Niccolò Alunno

(Real name Niccolò di Liberatore)

Notable Umbrian painter in distemper, born c. 1430, at Foligno; died 1502. He was the son of a painter and a pupil of Bartolommeo di Tommaso. His master’s assistant was Benozzo Gozzoli, the pupil of Fra Angelico. The simple Umbrian feeling in his work was somehow modified by this Florentine influence. His earliest known example (dated 1458) is in the Franciscan Church of La Diruta, near Perugia. He painted banners for religious processions, as well as altarpieces and other pictures, died a rich man, and is supposed by Mariotti to have been the master of Perugino, Pinturicchio, and Andrea di Luigi. Some works ascribed to him are thought to be by another, and contemporary, Alunno, called Desiderato. A “Madonna Enthroned” is in the Brera Gallery in Milan, and there are altarpieces at Perugia, in the Castle at San Severino, at Gualdo, La Bastia, and Foligno. The predella of the last, which was taken to France by Napoleon, still remains in the Louvre. One of his banners is in a church in Perugia.