Margarito, Margaritone da Arezzo or Margaritone d'Arezzo (fl. c. 1250–1290) was an Italian painter from Arezzo, in Tuscany. Margaritone's given name was Margarito, but it was transcribed erroneously by Vasari as "Margaritone". It is by this latter form that he is still often known today.
Little is known of Margaritone's life. The only documentary record of his existence dates from 1262, when he lived in Arezzo. However, a fair number of his works are known to survive. Unusually for the time, most are signed, but on the only one to be dated the date is "now fragmentary and variously read as 1269, 1274, and 1283".[1] Given the lack of surviving dates, no chronology for his career has yet been created. The best documentary evidence suggests he was busy in the 1260s, but stylistically much of his work suggests dates before 1250.[2] Towards the end of his career he collaborated with Ristoro of Arezzo, also a miniaturist.[3]
The nature and distribution of surviving works indicate that Margaritone was much in demand as an artist, both in Arezzo and throughout Tuscany. Most of these are dossals, either of the Madonna and Child, some with smaller scenes to the sides, or of Saint Francis of Assisi.[4] His treatment of the elements of these subjects is very consistent.[5]
Unlike most contemporaries, he has a life in Giorgio Vasari's The Lives of the Artists. Vasari, also from Arezzo, "devotes a good deal of space to him as an early painter from his home town".[6] However, much of Vasari's information seems to be wrong: there is no evidence he was also a sculptor, and a death in 1316 seems far too late.[7]