RONDINELLI, Niccolò

Italian painter. He may have been born in Ravenna, but he is first documented in the studio of Giovanni Bellini in Venice c. 1490 and was one of his master’s more important pupils. He probably collaborated with Bellini on major projects; his own works of this period are small altarpieces derived from types established by Bellini, such as the Virgin and Child Watching a Bird, falsely signed Iohannes Bellinus (untraced).

He is recorded as being married in Venice in 1495 and shortly afterwards moved to Ravenna, where he undertook a number of important commissions in and around that city, while continuing to produce works for private devotion. His paintings continued to be strongly influenced by Bellini, often using his formula of the Virgin enthroned in an architectural setting and flanked by saints and donors, but he was able to draw on the style of other artists, such as Cima da Conegliano, Vittore Carpaccio and Marco Palmezzano and yet produce works that reveal a personal idiom distinct from that of his contemporaries.

His most celebrated work, and one of the few that can be securely dated, is St Sebastian, made for the cathedral at Forli (1497; in situ), whose suave elegance clearly shows Rondinelli’s individuality. Closer to Bellini are the Virgin and Child with SS Nicholas, Peter, Bartholomew and Augustine, made for the church of San Domenico in Ravenna, and St John the Evangelist Appearing to Galla Placidia, formerly in the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, Ravenna (both Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan).

Rondinelli is last recorded in Ravenna in 1502, but such pictures as the Virgin between SS Catherine and Jerome (Accademia di Belle Arti, Ravenna), which show a knowledge of Bellini’s work of the early 1500s, suggest that he lived until c. 1510.