Fra Diamante

1430 – 1492

Italian painter. He was brought up in the Carmelite convent in Prato and first worked as garzone for the Carmelite painter Fra Filippo Lippi. On 17 July 1447 he was paid for gilding a temporary predella for Lippi's Coronation of the Virgin (Florence, Uffizi). At Prato he assisted Lippi on his fresco cycle in the choir of the parish church (now the cathedral) between 1452 and 1466. In July 1460 Diamante received payment on Lippi's behalf for the latter's completion of Pesellino 's Trinity with Saints (London, National Gallery), and in the same month he is recorded as a Vallombrosan monk. At this time he probably executed the frescoes of St John Gualbertus and St Albert of Trapani beside the window of the choir of Prato Cathedral. In 1463 Diamante was imprisoned in Florence for an undisclosed crime. His absence from Prato coincided with a halt on Lippi's fresco project, and in January 1464 the comune of Prato implored the Archbishop of Florence to grant Fra Diamante's release. Work on Lippi's frescoes recommenced in March, apparently without Diamante, and the next mention of him there is in October 1465. He was Fra Filippo Lippi's assistant collaborator for 22 years, but no surviving painting can be firmly attributed to him. The problem of his oeuvre involves the question of Lippi's workshop in Prato, still a highly complex issue.

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