Bartolomeo di Fruosino, 1366/1369-1441

The documentary evidence relating to this artist is still rather scarce; he worked both as a painter and as a illuminator (Zambrelli, Bartolomeo di Fruosino, p. 65). In 1394, he appears as “disciple” of Agnolo Gaddi in a document related to the decoration of the chapel of the Virgin’s Belt in the Cathedral of Prato, and in 1421 his name appears in the colophon of a graduale/antiphonary produced for the church of St. Egidio (Florence, Museo di San Marco, ms. 557). Nevertheless it is possible that his first period of training took place in the workshop of Lorenzo Monaco (1370-1423/24), with whom he could have worked on more than one occasion, for example for the choirbooks of the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, between 1396 and 1423 (ibidem, pp. 64-65). Scholarship is in agreement about attributing Bartholomeo the production of ms. Antiphonario A 69 of the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence, for which Corale 1 of Santa Maria degli Angeli served as a model. The three manuscripts of the entire corpus of Livy, I, III and IV Decades, date back to approximately 1416 (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, ms. Hamilton 402; Vatican City, Vatican Library, ms. Ferr. 562; Montpellier, Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Médecine, ms. H 115), copied in the convent of Santo Spirito in Florence by the scribe Giovanni Bartoli da Signa. Specializing above all in the decoration of liturgical manuscripts, he also illustrated some copies of Dante’s Commedia, such as ms. Plut. 40. 16 of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana of Florence, that of the Biblioteca Palatina di Parma, ms. 118 and the Commentario all’Inferno detto l’Ottimo (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. it. 74).