Pietro di Giovanni D'Ambrogio (

fl. ''Floruit'' (; abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for "they flourished") denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indicatin ...

1410-1449) was an Italian painter of the Sienese school.

Life and work

He was apparently born in Siena and may have studied with Stefano di Giovanni, known as "Il Sassetta". In 1428, he became a member of the Painter's Guild. Most of his surviving pieces date from the 1430s and 1440s. The first major work that is still extant is an altarpiece depicting the adoration of the shepherds with Saint Augustine and Saint Galgano, which dates from between 1430 and 1435 and may have been based on earlier works by Ambrogio Lorenzetti or Bartolomeo Bulgarini. Some of his works were also once attributed to Il Sassetta. Documents from 1440 indicate that he received payment for some works done in the Città di Castello, but the nature of those works is not mentioned. That same year, he worked on

fresco Fresco (plural ''frescos'' or ''frescoes'') is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaste ...

es at the Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala (now a museum), but these have been destroyed. In 1444, following the death of the Franciscan priest, Bernardino (who would later become a saint), he painted a portrait of him based on his death mask, for the Basilica dell'Osservanza, which is now preserved at the

Pinacoteca Nazionale List of national galleries is a list of national art galleries. {{tocright Africa * Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa *National Art Gallery of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia The Americas *Galería Nacional, San Juan, Puer ...

. Some art historians have seen the influence of

Masaccio Masaccio (, , ; December 21, 1401 – summer 1428), born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was a Florentine artist who is regarded as the first great Italian painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, ...

in a set of panels from a predella, now divided between the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

and the Lindenau Museum. In 1446, he painted the Crucifixion mural at the Siena City hall ( Palazzo Pubblico) and. two years later, completed another depiction of Saint Bernardino in

Lucignano Lucignano is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Arezzo in the Italian region Tuscany, located about southeast of Florence and about southwest of Arezzo. Lucignano borders the following municipalities: Foiano della Chiana, Marcian ...

. He may have also participated in painting the cloister at the

Monastery of the Holy Saviour The continuing Monastery of the Holy Saviour at Lecceto in Tuscany, was the principal House of the order of the Hermit Friars of Saint Augustine (not to be confused with the Augustinian Canons Regular) in 1256, when Pope Alexander IV constitute ...

in Lecceto. He and Vecchietta worked on а pair of

reliquary A reliquary (also referred to as a ''shrine'', by the French term ''châsse'', and historically including ''wikt:phylactery, phylacteries'') is a container for relics. A portable reliquary may be called a ''fereter'', and a chapel in which it i ...

shutters at Siena Cathedral; now in the Pinacoteca. Numerous small works from the late 1440s have been attributed to him. In addition to his artwork, he also provided miniatures and illustrations for various books; notably the ''Tractatus de Principatu'' (1446), now in the , and an Antiphonary, which is held by the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Sources

* C. Volpe (ed.) ''Il Gotico a Siena: miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti d'arte'' (exhibition catalog, Palazzo Pubblico), Centro Di, 1982 * Giulietta Chelazzi Dini, et al., ''Five Centuries of Sienese Painting: From Duccio to the Birth of the Baroque'', Thames and Hudson, 1998 * Max Seidel (ed.), ''Da Jacopo della Quercia a Donatello. Le arti a Siena nel primo Rinascimento'', (exhibition catalog), Federico Motta Editore, 2010

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:D'Ambrogio, Pietro 15th-century Italian painters Religious painters Italian muralists Fresco painters Painters from Siena