Gherardo Di Giovanni Del Fora

1445 – 1497

Gherardo di Giovanni di Miniato del Fora, Italian illuminator and painter, member of a family of artists. The sculptor Giovanni Miniato (1398-1479), a collaborator of Donatello, had three sons who were active in Florence as artists: Bartolomeo di Giovanni (di Miniato) del Fora (1442-1494), Gherardo di Giovanni (di Miniato) del Fora and Monte di Giovanni (di Miniato) del Fora (1448-1533). The three brothers maintained a book workshop together from 1465 and continued to work together until 1476, when Bartolomeo left, seemingly for financial reasons. Since Gherardo and Monte often collaborated, their work is sometimes difficult to distinguish with complete confidence. Both were familiar with contemporary painting, but they had different interests. Gherardo was sensitive to an ordered arrangement of figures in space; he preferred his portraits to be inscrutable, and he liked to reproduce contemporary Florentine architecture faithfully. Monte's urban views, by comparison, were more imaginative and his portraits more expressive. Gherardo was active from the early 1460s as an illuminator and also painted panels and frescoes, he was also known as a mosaicist. His large-scale work can be attributed only through a systematic analysis of the illumination that has been assigned to him by scholars in the 20th century. With his brothers he maintained a workshop, from which the principal religious and secular institutions of Florence commissioned illustrated books. Gherardo lived for many years as a lay brother in San Marco; he had literary and musical interests and frequented the bottegas of the most prestigious painters, from Bartolomeo della Gatta to Leonardo da Vinci. The salient characteristics of Gherardo's work in manuscripts, and sometimes in printed books, include the introduction of the Antique; an interest in portraiture and the peculiarities of architecture and landscape; the study of colour and light; the early introduction of Netherlandish elements in landscapes; and innovations in the layout of the page. He also introduced an unusual type of border, elegantly decorated all'antica with cameos, grotesques, mythological figures and candelabra drawn from engravings and sculpture. Other sculptural motifs include the tondo, reminiscent of Donatello, and the festoons with fruit and flowers in the style of the della Robbia family.

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