Francesco Pesellino

His father was the painter Stefano di Francesco (died 1427), and his maternal grandfather was the painter Giuliano Pesello (1367–1446), from whose name the diminutive nickname "Pesellino" arose. He married in 1442, and probably joined the Florentine painters' guild in 1447. In the following years he made for reputation with small, highly-finished works for domestic interiors, including religious panels for private devotional use and secular subjects for pieces of furniture (i.e. wedding chests and wainscoting). According to many art historians, his style "anticipated the developments of later Florentine painters such as Andrea del Verrocchio and the Pollaiuoli [brothers Antonio and Piero]".

Training under Giuliano Pesello and Filippo Lippi is recorded. Works named in the authority record are Seven Liberal Arts, Seven Virtues, The Story of David and Goliath, Life of Susannah and Story of Griselda. Work by Francesco Pesellino is recorded in the collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Städel Museum, Nationalmuseum, Metropolitan Museum of Art and National Galleries Scotland.

• Illustration — Story of Griselda (detail of a cassone panel), ca 1450. Bergamo, Accademia Carrara. According to Vasari, Pesellino painted the predella of Fra Filippo Lippi's Novitiate Altarpiece for Santa Croce. The predella is now divided between the Uffizi and the Louvre. His only surviving documented work is the Santa Trinita of Pistoia Altarpiece. Early sources, such as Vasari's Lives of the Artists, describe a number of other paintings by Pesellino, now lost, in prominent at the Palazzo Medici and the Medici Casa Vecchia. At least one work by Pesellino is said to have hung in the same room as Paolo Uccello's Battle of San Romano. Some panel paintings have been identified as Pesellino's by stylistic comparison with the altarpiece. These include two long horizontal panels with the Story of David and Goliath and the Triumph of David, now at the National Gallery, London. Other cassoni panels are in Bergamo (Accademia Carrara) and Boston (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum), whilst the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Toledo Museum of Art have other works. A small diptych of the Annunciation at the Courtauld Institute is another good example of the small-scale cabinet paintings that made Pesellino's famous, whilst his King Melchior Sailing to the Holy Land is in the Clark Art Institute. The Hermitage has six very beautiful full-page miniatures by Pesellino from an illuminated manuscript.