Benozzo Gozzoli 1421-1497

During his formative years Benozzo Gozzoli collaborated with Lorenzo and Vittorio Ghiberti on the third bronze door of the Baptistery, Florence (1444), with Fra Angelico on the pictorial decoration of the Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence (1444-45), with Fra Angelico on some frescoes in the chapel of Pope Nicholas V in the Vatican (1447), and again with Fra Angelico on the ceiling of the Chapel of San Brizio in the cathedral at Orvieto (1448). He painted his first independent frescoes in Montefalco in Umbria for the church of S. Francesco (1450-52). Gozzoli's pleasing narrative style made him one of the most prolific fresco painters of Tuscany: with cycles in Florence, San Gimignano, and Castelfiorentino. From Web Gallery of Art.

Gozzoli's Life of S. Francis, San Francesco Montefalco 1452

St. Francis preaching to the birds and blessing the town and the Franciscans of Montefalco 1452

The Death of San Francis

Gozzoli's Procession of the Magi, Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Florence, 1460

Benozzo Gozzoli (1421-1497), Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Cappella dei Magi, Florence. Gozzoli was the great master of colorful story- telling. This cycle, splendidly restored, is his most beautiful set of frescoes. A feast for the eyes. In a pretext for showing pictures of all the Medici, he shows them in the annual Procession of the Three Kings winding their way through an imaginary fairy landscape - in Tuscany.

The Capella dei Magi

Procession of the Old King

Procession of the Middle King

The Middle King

A young member of the Medici family

Procession of the Young King

Gozzoli's Frescoes in Saint Augustin, San Gimignano 1465

In 1465 in the church of Saint Augustin in San Gimignano Gozzoli painted a lively Life of the Saint and scholar: Naive but fluent story-telling, better than the conventional lives of Augustine.

The chapel in San Augustine with Gozzoli's frecoes

St. Augustine the brilliant child protege - the little boy in green dress on the right! - at school in Segesta, North Africa

Leaving Segesta for Rome

Separately, on the south wall, he painted a curious – a topless Virgin! - fresco of "San Sebastian as the Intercessor"