work. His paintings show a mastery of
color, light, and texture, and he was espe-
cially masterful in painting clothing and
intricate drapery.
Battiferra degli Ammannati, Laura .....
(1523–1589)
Italian poet, known for several volumes of
herwritingsaswellashermarriagetoBar-
tolomeo Ammannati, a renowned sculptor
who worked closely with Michelangelo
Buonarroti. She was born in Urbino, the
illegitimate daughter of a wealthy man of
the church, Giovanni’ Antonio Battiferri,
and his concubine, Maddalena Coccapani.
First married to a professional musician,
Vittorio Sereni, Laura was widowed in
- Some time in her youth she had met
Ammannati, an up-and-coming artist who
carried out commissions for the church
and for the duke of Urbino, who hired
him to decorate a country villa in the Um-
brian town of Pesara.
Laura Battiferra’s marriage to Amman-
nati was arranged by her influential father
and took place in the spring of 1550, not
long after the death of her first husband.
The couple lived in Rome, where he
worked on several important commissions.
After the death of his patron, Pope Julius
III, they moved to Florence, where Am-
mannati was taken into the court of Co-
simo de’ Medici. There, Battiferra earned
her reputation as a poet. In 1560 her po-
ems appeared in theFirst Book of Tuscan
Works, a collection of several different po-
ets from Florence and its surroundings.
Inspired by the Italian poets Petrarch and
Dante Alighieri, and the ancient Roman
poets Ovid and Virgil, she wrote more
than three hundred sonnets in which she
used great skill in language and a wide-
ranging knowledge of philosophy, mythol-
ogy, and literature. A pious woman and a
devout Catholic, she also created Italian
translations of the penitential psalms in
the 1560s and donated much of her wealth
to the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits.Bellini, Gentile ..................................
(ca. 1429–1507)
The son of Jacopo Bellini, Gentile was one
of the most renowned Venetian painters of
the Renaissance. Trained by his father, he
closely followed Jacopo’s painting style in
his early works. In 1474 he began work on
a cycle of historical paintings that would
decorate the Chamber of the Great Coun-
cil in the Doge’s palace in Venice. For the
Scuola Grande di San Lorenzo, Bellini
painted another grand cycle, includingThe
Procession of the True Cross in the Piazza
San Marco, a work completed in 1496.
These huge canvases contain hundreds of
figures and highlight the splendor of the
city of Venice. Bellini also made Venice the
setting for paintings he made for the reli-
gious confraternity of San Giovanni Evan-
gelista. These works, which includeProces-
sion in St. Mark’s SquareandRecovery of
the Holy Cross, celebrate a holy relic owned
by the school.
In 1479 the Doge of Venice sent Bellini
as a diplomat to the court of Muhammad
II, the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, who
had requested a skilled painter. Muham-
mad defied Islamic traditions forbidding
representations of the human form by hav-
ing Bellini paint his portrait, a lifelike pic-
ture that became one of Bellini’s most fa-
mous works. Bellini’s reputation in the east
gained him prestige in Venice and imbued
his later works with elements of Islamic
artistic style. Bellini was also known for
his portraits of the doges of Venice and
other nobility, including Caterina Cornaro,
the queen of Cyprus.Battiferra degli Ammannati, Laura