MICHELE DI MATTEO DA BOLOGNA (Bologna, news from 1410 to 1469) Saint Dominic Oil on panel, 58X43 cm Bibliography: Zeri Archive, no. 27771 (as Michele Di Matteo) Although he was registered in the guild of painters in 1416 as 'magister Michael Mathei pictor capelle Sancte Caterinae de Saragotia', we have no significant evidence of the artist's early activity. We do know that in 1410 he was paid for some banners with the insignia of the Antipope Alexander V, but we can assert that he was trained in Bologna in the environment still linked to the archaising modes of Giovanni da Modena, as can be seen by looking at the Coronation of the Virgin of 1426 belonging to a private collection in Florence. Also belonging to this period are St. Bartholomew and the Emperor Constantine from the Pesaro Civic Museum and a Madonna and Child from the National Museum in Bucharest, from the Hercolani collection in Bologna, while of a slightly later period is the panel painting depicting the Madonna of Humility from the Bordonaro collection in Palermo, which heralds the evolution that the artist was to express during his first stay in Venice (1631-1636). The panel under examination is still of a purely Felsine moment, as the punching and the hieratic pose of the Saint would seem to suggest, in analogy with the archaism of Orazio di Jacopo's contemporary works (cf. C. Volpe, Orazio di Jacopo, in La pittura nell'Emilia e nella Romagna. Raccolta di Scritti sul Trecento e Quattrocento, Modena 1993, pp. 90- 92, fig. 172). Reference bibliography: M. Boskovits, Gemäldegalerie Berlin, Frühe italiensische Malerei, Berlin 1988, pp. 139, 380 A. Galli, in The Alana Collection: Italian Paintings from the 13th to 15th Century, edited by M. Boskovits, Florence 2009, pp. 126-129, cat. no. 22 F. Massaccesi, Nuove riflessioni sul percorso di Michele di Matteo, in Arte cristiana, XCVII (2009), 852, pp. 171-180