Nanni di Bartolo

Nanni di Bartolo, also known as "il Rosso" ("the redhead"), was a Florentine sculptor of the Early Renaissance, a slightly younger contemporary of Donatello. His dates of birth and death are not known, but he is recorded as an active master from 1419 to 1451.^[2]

He is not to be confused with the slightly older, and more prominent, Florentine sculptor Nanni di Banco, and is often called "Rosso" in art history to avoid this.^[3] In both cases "Nanni" is a contraction of "Giovanni", Italian for "John". He was the son of a Friar Bartolo.^[4]

After a series of prominent commissions working with Donatello, the outstanding sculptor of the day in Florence, which was then the leading innovative centre of Italian Renaissance sculpture, Rosso is recorded as leaving Florence in February 1424,^[5] "at least partly to escape debts".^[6] Perhaps he also recognised that he could not compete at the top level with the hugely talented generation of sculptors active in Florence.^[7] For at least the next fifteen years he seems to have worked in Venice and the Venetian parts of north Italy, both spreading Florentine style, but also accommodating it to the local lingering taste for International Gothic elements.^[8]

Many works, mostly small but some large, are attributed to him with varying degrees of certainty, but some are signed. These include works in terracotta and plaster, many reliefs or busts of the Virgin Mary or saints. Dating comes entirely from documents such as contracts.^[9]