Cartwright, Julia: The painters of Florence: from the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth century (London: John Murray, 1910)

XIII

BENOZZO GOZZOLI
1420-1498
While the Carmelite friar was bearing Masaccio’s
message in a more popular form to the world, a
follower of Fra Angelico, Benozzo Gozzoli, was
continuing his saintly master’s work on a lower
spiritual level, in a more homely and ordinary style,
This amiable and industrious artist, who painted a
larger number of frescoes than any of his contem-
poraries, had neither Angelico’s inspiration nor Fra
Lippo’s genuine artistic gifts. He studied Masaccio
and the Naturalists carefully, and tried to imitate
their clever foreshortenings, but he remained far behind
Paolo Uccello and his followers in knowledge of the
human form. His perspective is often faulty, and his
drawing careless and slovenly; but as a story-teller
and illustrator he has few rivals, and the frescoes
which he painted with such marvellous rapidity are
of rare interest, as pages of contemporary history
which bring the life of the court and the life of the
schools, the Medici and the humanists, the labourers
in the vineyards and gardens of Tuscany, all in turn
before our eyes.
Benozzo, surnamed Gozzoli—the thick-throated-
was the son of a small Florentine tradesman—liter-
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