Gentile da Fabriano

Gentile (di Niccolò di Massio) da Fabriano was born around 1370 in or near Fabriano, in the Marche. Despite having several family members who took part in different civic and religious organizations in the city, much of Gentile's early life remains undocumented. His mother died some point before 1380, and his father, Niccolò di Giovanni Massi, retired to a monastery in the same year, where he later died in 1385. Little is known of his educational formation: one of his first known works, a Madonna and Child (c. 1395–1400, now in Berlin) shows the influence of paintings made in the northern Italian late-Gothic style. Around 1390 Pavia resided at the court of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, where there is a table with the Madonna with the Children together with the saints Clara and Francis (now in the Pavia Civic Museums) and some frescoes depicting ladies inside a room of the Visconti Castle.
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