Abstract

This article outlines the figure of the Florentine Bartolomeo Varnucci, an illuminator who for decades had his workshop in the Badia Fiorentina, where he was assisted by his brothers Giovanni and Chimenti. They where all cartolai, craftsmen able to take care of the production of manuscripts as a whole, from the preparation of the parchment to the binding. Active from the third to the eighth decade of the fifteenth century, Bartolomeo was able to interpret the rise of humanistic book production, with its typical decoration of white vine stems, but also to move through the vast requests of the devotional world, more inclined to conservative artistic solutions. This contribution gives a complete survey of the artist’s milieu and work, adding several new works to his catalogue.

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