Bernardino Poccetti

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Bernardino Poccetti, also known as Barbatelli, (26 August 1548- 10 October 1612), was an Italian Mannerist painter and printmaker in etching .

Born in Florence, he was initially trained as a decorator of facades and ceilings, enrolling in 1570 in the Florentine painters guild for such work, the Academy of Design. He is also referred to as: Bernardino Barbatelli or Bernardino delle Grottesche, delle Facciate, or delle Muse. He initially worked in the shop of Michele Tosini, and he participated in the broadly shared decoration of the Chiostro Grande of Santa Maria Novella in 1580s. In 1583-85, he helped decorate panegyric frescoes for the Palazzo Capponi. He also completed frescoes in San Pier Maggiore in San Pierino.

In 1592-23, he worked on frescoes in the Certosa di Galluzzo relating to Life and Death of San Bruno. He painted scenes from the life of founder of the Convent of the Servites for the Annunziata. He painted scenes from the Life of St. Anthony (fresco) for San Marco. He frescoed scenes from the Life of Cosimo I as decoration of great Salon of the Pitti Palace. He also labored for other charterhouses in Pisa and Siena. He also painted frescoes, considered his masterpiece, in the Cappella del Giglio (Cappella Neri, 1599) in Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi. In his later works, he is considered on the Florentine reformers, member of the so-called Contra-Maniera along with Santi di Tito, Domenico Cresti (Il Passignano), Lodovico Cigoli, Jacopo Chimenti da Empoli, Andrea Boscoli, and Gregorio Pagani, that imbued naturalism into the academic Mannerism of his age.

He did two rare etchings, the Crucifixion, a very powerful print, and the Bearing of the Cross; like many Italian etchers of the period he may have found it hard to make money from prints and abandoned the medium.

[edit] Other works

• Palazzo Usimbardi (now Palazzo Acciaiuoli, 1603)
• Santissima Annunziata, Pistoia (1601)
• Cloister of Sant'Antonio in San Marco, Florence (1602)
• Massacre of the Innocents, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence (1610)

[edit] External links

[edit] References

• Freedberg, Sydney J. (1993). "Painting in Italy, 1500-1600", Pelican History of Art, 627-629. 
• Bryan, Michael (1886). in Robert Edmund Graves: Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, Biographical and Critical (Volume I: A-K). York St. #4, Covent Garden, London; Original from Fogg Library, Digitized May 18, 2007: George Bell and Sons, page 78.