ABSTRACT
Benozzo Gozzoli is often characterized as a decorative painter working in an essentially late Gothic stylistic mode. Such a characterization depends mainly on a conventional but I think questionable reading of the pictorial style of Benozzo's most celebrated work, the frescoes in the chapel of the Palazzo Medici in Florence. In various respects these frescoes in fact demonstrate remarkable imagination and artistic innovation; but, nevertheless, there is some truth in the view that they reflect an interest in the late Gothic art of the North Italian courts. It is reasonable to suggest that Piero di Cosimo de' Medici - who, if not the patron, was at least responsible for seeing the decoration of the family chapel carried through to completion developed this artistic taste through his contact with courts such as that of the Este at Ferrara. It is less safe, however, to assume that Benozzo Gozzoli's stylistic preferences were limited to those shown in the Cappella Medici frescoes. Evidence that his interests and artistic skills ranged far beyond those that might be classified as 'courtly late Gothic' is to be found in other works, notably the frescoes formerly in the Camposanto in Pisa which he painted towards the end of his career in the 1480s. This evidence can be mirrored by consideration of a group of drawings which originally formed part of the property of his workshop. The sketchbook has been discussed by a number of scholars, recently in particular by Robert Scheller and Albert Elen, and by Bernhard Degenhart and Annegrit Schmitt in their great Corpus of early Italian drawings. 1 The quality of draughtsmanship in the drawings in this sketchbook is not high, and clearly shows that a number of assistants in Gozzoli's workshop contributed their efforts to it, in some cases when they were apparently still at a fairly early stage of their training as painters. But the contents of the surviving drawings, as well as the workshop practices that may be inferred from them, are of considerable interest and 27invite an attempt to evaluate the character and training methods of the Gozzoli workshop.
