Zanobi Strozzi

Annunciation
Madonna of Humility with Two Musician Angels, Museo Poldi Pezzoli

Zanobi di Benedetto di Caroccio degli Strozzi (17 November 1412 – 6 December 1468), normally referred to more simply as Zanobi Strozzi, was an Italian Renaissance painter and manuscript illuminator active in Florence and nearby Fiesole. He was closely associated with Fra Angelico, probably as his pupil, as told by Vasari.[1] He is the same painter as the Master of the Buckingham Palace Madonna.[2] Most of his surviving works are manuscript illuminations but a number of panel paintings have also been attributed to him, including seven altarpieces and six panels with the Virgin and Child,[3] along with some designs for metalwork.

Vasari says Strozzi "painted pictures and panels for a great many private houses in Florence"; he also mentions a double portrait.[4] Strozzi may have been something of a pioneer in small narrative pictures for homes, which departed from the usual subject of the Virgin and Child.[5]

He was one of the most important Florentine illuminators of his day, with documents confirming his participation in at least eighteen surviving manuscripts (in which he often worked as but one of a group of artists). This stands in contrast to his paintings; except for one signed work in London's National Gallery, all of his paintings are attributed to him on the basis of style alone.[6]

  1. ^ Kanter and Palladino, 228; Gordon, 406
  2. ^ Gordon, 406
  3. ^ Kanter and Palladino, 258
  4. ^ Vasari, 126; Italian from Kanter and Palladino, 258
  5. ^ Kanter and Palladino, 266
  6. ^ Kanter and Palladino, 229–230