PAOLO DI GIOVANNI FEI - b. ~1345 San Quirico d'Orcia, d. ~1411

Italian painter. He is often confused with Francesco di Vannuccio and at one time was thought to have been a pupil of Vannuccio’s partner, Andrea Vanni. He held public positions in Siena from 1369 and was first mentioned in the register of painters enrolled in the Breve dall’Arte in 1389. There are a number of signed and dated works from 1381 onwards. Between 1395 and 1410 he is documented as working at Siena Cathedral. Works such as the Birth of the Virgin (Siena, Pinacoteca Nazionale) and the Assumption of the Virgin (Washington, National Gallery of Art) show the influence of the Lorenzetti brothers, Pietro and Ambrogio, Bartolo di Fredi and Simone Martini. Paolo di Giovanni Fei’s figures have a slightly jowly, long-cheeked and long-nosed facial type and hands with characteristically bulbous ended fingers.

His style is marked by an overpowering delight in colour and incidental detail rather than rational spatial illusionism. He often adopts motifs of earlier Tuscan artists, such as the Christ Child holding his own foot. The figure truncated by architecture also occurs frequently. Although such devices were used to good effect in the works of the Lorenzetti and earlier painters, such as Jacopo del Casentino and Duccio, the same elements can confuse and work against spatial illusionism in Paolo di Giovanni Fei’s work. He influenced Sassetta with such works as the Virgin and Child Enthroned with SS John the Baptist, Andrew, Francis and the Prophet Daniel (Siena, Pinacoteca Nazionale) and Giovanni di Paolo.