of S Martino a Gangalandi, near Lastra a Signa, are documented to 1433.

In 1434 in Santa Trìnita, Florence, Bicci worked with Stefano d’Antonio Vanni on the fresco decoration of the Compagni Chapel. The scenes of the Slaying of the Brother and the Pardon of St John Gualberto remain visible on the entrance arch; the altarpiece, also a product of the collaboration, is now in Westminster Abbey, London. Bicci’s patrons thus also included some of the noble (or at least upper-class) families of Florence, as well as those from the surrounding countryside from whom he received a constant flow of commissions for altarpieces.

Bicci’s son Neri has been credited with a role in the execution of the triptych showing the Virgin and Child with SS Hippolytus, John the Baptist, James and Christopher (1435; Bibbiena, SS Ippolito e Donato). By the age of 20, Neri was managing the workshop alongside his father and his name began to appear in official documents next to that of Bicci. In this they repeated the procedure whereby Bicci had succeeded his father Lorenzo.

According to Milanesi (who did not cite documentary evidence and incorrectly dated the commission to 1433), Bicci was one of the artists commissioned to paint a fresco cycle of twelve Apostles in the Florence Cathedral, in lieu of traditional consecration crosses, for the consecration of the cathedral on 25 March 1436 by Pope Eugenius IV. These Apostles were distributed throughout the church on the tribune and nave walls, and were replaced by statues in the 16th century (Amy). A second cycle of Apostles and saints commissioned from Bicci in 1439–1440 survives, although heavily restored, in the tribune chapels. In 1437 he was again working at Santa Trinità, painting the altarpiece for the Scali Chapel (untraced). This had first been commissioned from Giovanni dal Ponte, who had left the work unfinished. On 7 June 1438 Bicci was a witness, with his son Neri, in a dispute between a gold-beater called Bastiano di Giovanni and Domenico di Giovanni Lapi. In 1439–40 Bicci received payment for the trompe-l’oeil funerary monument to Luigi Marsili (1342–94) frescoed on the right wall of the cathedral, although Neri appears to have played a large part in the execution of this work.

Bicci updated his style only with regard to decorative or accessory elements, inserting passages in classicizing taste into a repertory that depended essentially on the Gothic tradition. It is hard to say to what extent these elements were borrowed from the new Renaissance language and to what extent they were inherited from the tradition of ornamental expression going back to Giotto. In 1441, with a commission from the church of S Egidio at the Ospedale di S Maria Nuova, Florence, the 68-year-old Bicci was working alongside some of the most advanced painters of the day, Domenico Veneziano and Andrea del Castagno. By that time, however, his art had crystallized immutably and no great stimulus resulted to modify the compositional schemes that he repeated in so many works. His figures with their motionless features and his decorative repertory were favoured by many classes of patrons. This gave him a central role in the production of Florentine art and put him at the head of a workshop that employed many painters, albeit most were of modest standing.

From this point on, biographical information on Bicci becomes more scarce. In 1442 it was Neri who drew up the catasto (land registry declaration) in his father’s name. There Bicci’s age is given as 67; however, such inconsistencies are not rare in these declarations of income made by Florentine citizens to the government of the Republic. The workshop was evidently still operating in S Maria Nuova (works untraced), and receiving payments in 1443–6 and 1447. The altarpiece depicting St Nicholas of Tolentino Protecting Empoli from the Plague (Empoli, Mus. S Andrea) for the Augustinian church of S Stefano, Empoli, was completed on 5 October 1445.

Despite his age Bicci continued to receive commissions for important works: in Arezzo the Bacci family appointed him to fresco the main chapel of S Francesco, and he worked in the town sporadically from 1445 to 1447, when he was forced to leave Arezzo either because of an epidemic or because his own health was poor. In the angels of the triumphal arch, scholars have detected the less refined, more archaic style of Neri, who by that time seems to have been definitely in charge of the workshop. Yet another project, the fresco decoration of the Lenzi Chapel in the church of the Ognissanti, Florence, was commissioned by Bartolommeo Lenzi and begun by Bicci in 1446. It was completed in 1451 by Neri and other workshop collaborators.

In the catasto of 1446–7 Neri di Bicci, in his father’s name, gave the address of the workshop as Via S Salvadore, in the district of Santo Spirito, declaring that it was bought from the abbot of the Camaldolese Monastery. Bicci’s last catasto of 13 August 1451, drawn up as usual by Neri, gives his age as 82, and that of his son as 31. Bicci, perhaps the most prolific and long-lived painter of the early 15th century, died the following year and was buried in S Maria del Carmine. It was not, however, the end of the workshop: this had been solidly managed, perhaps since the mid-1440s, by his son Neri, who expanded both its operative capacity and its range of activities.

Almost all of Bicci’s most important works are documented. There are many others without documentation, including the frescoed tabernacle from Ponte a Greve, a suburb of Florence, depicting the Virgin and Child (Florence, Sopr. B.A. & Storici Col.); the altarpiece depicting the Nativity in the building known from 1551 as S Giovannino de’ Cavalieri, Florence; the Coronation of the Virgin (ex-oratory of S Apollinare, Florence; Florence, Santa Trìnita); the polyptych of the Virgin and Child with Saints in S Maria Cetica in the Pratomagno; a Virgin and Child with St Catherine of Alexandria and Other Saints frescoed in a private house, the Casa Bandinelli Gradi, Cerbaia, near San Casciano Val di Pesa; and the tabernacle with the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints at the Canto alla Cuculia in the district of Santo Spirito, Florence, near the church of S Maria del Carmine. All these works were painted after 1440.

2. Style and workshop.

Bicci’s work retained coherence during his more than 40 years of documented activity. Indeed it became so distinctive, with the figures posed like cutouts against the gold backgrounds of the panels, and the thrones, tabernacles and chairs supported by little twisted columns decorated with rigid carved patterns or those inspired by Cosmati work, that the term Biccism is sometimes used in connection with the spread of his style (Frosinini). The extraordinary activity of Bicci’s workshop required a large number of collaborators, with some of whom the master would on occasion go into partnership, as he did with Stefano d’Antonio Vanni and Buonaiuto di Giovanni. Other painters in the workshop were, from the 1420s, Masaccio’s brother, Scheggia, Antonio di Maso, Marco da Montepulciano (with whom, according to Vasari, Bicci worked in Arezzo in S Bernardo) and Giovanni di Cristofano. During the 1440s he collaborated with Buono di Marco and Antonio di Lorenzo (fl 1391–c. 1440/50). The painter known as the Maestro di Signa left, in the church in Signa, frescoes whose formal characteristics are very close to those of Bicci. This anonymous artist worked in the town until the 1460s, and also painted numerous murals in both town and country churches. The tabernacle of the Canto alla Cuculia has also been assigned to him.

Although Bicci came into contact with the most important painters of the early 15th century, the figurative spirit of the Renaissance did not attract him even superficially, as it would later attract his son Neri. Nevertheless, his paintings were in great demand until the mid-century and not only in the countryside where outdated taste might be expected to linger on, but also in the city of Florence itself. Traditionalism, it would seem, was quite persistent, and Bicci its perfect, if unwitting, representative.

Bibliography

Bolaffi; Colnaghi; DBI

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F. Zeri : ‘Una precisazione su Bicci di Lorenzo’, Paragone, 105 ( 1958 ), pp. 67–71

B. Buhler Walsh : The Fresco Paintings of Bicci di Lorenzo (PhD dissertation, Indiana University, 1979 )

B. Buhler Lynes : ‘Bicci di Lorenzo’s “Lost” Compagni Polyptych’, Gaz. B.-A., vi/102 ( 1983 ), pp. 208–14

R. Caterina Proto Pisani : ‘Tre casi d’intervento nel territorio toscano’, Boll. A. , lxxii/6 ( 1984 ), pp. 3–6

C. Frosinini : ‘Un contributo alla conoscenza della pittura tardogotica fiorentina: Bonaiuto di Giovanni’, Rivista d’arte [prev. pubd as Misc. A.], xxxvii/4 ( 1984 ), pp. 107–31

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C. Frosinini : ‘Il passaggio di gestione in una bottega fiorentina del primo ’400: Bicci di Lorenzo e Neri di Bicci’, Ant. Viva , xxvi/1 ( 1987 ), pp. 5–14

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C. Frosinini : ‘Proposte Per Giovanni Dal Ponte e Neri Di Bicci: Due Affreschi Funerari Del Duomo Di Firenze’, Mitt. Ksthist. Inst. Florenz, xxxiv/1–2 (1990), pp. 123–38

F. Ames-Lewis : ‘Drawing for Panel-painting in Trecento Italy: Reflections on Workshop Practice’, Apollo, cxxxv ( June 1992 ), pp. 353–61

M. J. Amy : ‘The Revised Attributions and Dates of Two 15th Century Mural Cycles for the Cathedral of Florence’, Mitt. Ksthist. Inst. Florenz, xlii/1 (1998), pp. 176–89

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S. Chiodo : ‘Osservazioni su due polittici di Bicci di Lorenzo’, A. Crist. , lxxxviii ( 2000 ), pp. 269–80

E. Bailey : ‘Marian Lauds and Madonna Images: An Early Quattrocento Street Tabernacle’, Medieval Perspectives, xx ( 2001 ), pp. 19–29

E. Mognetti and others: ‘Marks of Devotion: Case Study of a Crucifix by Lorenzo di Bicci’, Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed., V. M. Schmidt, Stud. Hist. A., 61 (Washington, DC, 2002 ), pp. 354–69

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Bruno Santi

Grove Art online, accessed 3/18/14 by E.Reluga