Michelino Molinari da Besozzo

Frescoes in the church of Sant'Eustorgio, Milan.

Michelino Molinari da Besozzo (c. 1370 – c. 1455) was an Italian painter and illuminator. He worked mostly in Milan and Lombardy.

Biography

A native of Besozzo, in 1388 he worked in the second cloister of the church of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro at Pavia, where he frescoed the Scenes of the Life of St. Augustine. In 1395-1405 he executed the miniatures for a breviary, currently housed in the Library of Avignon in France. A drawing of the Nativity (now in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana of Milan) dates to the same period. Other four saints on different parchments, from another breviary, owned by the Cabinet des Dessins of the Louvre Museum, Paris (1390–1400).

The first dated work from the artist is a miniature with the Funerary Eulogy of Gian Galeazzo Visconti (1403). Michelino worked in the Veneto from 1404 to c. 1418. In 1410 he is mentioned in Venice together with Gentile da Fabriano.

In 1414, together with other Veneto illuminators, he worked at the Cornaro Codex. The panel of the Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine, signed "Michelinus feci" and housed in the National Gallery of Siena, dates to c. 1420. Another known panel from him is the Marriage of the Virgin now at the Metropolitan Museum of New York City, USA (c. 1435). Less precise is the dating of the Offiziolo Bodmer, another breviary.

In 1418 he returned to Milan to work in the construction of the city's Duomo. In 1421 he was paid for the altar entitled to Saints Quiricus and Julietta, together with his son, Leonardo da Besozzo. Another commission given to Michelino were the drawings for the stained glasses of St. Julietta (1423–1425). A fresco depicting the Madonna with Child from c. 1430 is in the Abbey of Viboldone, while the Madonna of the Rose Garden (attributed by some to Stefano da Verona) is from c. 1435.

Michelino's last known work is the fresco with the Procession of the Magi in the church of Santa Maria di Podone of Milan and fragments in the Rocca Borromeo di Angera (1445–1446).

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