In this fascinating book, Fra Carnevale—heretofore a mysterious, quasi-legendary figure—emerges as a well-defined and pivotal artist in Renaissance Florence. In presenting their case, the authors take the reader from the workshop of Filippo Lippi in Florence to Urbino, capital of Federico da Montefeltro’s duchy in the region of the Marches. It was a road most memorably traveled by Piero della Francesca, who worked in Florence in 1439 and became Federico’s favorite artist. This book shows that other lesser known artists like Fra Carnevale also took the same path.


Among the many other artists—painters and sculptors—crucial to Fra Carnevale’s formation and discussed in this volume are Domenico Veneziano, Luca della Robbia, Pesellino, and Agostino di Duccio. Essays by Keith Christiansen, Andrea De Marchi, and Matteo Ceriana and a documentary appendix by Andrea Di Lorenzo and Matteo Mazzalupi transform our knowledge of this exciting moment in the history of Renaissance art.