Pico Master, active 1460-1505

LC control no.	no2019143680
Descriptive conventions	rda
Personal name heading	Pico Master, active 1460-1505 *Browse this term in* LC Authorities or the LC Catalog
Variant(s)	Disegnatore popolare, active 1460-1505 Illustrator of the Malermi Bible of 1490, active 1460-1505 Maestro del Plinio di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, active 1460-1505 Maestro del Plinio di Pico, active 1460-1505 Maestro del Plinio di Pico della Mirandola, active 1460-1505 Maestro di Pico, active 1460-1505 Master of the Pico della Mirandola Pliny, active 1460-1505 Meister des Plinius des Pico della Mirandola, active 1460-1505 Pico Pliny Master, active 1460-1505 Picomeister, active 1460-1505 Picov Majstor, active 1460-1505 Popular Designer, active 1460-1505
Beginning date	1469
Ending date	1495
Associated place	Venice (Italy) Ferrara (Italy)
Field of activity	Illumination of books and manuscripts Illustration of books
Affiliation	Venice (Republic : To 1797)
Profession or occupation	Illuminators Illustrators
Special note	Proposed identification with Bartolomeo del Tintore, miniaturist active in Bologna approximately 1459-1495, is not proven.
Found in	Masuccio, Salernitano. [Novellino], 21 July 1492 (name not given; colophon: Impresso in Venetia, per Iohan[n]i & Gregorio de Gregorii fratelli) Hind, Arthur M. Introduction to a history of woodcut, 1935: v. 2, page 464 ("I have already alluded to the popular and classic styles in Venetian woodcut. The distinction ... seems to indicate the existence of two master designers, who are probably to be found among the miniaturists and painters, and not among the craftsmen who cut the blocks. I will speak of these designers respectively as the 'popular' designer or the Illustrator of the Malermi Bible of 1490 and the 'classic' designer or the Illustrator of the Malermi Bible of 1493") page 470 ("The style of the 'popular' designer does not seem so nearly related to any of the well-known painters as that of the 'classic' ... He might well belong to the company of illuminators ... rather than the panel painters") pages 477-478 ("A book entirely suited to the vein of the 'popular' designer ... was Boccaccio's Decameron, which he illustrated ... in the editions printed by Joannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, June 1492 ... The same border and a certain number of the small cuts from the Decameron recur in the same printers' edition of Masuccio's Novellino, July 1492") Armstrong, Lilian. "The Pico Master: a Venetian miniaturist of the late Quattrocento," in her Studies of Renaissance miniaturists in Venice, 2003, pages 233-338: page 233 ("Throughout this period ... numerous miniaturists continued to thrive by decorating individual copies of the books emerging from the presses of the earliest printers. The present study seeks to establish the oeuvre of one such artist to whom can be attributed an almost uninterrupted sequence of works dating from 1469 to 1495 ... The artist begins as a miniaturist illuminating manuscripts, spends more than twenty years painting individual copies of Venetian printed books, and finally turns to designing woodcuts for printed books ... No illumination by the miniaturist has yet been linked to a document providing his name. Instead, the anonymous artist may be named after his best known work; he thus becomes the Master of the Pico della Mirandola Pliny, or in shortened form, the Pico Master") pages 269-270 ("Immediately following 1490, a veritable deluge of Venetian printed books appeared with woodcut initials, narrative scenes, and frontispieces. Scholars have agreed that this woodcut production in Venice was dominated by two designers. In 1935, A. M. Hind named the two artists the 'Popular Designer' and the 'Classical Designer.' The Popular Designer's style is most evident in the period 1490 to 1494, and the style of the Classical Designer emerges about 1493 and continues into the 16th century. Strong arguments have recentIy been made to show that the Classical Designer is the miniaturist Benedetto Bordon, and I would now propose that the Popular Designer is the miniaturist whose career has been reconstructed in this paper, that is the Pico Master") page 338 ("It has recently been proposed by Ulrike Bauer-Eberhardt that the Pico Master is Bartolomeo del Tintore [also known as Bartolomeo di Giovanni], a miniaturist documented in Bologna from 1459 ... While I welcome Bauer-Eberhardt's new attribution of a Breviarium ... as a work of the Pico Master, I do not agree that the Pico Master is the miniaturist of the 1459 Statuti della società dei Notai signed by Bartolomeo del Tintore ... Thus ... I unfortunately cannot accept that the Pico Master is Bartolomeo del Tintore") Bauer-Eberhardt, Ulrike. "Et hi tres unum sunt: Bartolomeo del Tinotore, Bartolomeo di Benicà da Ferrara und der 'Maestro di Pico," in Rivista di storia della miniatura (2000), v. 5, pages 109-119 (article proposes to identify the "Maestro di Pico" as Bartolomeo del Tinotore) Bentivoglio-Ravasio, Beatrice. "Maestro del Plinio di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola / Maestro del Plinio di Pico / Maestro di Pico," in Dizionario biografico dei miniatori italiani, 2004, pages 635-642: page 635 (active in Venice and Ferrara, approximately 1460-approximately 1505; conventual name assigned by Lillian Armstrong in 1990 to the miniaturist responsible for the decoration of a Pliny manuscript (Historia naturalis) prepared for Giovanni Pico della Mirandola) pages 640-641 (from 1489, worked almost exclusively as a designer of woodcut illustrations; according to Armstrong, he is responsible for nearly all the illustrations assigned to the so-called "Disegnatore popolare") passim (Maestro di Pico) Pagnotta, Linda. Le edizioni italiane della Legenda aurea, 1475-1630, c2005: page 29 (notes stylistic similarities between pen and ink miniatures in printed books of the period and early woodcut illustrations; the proposal to identify the "disegnatore popolare" ("popular designer") with the so-called Maestro di Pico (Pico Master) appears convincing, especially given that his activity in the field of woodcut illustration continues a twenty-year period of miniaturist practice at the highest level) German Wikipedia, September 27, 2019 (Meister des Plinius des Pico della Mirandola, also Picomeister, Italian Maestro del Plinio di Pico della Mirandola, Maestro di Pico; illuminator of a manuscript of Pliny's Historia naturalis prepared for Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, approximately 1480; probably active first in Ferrara, then Venice; his works are thought to be dated between 1469 and 1505; illuminator of manuscripts; after 1490, also produced woodcuts for early printed editions; identification with the miniature painter Bartolomeo del Tintore, active in Bologna at midcentury, has been proposed but is disputed in scholarly circles) Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, September 27, 2019: nid=132093243 (Maestro di Pico; other names: Maestro del Plinio di Pico della Mirandola; active 1469-1495; artist, painter, illuminator) nid=1017300232 (Meister des Plinius des Pico della Mirandola; other names: Picomeister; Maestro del Plinio di Pico della Mirandola; Maestro di Pico; active approximately 1469-1505; artist, illuminator, woodcutter) nid=1051588901 (Maestro del Plinio di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola; other names: Pico Pliny Master; active 1480-1490; illuminator) <http://d-nb.info/gnd/1051588901> <http://d-nb.info/gnd/1017300232> <http://d-nb.info/gnd/132093243> VIAF, September 27, 2019: VIAF ID: 259895457 (Maestro del Plinio di Pico della Mirandola, f. 1460-1505: Vatican Library) VIAF ID: 15921703 (Maestro di Pico: German National Library; Meister des Plinius des Pico della Mirandola, italienischer Buchmaler: Wikidata) VIAF ID: 193609881 (Meister des Plinius des Pico della Mirandola: German National Library) VIAF ID: 291518491 (Maestro del Plinio di Pico della Mirandola, 15e E.: National Library of the Netherlands) VIAF ID: 308727570 (Maestro del Plinio di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: German National Library) OCLC, September 27, 2019 (access points: Pico Master; Maestro del Plinio di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola; Meister des Plinius des Pico della Mirandola; usage: Pico Master; Maestro di Pico; Maestro del Plinio di Pico; Picov Majstor)