BENOZZO GOZZOLI
1420 - 1497

We have already seen that Fra Angelico's most famous pupil, BENOZZO GOZZOLI, carried on his master's tradition. Like Filippo Lippi, he could not wholly escape the knowledge of the increase of the painter's gamut through the revelations of Masaccio. But, like Filippo Lippi, or perhaps even more so, he was astoundingly little moved by it, and wrought almost wholly in the atmosphere of his master Fra Angelico, whom he aided in the making of the frescoes at Orvieto. But Benozzo Gozzoli shook himself free at last from the monastic influence of the saintly Dominican (for, be it remembered, he lived into the second half, indeed almost through the second half, of the fourteen-hundreds, which saw a very marked increase of artistic genius), and the art of his later life concerned itself with what was his chief achievement and inclination-the painting of the life of his day, which is clumsily known as genre. It is true that Benozzo Gozzoli continued to paint stories from Scripture as the subjects of his frescoes; but these stories were the excuse for the recording of the habits and life of his day, and of the costumes and personalities of that day. Whether he paint the walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa with the Building of the Tower of Babel, or the more famous frescoes in the chapel of the Riccardi Palace in Florence with the Procession of the Magi and Angels, wherein the Medici family are shown at the head of the richly arrayed cavalcade, Benozzo Gozzoli stands revealed as a charming chronicler, stating with naive grace and beauty the habits of his age. A prodigious and facile worker, Benozzo Gozzoli uttered the love of nature, a blithe delight in the idyllic life of the day-the vintage, the marriage-dance, the squabbles of [91] small boys, the jocularity of servants, children carrying their books to school-it all holds the romantic music of jocund life. He enjoyed the intimate friendship of the princely house of the Medici ; and one of his greatest achievements is the equestrian portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici, Lorenzo the Magnificent, as one of the Magi in the fresco of the Riccardi Palace at Florence-indeed, the whole of this fresco is redolent of the life of Florence in the fourteen-hundreds. And if he lack his master's simple faith and religious emotion, he but accentuates the fact of the increasing public interest in worldly splendour and fading religious fervour, just as Filippo Lippi's art shows a more sensuous and worldly religious spirit in marked contrast with the earlier, simpler, and more childlike faith of Fra Angelico.

Benozzo Gozzoli (and probably Fra Lippo Lippi) trained a pupil of whose life and work but little is known, ZENOBIO MACHIAVELLI (1418-1479) ; and there wrought also in Florence a follower of Filippo Lippi, and pupil to Giuliano Pesello, FRANCESCO PESELLINO (1422-1457), who is remarkable for his decorative gifts in colour, and famed for his paintings of cassone panels.

Of Filippo Lippi's pupils and followers also were FRA DIAMANTE and JACOPO DEL SELLAJO.



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VII
ANTONIO POLLAIUOLO
1429 - 1498
AND
PIERO POLLAIUOLO
1443 - 1496
FLORENTINE SCHOOL
"THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. SEBASTIAN"
(NATIONAL GALLERY)
St. Sebastian bound to the trunk of a tree, his body pierced with arrows. Painted in oil on wood. 9 ft. 6 in. h. x 6 ft. 7 1/2 in. w. (2.895 x 2.019).