ROMANESQUE PAINTER, Italian
(active 1090s in Lombardy)

The Fight with the Dragon (detail)

c. 1090
Fresco
San Pietro al Monte, Civate

The wall and vault frescoes in the former Benedictine monastery church in Lombardy, on the slopes of Monte Pedale overlooking Lake Como, were executed by five different artists or workshops at the end of the eleventh century. The frescoes, among the most superb decorations in early Romanesque painting, combines Ottoman elements with remnants of an ancient Roman illusionism, Byzantine formulae, and clearly Romanesque compositional principles.