Benedetto Bonfigli

Place: Perugia

Born: 1420

Death: 1496

Biography:

Benedetto Bonfigli (c. 1420 – July 8, 1496) was an Italian Renaissance painter born in Perugia, and part of the Umbria school of painters including Raphael and Perugino. He is also known as Buonfiglio. Influenced by the style of Domenico Veneziano, Benozzo Gozzoli, and Fra Angelico, Bonfigli primarily painted frescos for the church and was at one point employed in the Vatican. His best preserved work is the Annunication, but his masterpiece is the decoration of the chapel of the Palazzo dei Priori. Bonfigli specialized in gonfaloni, a Perugian style using banners painted on canvas or linen.  Little is known of his personal life, but he was an esteemed painter in Perugia before Perugino, who is said to be his pupil.
Bonfigli as a painter was heavily influenced by Fra Angelico. His attention to detail in smaller areas of his paintings, as well as his use of gold to highlight both sacred and earthly elements can be attributed to Fra Angelico. Bonfigli frequently used backdrops of forestry and cityscapes to provide an additional sense of depth to his pieces. His backgrounds are often said to have been influenced by Domenico Veneziano, who used rolling hills and trees as backdrops to make his paintings more realistic.  These stylistic influences of Angelico and Veneziano's are particularly pertinent in Bonfigli's Annunciation and Adoration of the Child. Most of Bonfigli's frescos use softer colors in the fabrics on his figures, but typically highlights the Virgin Mary in blue, an expensive dye attributed with roalty and sanctity, with a gold halo. He often incorporates historical architecture from his home town Perugia in his works, sometimes meshing buildings of different eras. Bonfigli's method is also similar to his teacher, Benozzo Gozzoli, who had been Fra Angelico's assistant and had worked in Umbria from 1450 to 1456, in that he uses softer colors on the garments of his figures that brings additional depth to his paintings.
Bonfigli trained in Perugia from 1430-1440, while the late-Gothic style was still dominant. Bonfigli's earliest surviving work is a dismembered polyptych, depicting Virgin and Child on the central panel, St. Sebastian and a Bishop Saint on another wing, and what is believed to be St Bernardino of Siena and St Anthony Abbot on another. The painter's first commissioned work is attributed to the Virgin and Child with Two Angels for a chapel near S. Pietro, Perugia on March 7, 1445. He was influenced by the works of Fra Angelico particularly during his employment in the Vatican by Pope Nicholas V in 1450, where many of Angelico's frescoes were displayed in the Cappella Niccolina of the Palazzo Vaticano, the pope's private chapel. We know Bonifgli was held in high regard by the pope due to his high salary at the time was an Italian Renaissance painter born in Perugia, and part of the Umbria school of painters including Raphael and Perugino. He is also known as Buonfiglio. Influenced by the style of Domenico Veneziano, Benozzo Gozzoli, and Fra Angelico, Bonfigli primarily painted frescos for the church and was at one point employed in the Vatican. His best preserved work is the Annunication, but his masterpiece is the decoration of the chapel of the Palazzo dei Priori. Bonfigli specialized in gonfaloni, a Perugian style using banners painted on canvas or linen.  Little is known of his personal life, but he was an esteemed painter in Perugia before Perugino, who is said to be his pupil.
Bonfigli as a painter was heavily influenced by Fra Angelico. His attention to detail in smaller areas of his paintings, as well as his use of gold to highlight both sacred and earthly elements can be attributed to Fra Angelico. Bonfigli frequently used backdrops of forestry and cityscapes to provide an additional sense of depth to his pieces. His backgrounds are often said to have been influenced by Domenico Veneziano, who used rolling hills and trees as backdrops to make his paintings more realistic.  These stylistic influences of Angelico and Veneziano's are particularly pertinent in Bonfigli's Annunciation and Adoration of the Child. Most of Bonfigli's frescos use softer colors in the fabrics on his figures, but typically highlights the Virgin Mary in blue, an expensive dye attributed with roalty and sanctity, with a gold halo. He often incorporates historical architecture from his home town Perugia in his works, sometimes meshing buildings of different eras. Bonfigli's method is also similar to his teacher, Benozzo Gozzoli, who had been Fra Angelico's assistant and had worked in Umbria from 1450 to 1456, in that he uses softer colors on the garments of his figures that brings additional depth to his paintings.
Bonfigli trained in Perugia from 1430-1440, while the late-Gothic style was still dominant. Bonfigli's earliest surviving work is a dismembered polyptych, depicting Virgin and Child on the central panel, St. Sebastian and a Bishop Saint on another wing, and what is believed to be St Bernardino of Siena and St Anthony Abbot on another. The painter's first commissioned work is attributed to the Virgin and Child with Two Angels for a chapel near S. Pietro, Perugia on March 7, 1445. He was influenced by the works of Fra Angelico particularly during his employment in the Vatican by Pope Nicholas V in 1450, where many of Angelico's frescoes were displayed in the Cappella Niccolina of the Palazzo Vaticano, the pope's private chapel. We know Bonifgli was held in high regard by the pope due to his high salary at the time (seven ducats a month). Other works, such as Fra Angelico's Cortona Polyptych commissioned in 1437, and the works of Domenico Veneziano in Perugia also heavily influenced Bonfigli's style. A close interpretation of Bonfigli's style is evident in a fresco dated 1446 of SS Catherine and Clement I in S. Cristoforo, Passigano; this piece, likely not the work of Bonfigli, demonstrates the influence the painter had on the region.
Bonfigli reached maturity as an artist after returning to Perugia from the Rome between 1453 and 1470. During this period, he painted the Annunciation, a smaller piece but among his most well known and preserved, held in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. Bonfigli was influenced by the style of Gozzoli, a Florentine Renaissance painter; his stylistic method is evident in Bonfigli's Annunciation with St. Luke and Vigin and the Four Saints, both held in the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria in Perugia, Italy. According to Giorgio Vasari, the Perugian artist painted the Adoration of the Magi coupled with a predella of Episodes from the Life of Christ and a Miracle of St Nicholas in 1466 for the chapel of San Vincenzo in San Domenico, collaborating with Bartolomeo Caporali. One of his masterpieces is a series of frescoes in the chapel of the Palazzo dei Priori in Perugia, which represent the Lives of St. Louis of Toulouse and St. Herculanus; the frescoes were commenced in 1454 and not finished in 1496, in which year Bonfigli's will is dated. One gonfalone, or banner, was painted in 1465 for the brotherhood of San Bernardino, and representing the deeds of their patron saint. Another gonfalone was painted for the brotherhood of San Fiorenzo in 1476. He painted the Virgin of Mercy (1478) for the church of the Commenda di Santa Croce. All of these works comprised a collection of gonfaloni across Perugia.
Chaplain Bartolomeo da Siena commissioned Bonfigli in 1454 to decorate half of the Priori Chapel. The chaplain intended to have the chapel painted with the Crucifixion with the Virgin and SS John the Evangelist, Laurence and Herculanus on the altar wall; and four scenes from the life of St Louis of Toulouse. The commission was altered later, and the fresco of the Crucifixion on the altar wall was not painted. The other four scenes of St Louis of Toulouse were arranged counter-clockwise from the right of the altar wall. One scene shows St Louis professing the Franciscan Rule before Pope Boniface VIII; another shows St Louis posthumously reuniting a merchant, with the church of San Domenico in Perugia clearly visible in the background; the third, badly damaged, depicts a miracle performed by St Louis; and the fourth shows St Louis burial in a church resembling the church of St Pietro in Perugia. This half of the Priori chapel was finished in 1461, and the artist Filippo Lippi adjudicated the work and priced it at 400 Florentine florins. The works are now held in the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria.

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