Crivelli, Taddeo

Italy, (fl. after 1451; d. by 1479)

  • Taddeo Crivelli - Saint Anthony Abbot
  • Saint Anthony Abbot

  • (1469), tempera colors, gold leaf, and gold paint on parchment
  • Leaf: 3.2 x 4.25 in. (7.9 x 10.8 cm.)
  • Getty Museum, Los Angeles
  • Editor’s Note:

    The image of St. Anthony here is from the illuminated manuscript known today as the “Gualenghi-d’Este Hours.” As most books of hours, it included a section of Suffrages – short prayers to saints – which contains the majority of the twenty-one full-page miniatures in the manuscript.

    Crivelli created this commissioned work in 1469. This tiny, hand-held manuscript was probably a gift to celebrate the marriage of diplomat Andrea Gualengo to Orsina d’Este, a member of Ferrara’s ruling family. It became their personal prayer book.

    Here St. Anthony and his pig are meant to serve as a devotional model for Andrea and Orsina or other readers of the manuscript. The picture is accompanied by a prayer to the saint on the facing page, which was intended to inspire the reader to pious meditation.

About the Artist

Taddeo Crivelli, Italian, (fl. after 1451; d. by 1479). Crivelli was an illuminator and painter, also known as Taddeo da Ferrara.

Possibly of Lombard origins, Crivelli spent the busiest 20 years of his career (c. 1452-71) in Ferrara where he engaged in hundreds of commissions and employed a sizeable shop of apprentices and assistants. Crivelli was one of the most important manuscript illuminators of the Renaissance.

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