Pinturicchio

Pinturicchio was the painter the Borgia pope wanted on his walls. His nickname means the little painter, a jab at his small size, but Pope Alexander VI, the Borgia pope notorious for his worldly court, handed him one of the richest commissions in Rome: the decoration of the Borgia Apartments in the Vatican in the 1490s. Pinturicchio filled them with saints and legends glittering with gold leaf and raised ornament, a sumptuous surface fit for a luxurious papacy.

Trained in Umbria in central Italy alongside Perugino, he had already helped paint the walls of the Sistine Chapel before Michelangelo's ceiling existed. He loved rich colour, crowds of finely dressed figures and detailed backgrounds, decoration for its own delight.

His other masterpiece stands in Siena. In the cathedral's Piccolomini Library, painted around 1502 to 1507, he covered the walls with the life of a Renaissance pope in bright, story-book scenes under a ceiling of pattern and gold. He died in Siena in 1513, and one old account claims the ailing painter was left to starve by careless servants, though the story may be more legend than fact.