PIREZ D'ÉVORA, Alvaro

Italian painter of Portuguese birth (also called Alvaro di Pietro; Alvaro Portoghese). He is first recorded in Pisa, where he arrived some time before 1411; he was probably trained in Valencia. He was influenced by Turino di Vanni and Taddeo di Bartolo and evolved a style that reflects a combination of Pisan, Florentine and Sienese trends in Late Gothic painting.

In 1411 he and Niccolò di Pietro Gerini painted frescoes on the façade of the Palazzo del Ceppo in Prato (destroyed). His two signed and dated works are an altarpiece with the Virgin and Child with Four Saints (1423; Volterra, Pinacoteca Comunale), and a triptych (1434; Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum) with the Annunciation, Crucifixion and Resurrection. He also signed panels of the Virgin and Child with Angels in Santa Croce a Fossabanda, Pisa, and in the Franciscan church in Nicosia, Sicily. Paintings attributed to Alvaro Pirez include two side panels from a dispersed altarpiece, SS Michael and John the Evangelist (Warsaw, National Museum) and SS Catherine and James (Münster, Westfälisches Landesmuseum); two panels of Four Apostles (two on each panel; Altenburg, Staatliche Lindenau-Museum); panels of the Virgin and Child (Livorno, church of the Casa di Riposo; Cagliari, Museo Archeologico Nazonale); and fragments of a St Catherine (Berne, Kunstmuseum) and a St Francis (private collection). He had no imitators or followers.