Belbello da Pavia Biography
(fl c. 1430; d after 1473). Italian illuminator. He was one of the principal and most distinctive manuscript illuminators active in Lombardy in the mid-15th century. Filippo Maria Visconti, 3rd Duke of Milan, commissioned him to complete a Book of Hours (Florence, Bib. N. Cent., MS. Landau Finaly 22; see fig.) left unfinished by Giovannino de Grassi and Salomone de Grassi. Three miniatures in an Acta sanctorum (Milan, Bib. N. Braidense, MSS AE. XIV. 19–20), the first volume of which is dated 1431, are close in style, and probably in date, to Belbello’s work in the Visconti Hours. He also contributed to the illumination of the Breviary of Marie of Savoy (Chambéry, Bib. Mun., MS. 4). This is likely to have been painted after Marie’s marriage to Filippo Maria in 1428, but before 1434, the year Belbello completed a Bible (Rome, Vatican, Bib. Apostolica, MS. Barb. lat. 613) for Niccolò III d’Este, Marquess of Ferrara.
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