Background
Baldovinetti was born in Florence to a family of a rich merchant.
Baldovinetti was born in Florence to a family of a rich merchant.
Tradition says that he assisted in the decorations of the church of South. Egidio, however no records confirm this. These decoration were carried out during the years 1441–1451 by Domenico Veneziano and in conjunction with Andrea del Castagno. That he was commissioned to complete the series at a later date (1460) is certain.
In 1462 Alesso was employed to paint the great fresco of the Annunciation in the cloister of the Annunziata basilica.
The remains as we see them give evidence of the artist"s power both of imitating natural detail with minute fidelity and of spacing his figures in a landscape with a large sense of air and distance. And they amply verify two separate statements of Vasari concerning him: that "he delighted in drawing landscapes from nature exactly as they are, whence we see in his paintings rivers.
Bridges, rocks, plants, fruits, roads, fields, cities, exercise grounds, and an infinity of other such things," and that he was an inveterate experimentalist in technical matters. His favourite method in wall-painting was to lay in his compositions in fresco and finish them a secco with a mixture of yolk of egg and liquid varnish.
This, says Vasari, was with the view of protecting the painting from damp.
But in course of time the parts executed with this vehicle scaled away, so that the great secret he hoped to have discovered turned out a failure. In 1463 he furnished a cartoon of the Nativity, which was executed in tarsia by Giuliano de Maiano in the sacristy of the cathedral and still exists. In 1497 the finished series, which contained many portraits of leading Florentine citizens, was valued at a thousand gold florins by a committee consisting of Cosimo Rosselli, Benozzo Gozzoli, Perugino and Filippino Lippi.
Only some defaced fragments of it now remain.
Meanwhile Alesso had been much occupied with other technical pursuits and researches apart from painting. He was regarded by his contemporaries as the one craftsman who had rediscovered and fully understood the long disused art of mosaic, and was employed accordingly between 1481 and 1483 to repair the mosaics over the door of the church of South. Miniato, as well as several of those both within and without the baptistery of the cathedral.
He died at in the hospital San Paolo, August 29, 1499, and was buried in San Lorenzo. One of his pupils was Domenico Ghirlandaio.
In 1448 he was registered as a member of the Guild of Saint Luke: "Alesso di Baldovinetti, dipintore.".