Benozzo Gozzoli

Benozzo Gozzoli (c. 1421–1497) was born Benozzo di Lese, a tailor's son, in the village of Sant'Ilario a Colombano, and his family moved to Florence in 1427. He trained as a goldsmith as well as a painter, worked with Lorenzo Ghiberti on the Gates of Paradise, and assisted Fra Angelico on the frescoes of San Marco in Florence and then in Rome and Orvieto. From 1449 he worked independently in Umbria, notably on the life of Saint Francis at Montefalco. Back in Florence, between 1459 and 1461 he painted the frescoes of the Magi Chapel in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, a procession crowded with Medici portraits, landscape detail and his own likeness. Further commissions followed: the Life of Saint Augustine at San Gimignano and, from 1469, his largest project, twenty-four Old Testament scenes in the Campo Santo at Pisa, where the city gave him a tomb. He was among the most prolific fresco painters of his generation, and died in Pistoia in 1497. Here: The Virgin and Child Enthroned among Angels and Saints, the altarpiece he painted in 1461–62 for the Confraternity of the Purification in Florence.