Domenico Veneziano
1410–1461 · Republic of Venice · Italian Renaissance, Early Renaissance
The story
Giorgio Vasari told a good story about Domenico Veneziano: that a jealous rival, the painter Andrea del Castagno, murdered him to keep a secret of oil painting. It made vivid reading and it is false, because Castagno died in 1457 and Domenico outlived him by four years.
What Domenico really did was gentler and more important. Working in Florence around the 1440s, he flooded his religious pictures with clear daylight and soft colour, as in his 'St Lucy Altarpiece', where saints stand in an airy pink-and-green loggia. That handling of light shaped a young assistant of his, Piero della Francesca.
Few securely attributed works survive, and the dates of much of his life stay uncertain. The 'St Lucy Altarpiece' is now broken up, its main panel in the Uffizi in Florence and the small predella scenes scattered across other museums.
