Biography

Italian painter. Agnolo and Donnino del Mazziere ran a significant artistic enterprise in Florence during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The brothers were trained in the studio of the traditionalist painter Cosimo Rosselli, then they have established their own shop by the late 1480s. Vasari mentioned in the life of Cosimo Rosselli that Agnolo, the more talented of the brothers, was a skilled draftsman and remained a close friend of Cosimo Rosselli's until the master's death in 1507. That he was recognized as a painter of some technical proficiency is further attested by the fact that Michelangelo included him among the artists called to Rome in 1507-1508 to consult on preparations for the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

The Mazziere brothers produced altarpieces and fresco decorations for churches, confraternities in Florence and elsewhere in Tuscany. Although existing records do not distinguish between the brothers' artistic contributions for any given commission, scholars assume that the bottega was a collaborative enterprise. Following Agnolo's death in 1513, the shop continued its activity at least until Donnino is last mentioned in 1515.

The painter of a small number of stylistically similar works, including three altarpieces from the late 1480s and 1490s in the Augustinian church of Santo Spirito in Florence was named the Master of Santo Spirito in 1962. These core paintings, and the other works later attributed to him in steadily increasing numbers, reveal an artistic sensibility of a determined traditionalist nature, steeped in the stylistic approaches worked out in Florence during the 1470s and 1480s.

The Enthroned Madonna and Child between Two Angels and Saints Lucy and Peter Martyr in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, was also attributed to the Master of Santo Spirito. This altarpiece was identified as the earliest recorded painting of the Mazziere studio, an altarpiece of 1490 for the hospital church of Santa Lucia in Florence. This panel is thus the evidence linking the recorded creations of the Mazziere brothers with the corpus of paintings ascribed to the Master of Santo Spirito. The authorship of a single artist or workshop for the substantial body of works given to the Master of Santo Spirito has received general scholarly acceptance.