Domenico di Michelino

Domenico di Michelino (1417–1491) was an Italian Renaissance painter who was born and died in Florence. His real name was Domenico di Francesco. The patronymic "di Michelino" was adopted in honour of his teacher, the cassone painter Michelino di Benedetto (c. 1378-1499), by whom no works have been identified. Giorgio Vasari reports that Domenico was also a pupil of Fra Angelico, whose influence is reflected in many of Domenico's paintings along with that of Filippo Lippi and Pesellino. Domenico enrolled in the Florentine painters' confraternity, the Compagnia di San Luca, by 1442. Two years later he joined the Arte dei Medici e Speziali, the Florentine painters' guild. He had a workshop in the Via delle Terme, Florence, which he shared with Domenico di Zanobi (formerly known as the Master of the Johnson Nativity). His earliest extant work is a processional banner for the Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence, in which the Virgin is shown protecting the martyred innocents beneath her mantle. Commissioned in 1440 and completed in 1446, the picture was entirely repainted in the sixteenth century by Michele Tosini. In 1449-50 Domenico painted the chapel of Saint Leonard in the church of Santa Maria a Peretola on the outskirts of Florence. The chapel includes a lunette with a scene of Saint Leonard Freeing Prisoners as well as images of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saint Lucy and musical angels. In 1458 Domenico painted an altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with Saints, now at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, and in 1463 he was commissioned an altarpiece by Cosimo de' Medici for the church of San Girolamo in Volterra (now at Volterra's Museo Diocesano). Other, undated altarpieces are in Anghiari (Santo Stefano), Dijon (Musée des Beaux-Arts), Florence (Galleria dell'Accademia), San Gimignano (Museo Civico) and San Giovanni Valdarno (Museo della Basilica di Santa Maria delle Grazie). A painting of Saint Lawrence at San Lorenzo a Porciano in Stia, painted between 1477 and 1482, is representative of Domenico's late work.