Life of MELOZZO DA FORLI

Advertisements

 
  Italian painter from Forli in the Romagna, active mainly in Loreto, Rome, and Urbino. He was an attractive and idiosyncratic painter who achieved a high reputation in his time, but little of his work survives intact and he has been a neglected figure until fairly recently. His style was indebted to Piero della Francesca and he was renowned for his skill in perspective and illusionism; he was, indeed, credited with being the inventor of extreme form of foreshortening known as sotto in s, of which Mantegna was another great exponent. Melozzo s skill in this field is seen in his fresco of the Ascension (1478-80) for the dome of SS. Apostoli in Rome, fragments of which are in the Quirinal Palace and the Vatican.