This Florentine artist carried on the same activity as his grandfather
Lorenzo di Bicci and his father, Bicci di Lorenzo, both of them
painters. Neri was trained in his father's workshop and took it over
after the latter died in 1452. His "Ricordanze" or memoirs, which he
himself wrote between 1453 and 1475, are the main source for
reconstructing his extremely prolific activity.
For over forty years
Neri di Bicci carried on the family business, which was based mainly on
commissions in the province and characterised by a taste that was
somewhat behind the times. His early career can be traced in the late
production of the workshop in his father's time, followed by a
preliminary period that continued to be closely linked to the typical
style of the Bicci family. After this however the artist developed his
own very personal and unmistakable style, to which he was to remain
faithful for the entire duration of his career. It was an eclectic
style, borrowed from a re-visitation of the great protagonists in the
artistic trends of the second half of 15th century Florence, from the
late production of Fra Angelico to Filippo Lippi, Domenico Veneziano
and Andrea del Castagno. Colour was the always the most characteristic
element in his paintings and also gave them an original touch of their
own; all the works in fact that came out of his workshop were always
brilliantly coloured with plenty of gilding, from the altarpiece with
the Madonna and Child enthroned between four Saints in the Diocesan
Museum of San Miniato in Pisa (1452), to the altarpiece with the
Madonna and Child enthroned between Sts. Cecily, Anne, Mary Magdalen
and Catherine of Alexandria in the Picture Gallery in Siena, carried
out in the later part of his career (1482).
His Memoirs help to give us
an idea of the many ramifications that involved the artist craftsman in
all fields of art. They ranged from supplying designs for textiles,
collaborating with carvers for sculptures in wood and making drawings
for sculpture. Many future artists worked as apprentices in his
extremely busy workshop in the second half of the century, among them
Cosimo Rosselli, Giusto d'Andrea, Francesco Botticini and Bernardo di
Stefano Rosselli. |
