Giovanni di Piermatteo Boccati

1420 – 1487

Giovanni di Piermatteo Boccati (also Boccato or Giovanni di Piermatteo Boccati da Camerino) was an Italian painter, active in Umbria. He obtained citizenship in Perugia in 1445. Initially he was influenced by the Florentine masters Lippi, Fra Angelico and Uccello, amongst others, later by the Sienese, in particular Domenico di Bartolo. Together with his compatriot and sometime companion Giovanni Angelo d'Antonio, he was the chief representative of painting under the Da Varanno rulers of Camerino. However, unlike Giovanni Angelo, Boccati enjoyed a success that extended over a much broader area. He was active in Perugia (1445-47; about 1454-60; 1479), Padua (1448), and Orvieto (1473), and was employed by Federigo da Montefeltro to fresco a room in a wing of his palace at Urbino, prior to 1467. In this respect, his cultural background can be considered cosmopolitan, although he never had more than a superficial understanding of the basis of Renaissance art: his mastery of perspective was primitive at best and his figures show no interest in anatomy.

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