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Pietro Paolo Agabiti

 

Agabiti [Agapiti] Pietro Paolo

(b Sassoferrato, c. 1470; d Cupramontana, c. 1540). Italian painter and possible woodcutter. He spent his early years in Sassoferrato, where his family owned a ceramics workshop. Around 1497 he probably visited the Veneto region, since his Virgin and Child with Saints (Padua, Mus. Civ.) painted that year shows the strong influence of painters active there such as Cima da Conegliano. The painting also reflects the Bolognese style of Francesco Francia and that of the Romagnian Marco Palmezzano. In Venice, Agabiti may have made woodcuts after the illustrations for Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Venice, 1499). By 1502 he had returned to the Marches, where he executed a painting (untraced) for S Rocco, Jesi, the town where in 1507 he is documented as residing. After 1510 he was again in Sassoferrato, where in 1511 he signed and dated both the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints (Sassoferrato, Gal. A. Mod. & Contemp.) and the Nativity in S Maria del Piano. In 1518, for the same church, he signed and dated an altarpiece depicting the Virgin and Child with SS Catherine and John the Baptist (in situ). In S Fortunato, Sassoferrato, he executed the Virgin and Child with Saints (1521; in situ), in which the influence of Marco Palmezzano is even more evident.

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