BALDOVINETTI, Alessio

Florentine painter, mosaicist, and worker in stained glass. His training is unknown, but his graceful, and refined style shows the influence of Domenico Veneziano and Fra Angelico.

His finest works include a damaged but still enchanting frescoGLOSSARYWall painting technique in which pigments are applied to wet (fresh) plaster (intonaco). The pigments bind with the drying plaster to form a very durable image. Only a small area can be painted in a day, and these areas, drying to a slightly different tint, can in time be seen. Small amounts of retouching and detail work could be carried out on the dry plaster, a technique known as a secco fresco. of the Nativity (1460-62) in the forecourt of the SS. Annunziata, Florence, a Madonna and Child (c. 1460) in the Louvre, Paris, and an AnnunciationGLOSSARYthe term for the event described in the Gospel according to St. Luke, when the Angel Gabriel brings the Virgin Mary the news that she is to bear her son, Jesus Christ. The Annunciation was among the most widespread pictorial subjects of European art during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. (c. 1460) in the Uffizi, Florence. 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 initialGLOSSARYthe first letter of the text in medieval manuscripts and early printed books, made to stand out emphatically by its colour, size, and ornamentation. promise'.