Giovanni Angelo D'antonio

Italian painter from Camerino. He worked in association with Girolamo di Giovanni da Camerino and was in fact responsible for much of the oeuvre assigned to the latter. He was born into a socially well-placed family in Bolognola, southeast of Camerino. He married the daugther of a Camerino merchant family, and it was perhaps through the business connections of his i-laws that he obtained a letter of introduction to the Medici in Florence. Sometime prior to January 1443 he went to Florence in the company of his compatriot Giovanni Boccati. Boccati joined the workshop of Filippo Lippi while Giovanni Angelo became a guest in the Medici palace. Giovanni Angelo had established a friendship with Giovanni de'Medici, and he had a close relationship with the Da Varano family, the rulers of Camerino. He begins under the influence of Domenico Veneziano. He was documented in Siena in 1451. Later works included the upper tier of the polyptych long given to Girolamo in the Brera. His relationship with the Da Varano family is attested by two commissions, both of which resulted in masterpieces: an Annunciation (Pinacoteca, Camerino) and a St John the Baptist (Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon) that includes a donor portrait of Giulio Cesare da Varano.

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