Biography

Italian illuminator. A pivotal figure in early 15th-century Venetian manuscript illumination, he was first mentioned as a 'miniator' in the Mariegola (rule book) of the Scuola di Santa Caterina dei Sacchi, Venice (Venice, Museo Correr, MS. IV, 118), written around the turn of the 15th century. A note indicating his paternity ('filio ser Marci') in a document of 1420 indicates that he was a brother of Franceschina, wife of Giovanni di Francia. The latter has been identified with Zanino di Pietro, a painter who influenced Cortese's style.

In 1409 a Venetian document mentions a 'Christophorus de Cortisiis pictor', who may be the illuminator Cortese to whom the polyptych Virgin and Child with Four Saints in the parish church of Altidona, Ascoli Piceno, has been tentatively attributed. The polyptych is very close to the style of Zanino di Pietro and also to that of a diptych, the Crucifixion with SS Francis and Onofrio, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Other documents, dated 1420 and 1425, also mention the artist. In September 1425 Cortese was in Bologna, but in October he returned to Venice, where he is mentioned as still living in 1439.