Melozzo da Forlì

▪ Italian painter

born 1438, Forlì, near Ravenna

died Nov. 8, 1494, Forlì

      early Italian Renaissance painter of the Umbrian school who was one of the great fresco artists of the 15th century. He is mentioned in Forlì in 1460 and 1464 and between 1465 and 1475 probably was active at Urbino, where he came into contact with Piero della Francesca (the main source of his pictorial style), the architect Donato Bramante, and the Flemish and Spanish painters employed by Federico da Montefeltro. Melozzo may have worked with Justus of Ghent and Pedro Berruguete on the decorations of the studiolo of the ducal palace at Urbino. About 1475 Melozzo moved from Urbino to Rome, where he may also have worked temporarily somewhat earlier. His first major work in Rome (completed 1477) was a fresco showing the investiture of Platina as librarian to the Pope, painted in the library of Sixtus IV in the Vatican. Records of payments of 1480 and 1481 relate to subsidiary frescoes and decorative paintings in the library. In 1478 Melozzo became a member of the Guild of St. Luke and about 1480 completed one of his most important works, a fresco of “The Ascension” in the SS. Apostoli (now in the Quirinale). The athletic figures in this work amply account for the reputation Melozzo enjoyed among Giovanni Santi and other contemporary writers as an exponent of perspective and foreshortening. Melozzo seems to have left Rome in 1484, on the death of Pope Sixtus IV, after completing the decoration of a chapel (destroyed) in Sta. Maria in Trastevere, and returned there in 1489. Probably during this second Roman period he prepared cartoons for mosaics in Sta. Croce in Gerusalemme. In 1493 he was painting in the Palazzo Comunale at Ancona and later in the year returned to Forlì. Little of his work has been preserved, and none of his great decorative schemes survives intact.

* * *