psychological effects of the black death (Meiss 1951).
However, Nardo’s art evinces less obviously than Orcag-
na’s the somber, pessimistic mood that Meiss identifi ed
in the art of Florence and Siena after 1348. Nardo’s style
is more lyrical and less austere than that of his brother;
his color combinations are more harmonious, and the
facial expressions of his saints are less intimidatingly
severe. His stylistic origins lie in the decorative taste
of Florentine painters such as Bernardo Daddi and the
Sienese school as exemplifi ed in the sumptuous work
of Simone Martini. Bright enamel colors are juxtaposed
with opulent brocades and patterned fl oors, as in the
polyptych in Prague and the two panels with saints in
the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. Nardo’s Madonnas in
Prague, Washington, and Minneapolis have a distinc-
tive beauty that led Offner to describe him as “the
most romantic artist of his age.” The delicate sfumato
modeling of pale fl esh tones enlivened with rose-pink
on the cheeks and lips, and of blond hair draped with
diaphanous veils, is achieved by a patient application of
successive layers of semitransparent glazes. The con-
summate care that Nardo lavished on his paintings—in
the preparation of the panel, the detailed underdrawing,
the meticulous application of paint and the painstaking
execution of sgraffi to and gilded punchwork—make him
possibly the fi nest craftsman among Trecento painters.
As a result, his works are remarkably well-preserved.
Nardo’s reputation has fared less well. History has
been unfair to Nardo. He has suffered from standing in
the shadow of his more famous brother, Orcagna. Vasari
must share some of the responsibility for this: he got the
artist’s name wrong (calling him Bernardo), relegated
Nardo to the role of assistant in Orcagna’s workshop,
and credited to Nardo inferior works that were actually
by others. Even now, despite Offner’s study, Nardo has
yet to receive the attention that is his due.
See also Daddi, Bernardo; Martini, Simone;
Orcagna, Andrea di Cione
Further Reading
Antal, Frederick. Florentine Painting and Its Social Background:
The Bourgeois Republic before Cosimo de’ Medici’s Advent
to Power— XIV and Early XV Centuries. London: K. Paul,
1948.
Meiss, Millard. Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black
Death. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1951.
Offner, Richard. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
Painting, Section 4, Vol. 2, Nardo di Cione. New York: College
of Fine Arts, New York University, I960.
Pitts, Frances Lee. “Nardo di Cione and the Strozzi Chapel
Frescoes: Iconographic Problems in Mid-Trecento Florentine
Painting.” Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley,
1982.
Brendan Cassidy
NEBRIJA, ELIO ANTONIO DE
(c. 1441–1522),
Spain’s leading pre-Renaissance humanist was born
Antonio Martínez de Cala e Hinojosa in the Andalusian
town of Lebrija. Opinion is divided concerning the year
of his birth. In the prologue to his undated Latin-Spanish
dictionary he gives his age as fi fty-one and states that
he was born in the year prior to the battle of Olmedo
(1444). However, other observations in the same pro-
logue concerning the age at which he went to Italy, the
length of his stay there and of his subsequent service to
Alonso de Fonseca, archbishop of Seville, have led some
specialists to place Nebrija’s date of birth in 1441.
At the age of nineteen Nebrija left for Italy to study in
the Spanish College of San Clemente in the University
of Bologna, where he was exposed to the writings of
Lorenzo Valla and to his critiques of the medieval system
of teaching Latin grammar. Nebrija was appalled at the
state of Latin instruction in the University of Salamanca,
by the teaching manuals employed (typifi ed by the
highly popular verse Doctrinale of Alexander de Vil-
ladei), which stressed rote memorization of paradigms,
and by the lack of attention paid to classical authors.
Nebrija returned to Spain determined to introduce the
reforms advocated by Valla. In 1476 he took possession
of the chair of Latin grammar at Salamanca, where he
remained until 1487, when he entered the service of
his former student Juan de Zúñiga, master of the Order
of Alcántara and future cardinal archbishop of Seville.
The years spent with Zúñiga were among Nebrija’s most
productive. At the beginning of the sixteenth century,
Nebrija joined the group headed by Cardinal Cisneros,
that was preparing the edition of the Biblia Poliglota
at the newly created University of Alcalá. Nebrija’s
insistence on applying strict philological criteria to the
text of the Latin Bible brought him into confl ict with
the group’s theologians. After Cisneros lent them his
support, Nebrija chose to withdraw from the project
and returned to the University of Salamanca where he
held various chairs. In 1513 Nebrija failed in his bid to
win the chair of prima de gramática. Embittered, he left
Salamanca. In 1514 Cisneros granted the ageing Nebrija
the chair of rhetoric at Alcalá de Henares, which he oc-
cupied until his death on 2 July 1522.
Nebrija can be described as Spain’s fi rst linguist,
perhaps best known today for his studies of Latin,
Greek, Hebrew, and the Castilian vernacular. Despite
his pioneering work on Castilian, Latin seems to have
been Nebrija’s primary concern as a linguist. His fi rst
major book was Introductiones Latinae (1481), a direct
result of Nebrija’s concern with the quality of Latin
teaching at Salamanca and his belief that grammatica,
the acquisition of Latin, was the key to all other scholarlyNARDO DI CIONE