Niccolò di Pietro

Around 1400 most painters were anonymous craftsmen, their panels turned out by workshops and rarely signed. Niccolò di Pietro was among the first in Venice to put his own name on his work, and his signed Saint Benedict enthroned, painted in 1394, is now one of the earliest signed Venetian panels we have. It hangs in the Uffizi.

Venice at that moment was the great trading hub between Europe and the East, and it shows in his pictures. The dense gold patterning and rich fabrics echo the Islamic textiles and silks that came through the city's markets, folded into the ornate late-Gothic style Venetians loved. He had taken in ideas from Gentile da Fabriano, the traveling master of that decorative manner, who worked in the city during these years.

On some paintings he signed himself Nicolò Paradiso, after the Ponte del Paradiso, the little bridge near his home in Venice. His name turns up in records and on panels from 1394 into the 1420s, and beyond that trail of dates and signatures little of his life is documented.