Artist · 3 prints
Niccolò di Giacomo da Bologna Prints
About Niccolò di Giacomo da Bologna
Niccolò di Giacomo da Bologna, often called Niccolò da Bologna, was an Italian manuscript illuminator, born around 1325, and he died around 1403. He worked all his life in Bologna, home to one of Europe's oldest universities, and was active from about 1349. He was one of the most important and prolific book painters of fourteenth-century Italy and did well enough to take part in city government. In the 1380s Bologna appointed him its official illuminator.
Niccolò's figures are expressive and his scenes crowded and full of action. He and his workshop decorated university textbooks, especially law books (his first signed works are copies of canon law), as well as choir books, prayer books, poetry and city statute books. Large painted initials, capital letters that frame a small scene, were a specialty. Between about 1394 and 1402 he illuminated a set of choir books for the Carthusian monastery at Farneta near Lucca, later cut up and sold; leaves from them are now in collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Niccolò di Giacomo da Bologna prints: reproductions of illuminated manuscript pages and painted initials by Niccolò da Bologna, the fourteenth-century book painter of Bologna. The collection includes Initial S: Pentecost (1394), The Crucifixion (1390) and Birth of John the Baptist.
Our selection shows his specialty, the historiated initial, a large painted capital letter with a small scene inside it. The Pentecost initial and the Birth of John the Baptist place crowded groups of figures within the curves of the letters, and the Crucifixion is a full scene. The colors are strong, with gold, blue and red.
The bright gold and color suit studies, libraries, bedrooms and reading corners, and the initials make an unusual choice for anyone whose name begins with S. All prints are museum-quality reproductions, available unframed or framed with low-glare acrylic glazing, with free shipping and import duties covered.
