Vivarini family

Family of 15th-century Venetian painters. Antonio Vivarini (b. c. 1415—d. c. 1480) collaborated from 1441 with his brother-in-law, Giovanni d'Alemagna (d. 1450), on altarpieces, four of which survive in the churches of San Zaccaria (1443) and San Pantalon (1444), and on a large three-part canvas in the Accademia (1446). Their large-scale polyptychs feature stiff, archaic figures and heavily ornamented frames. In 1447–50 they lived in Padua and worked with Andrea Mantegna on a cycle of frescoes for the Church of the Eremitani (destroyed in World War II). Antonio's younger brother and pupil Bartolomeo (b. c. 1432—d. c. 1499) collaborated with Antonio after 1450. His work, more progressive than his brother's, was imitative of Mantegna. From 1459 he worked independently. His most distinguished works include the altarpieces in the churches of SS. Giovanni e Paolo (1473), Santa Maria dei Frari (1474), and San Giovanni Bragora (1478) and in the Accademia (1477). Antonio's son Alvise (b. c. 1445—d. c. 1505) came under the influence of the Bellini family, with whom he worked on paintings (now lost) for the Doges' Palace (1488). The overlapping careers of Antonio, Bartolomeo, and Alvise recapitulate the overall development of Venetian painting from the late Gothic period to the threshold of the High Renaissance.

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